Keep swinging, Sparky, you'll eventually hit the ball

by: Eric B.

Sun Jun 17, 2012 at 14:06:47 PM EDT

I was eavesdropping on a conversation between one of my kid's old Little League coaches and a parent of one of the kids a few weeks ago. When kids transition from the Farm League to the National League, there's a tendency for them to just stand at the plate and either strike out or take a walk. It's a League-wide thing, and the guy who helped coached my kid's team last year said he had a piece of advice for his son's team this year ... "If you swing the bat, you might hit the ball; if you never swing it, however, you'll never hit it." Kudos to the Mackinac Center's professional intern ... keep swinging, kid, you might eventually hit the ball.

When last we left this madcap gang, they were complaining about licensing requirements for barbers. "How dumb," they said, practically in a single voice. "Why do we need to train barbers? If someone gives you a bad haircut, you can just go next door to a competing barber shop." When people, including the administration of benevolent overlord Rick Michigan, pointed out that barbers not only operate very sharp implements next to parts of people's necks containing vital blood vessels but they also come into first contact with public health nuisances like lice, their response was, "Oh, of course you're going to use that old public health chesnut." And, everyone went on to ignore them.

It appears that the silence we heard after this wasn't an admission of defeat, that in many cases we don't want an unregulated work environment, but a retreat, regrouping and repackaging of the same basic argument, except just as clumsily chosen.

Earning extra money replacing gutters or putting in new bathroom tile will cost you a lot of time and money thanks to Michigan's licensing laws.

Without a certificate from the government, a lot of contracting work is illegal.

Michigan's licensing apparatus requires most general contracting workers to pay $235, take 60 hours of state-approved education, pass two exams and be over 18 years of age. Tiling, pouring terrazzo and putting up gutters are covered as maintenance and alteration contractors. Michigan is one of only 10 states that requires a license for this type of work and has the fourth highest licensing burden in the country, according to the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm.

First off, the kind of tiling he's describing isn't just bathroom tiling, but also the tiling necessary for outside drainage projects. This is tiling under the ground and mostly involves draining water from rain and melted snow from the house away from it. It's not just putting tiles on your bathroom floor.

Why would you want someone who is trained in how to properly pour terrazo and place tiling to do this? Let's answer a question with two questions, and then answer that second question.

Why does the state's constitution empower one local elected official, called the drain commissioner, to set special assessments without input from property owners? Why are building projects required to have a storm drainage plan based on the square footage of paved space (i.e. parking lots and roof)? Because the state was once essentially a giant swamp.  We might be one of only a handful of states with requirements for tiling workers. We're also pretty unique in empowering drain commissioners for the same reason. Because if they do a terrible job of it, it's not just a matter of moving along to someone else who can compete better in the marketplace. It's a matter potentially of flooding ... both your property and your neighbors. It's not just a matter of flooding on the surface, too, but also of turning the ground really soggy.

By the way, shelling out the $235 for classroom education on this is nothing compared to the insurance you have to take out and the bonds you have to buy if you want to do this kind of work.  What the Mackinac Center here is bitching about is very much like screeching irrationally about the obscene bar to employment that obtaining a drivers license is for someone who wants to haul freight in an 18 wheeler.

One last note, having worked as a day laborer for a goodly amount of time between college graduation and my Navy days, I can conclusively say that none of this training is really required if you want to earn a little money on the side doing this work.  It's required if you want to pass yourself off as a self-employed contractor (again, for which $235 is hardly an onerous fee). Also, having known a guy or two who's done contracting work on the side (despite not being properly licensed), I can also tell you conclusively that if you just want to make a little money at this, you are still free to take all that risk on yourself. All this licensing does is give a property owner piece of mind that if things go south he has reasonble expectation to be made whole.