Wichita on verge of new regulatory regime

The Wichita City Council is likely to create a new regulatory regime for massage businesses in response to a problem that is already addressed by strict laws.

During a presentation to the Wichita City Council on February 23, 2016, police officials reported on a number of investigations and arrests. In 2015, there were 22 arrests for human trafficking and other violations. The presentation did not include what comprised “other violations,” nor did it contain any information about the disposition of these cases.

If the city is concerned about prostitution and child trafficking, the latter being a serious crime, we already have strong laws concerning this. As far as the two crimes being related: Prostitutes and pimps are already criminals, according to the law. Committing more crimes like child trafficking is just another step down the path they’ve already chosen.

A solution is to bring prostitution out of the shadows. Stop making consensual behavior between adults a crime. Then police can focus on actual and serious crime, like child trafficking.

But the zeal of the Wichita City Council for creating new regulatory regime is likely to overwhelm any rational thought about the problem. Now Wichita massage business owners and therapists are likely to be saddled with onerous licensing requirements. To become a newly-licensed therapist, you must possess one of several educational credentials, one of which is 500 hours of training. Existing therapists must meet similar requirements.

City officials note that the existing local massage industry requested this regulation. That’s not surprising. The purpose of nearly all occupational licensure laws is to restrict entry to the industry so that existing practitioners can charge higher rates. That is a scam, especially against low-income people that need a masseuse or a plumber. It is also a burden to people who want to become plumbers, barbers, massage therapists, or one of the many other licensed occupations.

It is both shocking and disappointing to realize that Wichita city bureaucrats and council members do not realize these economic realities. Another economic reality is that when licensing requirements are strict, the quality of service that many people receive declines. When investigating the demand for licensed plumbers, researchers found this:¹

This proxy assumes that the more stringent are the barriers the higher will be the cost of licensed service and the smaller will be its quantity. These two effects increase the motivation of consumers to substitute their own services for those of trained professionals. This substitution process should show up in rising retail sales of plumbing supplies in more tightly restrictive states since licensed plumbers will generally purchase supplies wholesale. The implicit assumption is this causal chain is that self-service is on the average of lower quality than could be obtained from even a marginally trained journeyman plumber.

In other words, when strict licensure requirements make plumbers expensive, more people do their plumbing work themselves, and this work is likely to be of lower quality. It’s quite a stretch (literally and figuratively) to apply this reasoning to do-it-yourself massage, but here’s another economic reality: The more difficult it is to achieve a credential, the greater is the incentive to cheat. You don’t have to search very far before you find vendors advertising their services like this:

We are one of the oldest and most trusted seller of fake diplomas on the web. We use real diploma paper, the same paper that most major universities and high schools use. We also use professional security paper for our fake transcripts. We have more than 12 years experience in printing fake diplomas. You can rest assured that your fake diploma or fake transcript will look very authentic. We offer many different types of fake diplomas and fake certificates such as, FAKE GEDs, fake college diploma, fake university degree, fake high school diploma, fake college degree, or fake high school transcripts and fake skill certificate.

How diligently will Wichita’s bureaucratic machinery investigate when presented with a fake diploma certificate and transcript? The city’s record is not good. After the city passed new taxicab regulations, somehow the regulation that prohibited convicted sex offenders from receiving licenses was not implemented effectively. The city granted a taxi driver license to a man who was on the state sex offender registry. He raped a passenger.

The city council should reject these regulations and devote the city’s resources to protecting people from actual crime.

Limiting economic opportunity

The Wichita City Council is concerned about human trafficking for the purposes of prostitution. That’s good. But the response the council is considering — which is licensing massage therapists — is not needed. We have strict laws already on the books that make human trafficking a serious criminal offense, which it is. The proposed Wichita regulations will simply make it more difficult for honest people to become massage therapists. Criminals will operate illegally. They are criminals, after all. Or, they will easily obtain false credentials.

Kansas already has many burdensome occupational licensure requirements that limit economic opportunity and protect entrenched interests. Nearby is a chart of the number of days training or experience required to obtain a license to work in various fields, according to Institute for Justice in 2012. ² I’ve added the proposed Wichita massage therapist requirements. As you can see, it will require more than twice as much education to become a massage therapist as is required to become an emergency medical technician. How does that make sense?

Comparing the proposed Wichita requirements to the nation, we find that the Wichita standard is quite lax. 39 states license massage therapists, with the average education or training requirement being 139 days, with the range being from 117 days to 327 days³. Wichita is proposing 83 days, which might inspire one to ask this question: If the Wichita City Council is truly concerned about protecting Wichitans from getting a bad massage, why is it proposing such minimal requirements, compared to other states?

In reality, the high barriers to becoming a massage therapist in many states is testimony to the massage industry’s success in erecting barriers to entry. By making it difficult to become a massage therapist, the supply is lower than it could be, and prices are higher. Consumers lose. Upward economic opportunity is lost.

The purpose of nearly all occupational licensure laws is to restrict entry to the industry so that existing practitioners can charge higher rates. That is a scam, especially against low-income people that need a masseuse or a plumber. It is also a burden to people who want to become plumbers, barbers, massage therapists, or one of the many other licensed occupations.

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Notes