Have you ever heard of the Institute for Justice (IJ)? They're like the ACLU, except they tackle those issues that the ACLU won't touch – you know, things that aren't free speech or abortion issues, like unfair licensing schemes and eminent domain abuse. This is from their Profile:

Founded in 1991, the Institute for Justice is what a civil liberties law firm should be. As our nation's only libertarian public interest law firm, we engage in cutting-edge litigation and advocacy both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion on behalf of individuals whose most basic rights are denied by the government–like the right to earn an honest living, private property rights, and the right to free speech, especially in the areas of commercial and Internet speech. As Wired magazine said, the Institute for Justice “helps individuals subject to wacky government regulations.” Simply put, we challenge the government when it stands in the way of people trying to earn an honest living, when it unconstitutionally takes away individuals' property, when bureaucrats instead of parents dictate the education of children, and when government stifles speech. We seek a rule of law under which individuals can control their destinies as free and responsible members of society.

They're awesome – you should sign up for their newsletter. They ended the dance ban in Pinal County, AZ; they successfully defended an impoverished woman's right to braid her neighbor's hair for money without having to go through expensive and unnecessary licensing procedures; they even broke up the casket cartel in Missouri, allowing private vendors to sell caskets without a funeral director's license.

You see, most of these licensing schemes are in place to prevent new competition in a field. It is a way for rent-seeking businesses to maintain cartel prices. By making the entry cost into a market artificially high, they effectively weed out a certain percentage of their competition. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously said, “licensure almost inevitably becomes a tool in the hands of a special producer group to obtain a monopoly position at the expense of the rest of the public. There is no way to avoid this result.”

These schemes often mire self-starters in unnecessary poverty, and hamper the market's ability to provide services at affordable prices. As James Harris points out, “ Today, an incredible one in five Americans must secure the government's permission to pursue their occupation — a figure that has risen from about one in 20 in the 1950s.”