Smith on Licensing Regulations
18 March 2007
Editor, US News & World Report
To the Editor:
James Pethokoukis is correct that "liberalizing trade for professional services - such as medicine and law - might not only suppress the dramatic income increases in those professions, as [Alan] Greenspan suggests, but also make them more affordable" ("Greenspan's Inequality Fix: Free Trade for Lawyers and Doctors," March 16).
Opposition to state licensing has a long and proud pedigree. Writing to William Cullen, MD, in 1774, Adam Smith argued that licensing is a monopoly privilege that lowers the quality of medical care by artificially keeping many good physicians out and by certifying some quacks. According to Smith, "That in every profession the fortune of every individual should depend as much as possible upon his merit, and as little as possible upon his privilege, is certainly for the interest of the public."*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Letter from Adam Smith to William Cullen, 20 Sept. 1774, in Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), pp. 173-179.
Editor, US News & World Report
To the Editor:
James Pethokoukis is correct that "liberalizing trade for professional services - such as medicine and law - might not only suppress the dramatic income increases in those professions, as [Alan] Greenspan suggests, but also make them more affordable" ("Greenspan's Inequality Fix: Free Trade for Lawyers and Doctors," March 16).
Opposition to state licensing has a long and proud pedigree. Writing to William Cullen, MD, in 1774, Adam Smith argued that licensing is a monopoly privilege that lowers the quality of medical care by artificially keeping many good physicians out and by certifying some quacks. According to Smith, "That in every profession the fortune of every individual should depend as much as possible upon his merit, and as little as possible upon his privilege, is certainly for the interest of the public."*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Letter from Adam Smith to William Cullen, 20 Sept. 1774, in Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), pp. 173-179.
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Thursday November 8, 2007 at 1:51pm