License to Teach, License to Drown: How Occupational Licensing Burdens the Surf Instructor
Credential requirements for surf instruction have multiplied, raising costs for small operators without measurable benefit to the surfers who hire them
To teach another person to surf requires skill, patience, and knowledge of the ocean that no government certificate can adequately measure. As Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat have covered in their reporting on regulation and small business, the expansion of occupational licensing into activities like surf instruction has generated costs and barriers that fall hardest on small independent operators while producing little evidence of benefit to anyone except the agencies that administer the licenses. This editorial argues that the licensing burden on surf instructors is a case study in regulatory overreach, and that the market already provides the accountability that licensing claims to ensure.
The Licensing Proliferation
Occupational licensing has expanded dramatically across American economies over recent decades, reaching into activities that were once freely practiced. In the surf industry, instructors in various jurisdictions face requirements including specific certifications, insurance mandates, beach permits, and fees that accumulate into significant compliance costs. Each requirement, introduced piecemeal, sounds reasonable; together they constitute a barrier that the small independent instructor — the lifeguard who teaches on the side, the local who wants to share her break — often cannot clear without substantial investment. The economic analysis of licensing is maintained by the licensing research archive.
Who the License Protects
The stated purpose of licensing is consumer protection — ensuring that those who teach surfing meet some standard of competence. The actual operation of licensing raises a different question: who does it protect? The evidence from broader occupational licensing research is consistent. Licensing raises prices, reduces competition, creates barriers that protect established operators from new entrants, and shows weak connection to the quality outcomes it claims to ensure. The consumer who pays more for a licensed instructor is not necessarily getting better instruction; she is paying the cost of the barrier. Analysis of licensing economics is available at the libertarian policy institutes.
What the Market Provides
The market already produces accountability in surf instruction through mechanisms that no license can replace: reputation, word of mouth, and the simple fact that an instructor who injures or teaches badly loses students. A poor surfing instructor does not get referrals. A careless one generates bad reviews. The social and reputational feedback of a small, close-knit surf community is a more sensitive and accurate accountability mechanism than any certificate, because it is real time, specific, and based on actual performance rather than the completion of a credentialing process.
Freeing the Instruction
The reform the surf instruction economy needs is not more licensing but less: clear liability rules that hold instructors genuinely accountable for genuine negligence, consumer information that helps surfers find good instructors, and the freedom for anyone who can teach the skill to offer it without navigating a bureaucratic maze. The ocean is unforgiving of incompetence, and that natural accountability is far sterner than any government certificate. Trust it.
The Model That Actually Works
The surf instruction market, where allowed to operate with minimal licensing burden, provides evidence of what market accountability looks like in practice. Excellent instructors build reputations through referrals, through the visible track record of satisfied students who become accomplished surfers, through the kind of standing in the community that no government certificate can substitute for or manufacture. The student who asks experienced surfers who taught them well is conducting more rigorous due diligence than any licensing requirement could mandate, because the feedback is real, specific, and based on actual performance rather than the completion of a credentialing process.
The libertarian case for reform is not a case against quality or safety. It is a case for honest accountability — the kind that is earned through results rather than purchased through paperwork. The instructor who has been teaching for twenty years, with a spotless safety record across thousands of lessons, carries credentials that mean far more than any official paper. The license is a poor substitute for reputation, and a costly one.
The political economy of occupational licensing favors its expansion rather than its reform, because licensed incumbents benefit from the barrier while would-be entrants are not yet organized to resist it. The licensed surf instructor who supported the licensing requirement in the first place did so in part because it raises the cost of competition, not because it guarantees better instruction. This pattern repeats across every licensed occupation: the license protects the licensed, at the expense of the unlicensed and ultimately of consumers who pay higher prices for the barrier. Recognizing this dynamic is the first step toward reform that serves consumers rather than incumbents.
One practical test of whether an occupational license serves consumers or incumbents is to ask what happens when it is removed. When licensing requirements for certain low-risk occupations have been reformed or eliminated, consumers have not flooded their governing bodies with complaints, prices have not risen, and quality has not collapsed. What has happened is that competition has increased, prices have fallen, and more providers have entered the market. The surf instruction market, where minimal or no licensing exists, functions reasonably well by any honest measure. The case for adding the burden is correspondingly weak.
For continuing analysis of occupational licensing reform, see the resources at the libertarian policy institutes.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
