经济学人下载:荒唐的条例,对无牌室内设计师的可怕威胁

Schumpeter

Rules for fools
荒唐的条例

The terrible threat of unlicensed interior designers
对无牌室内设计师的可怕威胁

May 12th 2011 | from the print edition

IN 1941 Franklin Roosevelt added two new items to America’s ancestral freedoms of speech and worship: freedom from fear and freedom from want. Today’s politicians offer a far more generous menu: freedom from unlicensed hair-cutters, freedom from cowboy flower-arrangers and, most important of all, freedom from rogue interior designers. What is the point of enjoying freedom from fear or want, after all, if you cannot enjoy freedom from poorly co-ordinated colour schemes?

1941年富兰克林.罗斯福给美国先前的言论自由和信仰自由条例再加了两个项目：免于恐惧的自由和免于匮乏的自由。今天的政治家却提供了一张更体面的菜单：免于无牌理发师的自由，免于无牌插花师的自由，更重要的是，免于无牌室内设计师的自由。如果不能避免不协调的配色方案，那么享受免于恐惧与匮乏的意义又何在呢？

In the 1950s, when organisation man ruled, fewer than 5% of American workers needed licences. Today, after three decades of deregulation, the figure is almost 30%. Add to that people who are preparing to obtain a licence or whose jobs involve some form of certification and the share is 38%. Other rich countries impose far fewer fetters than the land of the free. In Britain only 13% of workers need licences (though that has doubled in 12 years).

在19世纪50年代，当组织人统治时，只有不到5%的美国劳动者需要许可证。今天，经过30年的放宽管制，这个数字大约是30%，加上一些准备获取许可证的人和一些本身工作就具备某种形式的许可证的人，该比例能达到38%。比起该国的自由条例来，一些富裕国家给他们的国家强加的束缚要少很多。在英国，需要许可证的劳动者所占的比例只有13%（虽然该比例在12年之后已经翻了一番）。