There's a great Milton Friedman test: if license requirements benefit consumers you would expect to see consumers at the statehouse demanding legislation. But this is not what you see in the modern day. It's true very instrumental organizations like the FDA were funded based on public outcry, but now most lobbying done to or affecting those organizations is done by people already in the market.
You must not have never interacted with something like, say, AC install. It's regulated and you're not supposed to buy the parts yourself. You can, but some stores shut you out, they won't take your refrigerant back that legally needs to be disposed of, and so on. Recently I fixed some AC units that just needed a soldering touch up where "real repair companies" wanted to do a full new $10k install.
In the first set of examples, you have unlicensed work by unlicensed contractors killing people. Survivors are then angry enough at politicians to demand either more strict regulations or better enforcement. It’s a response to your freidman quote
The 2nd example highlights what happens when you have a bunch of unlicensed individuals posing as locksmiths ripping people off because they don’t know how to properly deal with locks. Instead of picking them, they use a drill to destroy the lock and overcharge their victims with new locks. It’s a big problem.
I've seen unlicensed and licensed work by licensed contractors kill people. Contractors aren't structural engineers and all of them will try to cheat you.
Locksmiths in my area have a proclivity to drill locks because it's cheaper than picking, save very cheap locks. Some locks can't reasonably be picked even by most locksmiths -- they have other things to do than teach themselves how to pick 1 specific type of lock.
You don't really understand the markets for these things and think you can regulate them.
Also not enough people have the time or inclination to pick locks or learn enough about a trade to discern good vs bad contractors. My points still stand.
I feel that you need to live outside of the bubble of a developed country to get a better perspective of things.
The drill to destroy locks is proper security theater. If people knew how easy it was to pick a lock they wouldn't trust security. Drilling takes time and makes the lock look better than it is.
You must not have never interacted with something like, say, AC install. It's regulated and you're not supposed to buy the parts yourself. You can, but some stores shut you out, they won't take your refrigerant back that legally needs to be disposed of, and so on. Recently I fixed some AC units that just needed a soldering touch up where "real repair companies" wanted to do a full new $10k install.
Similar stuff for locksmithing.