A cartel doesn't have to be very powerful at all to influence public policy. For something like this to happen, we need very few factors:
1)A small set of people that have much to gain from a policy change, while it'd be a small visible cost for everyone else. The moment another easily identifiable groups can lose, this weakens considerably
2)Enough political will to lobby. This can be due to single issue voting, or a setup where only the people that contribute economically to a cause will really benefit from it. This is the reason unions are very weak in "right to work" states, as the legislation makes paying dues a suboptimal outcome.
As long as you have that, it's pretty easy to get laws passed that will help you and hurt the public in hard to measure ways. It's easy to sell occupational licensing to people that aren't paying much attention, because the costs of it to the public are not easy to see, but very real to people who know get protected from other people joining their profession.
In Spain, for instance, you'll see a bunch of computer science professional organization that try to recruit people by saying that they will "protect your degree", mainly by lobbying for legislation that would separate someone with a computer science degree from "intruders" (people with decrees in engineering physics and such that can code).
And two years of training before becoming a barber is plenty of barrier: There are other professions that have similar difficulty and pay, but lack the two years of training requirement. So less people become barbers, as losing two years of pay for training is worse than getting a job right away! This leads to decreased competition, and eventually high prices. Two years is A LOT of time to end up getting paid that little.
1)A small set of people that have much to gain from a policy change, while it'd be a small visible cost for everyone else. The moment another easily identifiable groups can lose, this weakens considerably
2)Enough political will to lobby. This can be due to single issue voting, or a setup where only the people that contribute economically to a cause will really benefit from it. This is the reason unions are very weak in "right to work" states, as the legislation makes paying dues a suboptimal outcome.
As long as you have that, it's pretty easy to get laws passed that will help you and hurt the public in hard to measure ways. It's easy to sell occupational licensing to people that aren't paying much attention, because the costs of it to the public are not easy to see, but very real to people who know get protected from other people joining their profession.
In Spain, for instance, you'll see a bunch of computer science professional organization that try to recruit people by saying that they will "protect your degree", mainly by lobbying for legislation that would separate someone with a computer science degree from "intruders" (people with decrees in engineering physics and such that can code).
And two years of training before becoming a barber is plenty of barrier: There are other professions that have similar difficulty and pay, but lack the two years of training requirement. So less people become barbers, as losing two years of pay for training is worse than getting a job right away! This leads to decreased competition, and eventually high prices. Two years is A LOT of time to end up getting paid that little.