Clark Neily of the Institute for Justice has a great op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today about licensing interior decorators. Missouri doesn’t require anyone who does interior decorating to get a license, but you do need a license to call yourself by the title "interior decorator." Details of the Missouri law are here. A few states actually forbid interior decorating without a license; the interior decorators say such regulations are essential to protect public welfare. Neilly shoots down that argument:

If there were any credible evidence that unregulated interior design presents a genuine risk to consumers, ASID would certainly have found it by now. They have had plenty of time (more than three decades), resources (dues for ASID’s 40,000 members average several hundred dollars per year), and incentive. Furthermore, despite ASID’s best efforts, only three states regulate the practice of interior design. That leaves 47 (including California and New York) where the ravages of unlicensed interior design could be easily documented — if there were any.

So what is really behind ASID’s relentless push for more regulation? Simple: naked economic protectionism.

Read the whole thing!