Free to Design: Florida Entrepreneurs Take On the Interior Design Cartel

This is a video clip from the Institute of Justice regarding the Locke VS Shore case. I hope you’re ready for a good laugh.

I have watched this video several times and found these points worth speaking about.

Lifelong dream: If this was honestly her lifelong dream then why didn’t she peruse this as a career years ago? If she so badly wanted to do this, why did she get her degree in liberal arts? It is also my dream to become and interior designer. Instead of getting degrees in other majors that were of no interest to me, I enrolled in a school that taught interior design and now I am almost through with my program. Call me weird, but that’s how I am going about reaching my “lifelong dream.”

Land of Red tape and government regulations: Ha! This cracks me up. Sorry this isn’t the “land of I get to do what I want when I want.” There are rules and regulations to everything! This stops people from creating chaos and mayhem. Did you ever think that perhaps these regulations are in place to help enforce a safer tomorrow? How about the fact that regulations may be in place because of mistakes made by those, who were uneducated, that resulted in disaster. Without some guidelines somewhere we would all be in trouble.

Occupational licensing in 1950 was 5% and in 2009 it was 29%: Perhaps this is because the people that were unlicensed before in whatever field made so many mistakes, risked so many lives, and caused enough deaths that people got tired of it. There are standards to be met to keep the public safe and to keep peace of mind that whoever is doing your electrical work, your surgeries, or even your interior design work knows what they are doing.

Occupational licensing applied to interior design is more likely to exclude minorities and mid-career switchers: Sorry Clark, but that’s just not the case. I am Hispanic and going to school with all intentions of continuing onto the NCIDQ exam. There are also other minority groups attending the school now and many that have graduated. Currently there are students that are mid-career shifters that are also going through with the process. Why it is that Eva Locke can’t do the same? Why does she believe that she is exempt from the same guidelines that everyone else has to follow? If she would have decided to become a doctor mid-career would she not have to go through the years of schooling and take the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Exam). What if her choice led her to become a lawyer, would she not be expected to take the Bar exam? Lots of people want to be able to have their dream job without the schooling but that’s just not how it’s done; we would all be astronauts with no more education than the first grade if that were the case.

Overcoming hurdles such as getting another degree, passing a “mostly irrelevant exam”, and completing a 4 year apprenticeship under a licensed interior designer as an “indentured servant”: Where to start with this one? First off, anyone switching their career knows that more schooling is almost always necessary. Those that have chosen to stick within their degree limits lucked out, everyone else heads back to school. Unfortunately for Eva, a liberal arts degree won’t cut it in the interior design field. Now suck it up like everyone else and go back to school. Next, I wonder what the “mostly irrelevant” part of the NCIDQ exam is. It was my understanding that it was an exam that tested your knowledge of codes, building systems, construction standards, design application, project coordination, professional practice, and also had a practicum focused on space planning, lighting design, egress, life safety, restroom design, and millwork. That all sounds pretty relevant to me. Lastly, an apprenticeship is probably the most valuable part of becoming an interior designer. What you learn in the four years is irreplaceable by any other learning technique. I have had several teachers tell us that their first year as an apprentice taught them more than school could pack in three years. The fact that she refers to it as working as an indentured servant is ridiculous. Perhaps if Ms. Locke knew what was really involved in being an interior designer she would have known to expect so much more than just picking out pretty pillows and paint colors.

Pat Levenson took a career aptitude test and came up with the following as career options: cabinet maker, auto mechanic, and interior designer: We must be playing a game of “Which one doesn’t belong.” To believe that a grown adult took this test and put her entire future on it is just sad. What if garbage man, janitor, and homeless bum came up? Luckily she didn’t go with auto mechanic being how she wouldn’t want to learn anything or take any tests.

Clark also mentions how there is “No shred of evidence” to support the laws to protect health, safety, and welfare: In this section they interview a lobbyist from Texas about whether or not there has been a claim about an accident by an unlicensed designer. Before being cut off she says that “there are not things that I can document right now.” However, The Institute of Justice takes this as an admittal of no accidents happening. Not only is that not what she said, we don’t even get to hear the rest of the interview. Why aren’t there any documented accidents? Could it be that an accident wouldn’t even occur by a non licensed interior designer since they couldn’t do construction work anyway? What accident would there be to report; suffocation by over usage of decorative pillows, blindness by extreme use of bright paint? It all just sounds like a sad attempt to make something of nothing.

It upsets me so much that these women are okay with ruining the reputations and welfare of those that actually went to school and passed their examination. I just don’t understand what they could possibly gain from not working for their title. Considering all they really can do is decorate why go through the trouble of calling yourself something you’re not. It is hard enough already to differentiate interior DESIGN from interior DECORATION for the general public, but now we all have to work even harder to make it known that what these women do is not design at all.