By such measures does history's greatest experiment in human liberty become just another Cuba

Leviathan wants a file on you:

Few jobs used to require an occupational license or certificate, but now quite a few do. (Though perhaps some good things are finally happeningon this front.) The White House Council of Economic Advisers explains why this is a bad thing:

While licensing and certification seek to ensure that workers have the necessary qualifications, especially for occupations impacting consumer safety and well-being, overly-broad application of licensing requirements can create costly and unnecessary barriers to entering a profession. Licensing can lead to higher wages for those able to obtain a license, but can also lead to inefficiency and unfairness, including reducing employment opportunities and depressing wages for excluded workers, reducing workers’ mobility across State lines, and increasing costs for consumers.

Burdensome occupational licensing is also something sort of contrary to the American way of doing things. From “The Americans: The Colonial Experience” by Daniel Boorstin in a chapter titled “The Fluidity of Professions”:

By the 18th century in Europe the department of thought had been frozen into professional categories, into the private domains of different guilds, city companies, and associations of masters; and the professions separated the areas of thought.

Every professional field of learning bore a “No Trespassing” sign duly erected by legal or customary authority.

In the newer culture of America few such signs had been erected; from the sheer lack of organized monopolists, all monopolies could not be perpetuated. America broke down distinctions: where life was full of surprises, of unexplored wilderness, and of unpredictable problems, its tasks could not be neatly divided for legal distribution.

Any man who preferred the even tenor of his way, who wished to pursue his licensed trade without the competition of amateurs, intruders, or vagrants, or who was unwilling to do jobs for which he had not been legally certified was better off in England. …

The last serious colonial effort to set up a guild in the medieval mold took place in Philadelphia in 1718. Next the occupational guilds, the most important agencies for monopolizing knowledge in the Old World had been the ancient educational institutions, but those too were lacking in America, and the New World thaws the categories of thought.

Lots of jobs today require these licenses, from landscapers to barbers and hairstylists to manicurists to florists and more, to the tune of one in four jobs, up from one in 20 in the 1950s.

For more on this, a talk, “Why do you need a license to braid hair?” given by Melony Armstrong, who had to fight her state’s cosmetology board to open her business and whose efforts led to significant change in state laws and hundreds of new businesses.

Why? So paper-shuffling dweebs can have sufficient partying money and still make rent. And so, should you get uppity about it, they can sick Leviathan's monopoly on the legitimate use of force on you.