How to help men: Decriminalize ALL work
Hear me out
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My semi-platonic life partner sent me the video below, which succinctly summarizes a lot of what I’ve been saying about men’s woes. I’m also proud that I’ve been sounding this alarm since the talk I gave for SFL in 2015. I made a few key predictions that are, unfortunately, coming true.
The video host admits to not knowing the solution the problem. As I’ve written, it was pretty easy to find straightforward policy solutions to housing shortages (decriminalize dense housing) and sex worker exploitation (decriminalize sex work).
And in my years of thinking about men’s problems, and months of focusing on them intensely (here’s a full list of posts about men’s woes from July 2022 onwards), I’ve come to a perhaps-not-startling conclusion. At least part of the solution to men’s woes is to…
decriminalize work.
Hear me out.
First, as we’ve established, men’s wages and labor force participation rates are declining more precipitously than women’s. Not only that, but I’d argue that unemployment and underemployment hurt men more than women. Think about it. Men face much more societal pressure to “be a provider” in terms of a paycheck. Their identity and self-esteem is also much more tightly wound with their careers when compared with women. And an unemployed or underemployed man is much more likely to be seen as undateable or unmarriageable compared with a woman in the same position.
Then there’s just the general American idea that work is good and noble. And dependence, financial or otherwise, is especially socially unacceptable for men.
It just seems intuitive to me that no jobs or shit jobs would exacerbate singleness, loneliness, a lack of self-esteem, trauma, paranoia, conspiratorial thinking, authoritarianism, deaths of despair, and even violence.
And it seems equally obvious that if we could change one thing to have the greatest impact on the most men, we should probs choose higher labor force participation rates and better jobs.
Here’s the deal. It is illegal to do more than 1,100 kinds of jobs without a license and/or certification in at least one state. It’s illegal to do around 60 in all 50 states. Over the past 50 years, occupational licensing has nearly tripled. According to
, “The fraction of workers required to hold a government-issued license has sextupled since the 1950s, from less than 5 percent to almost 30 percent today.”These pieces of paper require hundreds of hours and hundreds or thousands of dollars to obtain. And putting up the time and money doesn’t guarantee employment.
“There's no guarantee to pass the test for the licensing, and it costs over $100 to take,” Stephen Combs told me about the licensure he was required to obtain to work as a customer service rep for an insurance company. “I basically lived in Panera for a week studying for the damn thing. Plus the ongoing learning kept me from keeping it up. The entire year I worked there, I used none of the knowledge. Basically the computer programs do all the work the licensing requirements used to.” He said the requirement kept many men out of the profession.
In 2016, more than 12.2 million, or 21.7% of small business workers, needed a license to practice a trade or a profession. That same year state occupational licensure laws decreased total US jobs by 2.6m and jobs at small businesses by 900,000.
Proponents claim these requirements improve health and safety. Yet, like many health and safety regulations, they demonstrably don’t work.
The real reason for these requirements is that they artificially raise wages for the incumbents by limiting the competition.
Here are some good reads on the topic. As Jerusalem Demsas recently reported in the Atlantic, more people are beginning to understand the problem:
Last week, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu announced that he would seek to “fully remove 34 different outdated licenses from state government” and eliminate “14 underutilized regulatory boards.” He also said that he would seek to make New Hampshire the next state to adopt universal recognition: “If you have a substantially similar license and are in good standing in another state, there’s no reason you shouldn’t have a license on Day One in New Hampshire.”
A national ban on licensure and certification requirements seems like a really effective way to get more men into high-paying work without harming health and safety. It will also make hundreds of services cheaper. Licensed and certified professionals who will have to compete with new entrants are the only people who won’t benefit. But this is America, baby. Competition is supposed to be the name of the game.
If you still want to hire licensed or certified professionals, you do you! But if you don’t think someone needs to have been through hours of pointless, outdated “training” and have paid thousands of dollars to braid your hair, you’ll have the legal right to hire whoever wants to do it.
Again, I’m not asking for a ban on licenses and certifications. Go on with your bad selves. I’m calling for a nationwide ban on licensure and certification requirements. Make it legal to work, with or without expensive, time-consuming, ineffective pieces of paper.
And I’m not saying we can solve all of men’s problems with the stroke of a pen. But getting more men (and women) into good jobs surely can’t hurt.
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