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[RedKing]

For one thing, cartels hate independent operators. 

[Truean]

For one thing, cartels hate independent operators. 

True to a point, but really, you can mess up someone's life completely if you don't know what you're doing in this. Hell if a barber needs licensed so you don't get a bad haircut, I'd imagine it might be an idea to have someone know what they're doing before you risk going to prison, losing your house, or otherwise stepping in it.

[Nadaka]

Damn it.

My electric bill is almost $300 this month.

Who knew having a big house that everyone keeps at 70 degrees while they run 3 tv's all day and night with the lights on and leaving the freezer open in the garage (to spoil my burrito's and unchill my hardest of alcohols) would double my electric bill? The only good thing is that my breaker box is full so they can't run another 220 line to power the ceramic kiln.

[GlyphGryph]

True to a point, but really, you can mess up someone's life completely if you don't know what you're doing in this. Hell if a barber needs licensed so you don't get a bad haircut, I'd imagine it might be an idea to have someone know what they're doing before you risk going to prison, losing your house, or otherwise stepping in it.

Which is why you make licensing optional. The barbering example is perfect: The only purpose of licensing barbers is to make the market more difficult to enter and secure the government a nice little revenue stream in the process. Basically an agreement between the two : "You give us cash, we'll cut out a chunk of the competition"

Literally, that's the only justification for it. Blows. My. Mind.

I think optional licensing schemes, but they are no longer common.

Law is similar to engineering in a way - people can live or die based on the quality of your work, lives can be saved or ruined. And it can also be abused - like the guy who got charged with "practicing engineering without a license" for doing a bunch of paperwork and sending in a request to the city government to add traffic lights at two busy intersections after someone was killed.

And when licensing is turned into a for-profit industry, things go south pretty quickly...

[Nadaka]

A little over a century ago your barber also used to do dental work and surgery.

[Truean]

.

[Scelly9]

I Am Alive turn out to be really, really shitty.

[quinnr]

If you get an 'A' (92% or higher) on the practical lab chem final, you don't have to take the written portion. However, my results (which are half the grade for it) were 30% of expected. Normally I wouldn't mind, but I have absolutely no clue where it went wrong. At all. :/

[ChairmanPoo]

Sometimes you do worse, such is life. Dont beat yourself over it

[GlyphGryph]

I hear you, but I have a completely different take on it. Fees too high, skill registry good.

So basically you make lower quality, perhaps dangerously lower quality, services available to what's really the poorer people.... Hey, may as well have "optionally licensed" doctors too right? This of course means unlicensed doctors.... The rich people will go to the licensed doctors and have excellent care; the poor people will go to the unlicensed ones and be butchered at times more or less. The poorer people get the short end of that no matter if it's a "minor issue" or not, cause things really should be done the right way....

First, I think you may have misunderstood my a little - I like optional licensing schemes for things like barbers, where lives aren't hanging in the balance - a recognition that this person knows what they are doing and that those who don't may not, use at your own risk. That's why I said it was better to compare law to engineering - the license is because the repercussions are so terrible that allowing untrained people to engage in the activity could ruin lives, and licensing is the only real way to insure they are trained (and when done well, this should be ALL it's doing, in my mind). Driving is another thing that falls under this category.

Generally, of course, I don't think those licenses should apply when the only life you risk ruining is your own (self-representing, driving on a closed course, surgerizing yourself), but that's something else.

And as to the other point, isn't that exactly the way it works now? The poor get the crappy lawyers and crappy doctors because the good ones get snatches up by people able to pay more? I don't see how licensing has... any impact at all on that, really.

[ChairmanPoo]

It sets standards. You need licensing to at the very least make sure that everyone who sets up shop as a lawyer or doctor is, in fact, a lawyer or a doctor.

(Here we don't have bar exams as such. You do need to be collegiated to work as a doctor, though. In general, it's considered that if you qualified for a title that the relevant national entities regard as valid, you can collegiate yourself as a... whatever)

(I do think the British system makes more sense overal, for the record)

[GlyphGryph]

I should add, once more - I don't have a problem with licensing for professions where quality is not just optional but necessary.

I do believe the government should have an obligation to make them available for free, though.

[Lord Shonus]

There's a lot to be said for paid licensing. It helps to reduce the number of dilettantes and incompetents that get through the system, and makes you want that license, which helps, in theory, increase the number those who are in it less for the money than the principle.

[GlyphGryph]

That thing you just said doesn't make an ounce of sense.

"By blocking out people who can't pay and only allowing those who by definition must treat it as an investment rather than an act of principle, we'll get people are less likely to be in it for the money and more likely to be in it for the principle"

o_O

That logic seems completely backwards to me.

and

It helps to reduce the number of dilettantes and incompetents that get through the system

If they pass the licensing requirements, then they are neither. How does paying for it make them more or less capable?

[Lord Shonus]

I suppose that was poorly worded. There's a lot of people, myself being an excellent example, who are extremely good at tests of all sorts, but can't usually apply that information. These would be the category I referred to as incompetents. Having the licensing exam be free allows such people to amass a huge number of certifications and licensees that they really can't use, but they have equal weight in most ways to almost any other practitioner. Having a price on the test helps prevent that, as does requiring a degree.

The second category, dilettantes, aren't easily stopped by a degree requrement, as their interest will often sustain them long enough to pass, often with very high marks, and through the examination. Then, six months later, they lose interest in what they're doing and move on to something else, at a great deal of cost to everyone else involved. Having a price on the test can be enough to make this sort of person not go down that route in the first place, saving a great deal of trouble. This sort of person is particularly common in the high end fields such as law or medicine, as both attract a great deal of idealism.