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Insurance is important, but that doesn't mean a license should be legally required, for a few reasons: 1. Ethically, I think that if you choose to do business
by jmckib 11y ago
Insurance is important, but that doesn't mean a license should be legally required, for a few reasons:
1. Ethically, I think that if you choose to do business with an untrained, inexperienced broker, then the consequences are on you. In fact, there may be legitimate reasons to do so, which brings us to point 2.
2. If the members of a profession control entry into that profession, which is always the case with occupational licensure, then those members have a strong economic incentive to construct barriers to entry. More and more irrelevant requirements will be added over time. Certification protects against this tendency while still providing all of the supposed informational benefits of licensure. If certification requirements become too crazy and irrelevant, the price differential between certified and uncertified professionals will increase, and consumers will start to use uncertified professionals instead, forcing the certification requirements back down to sanity.
- mcguire 11y ago1. How would you know? 2. You know this licensing system did not come out of thin air? Got an example of a working, critical certification system?
- jmckib 11y ago1. I was just stating my opinion. If somebody wants to go to an incompetent insurance broker, or do dangerous drugs, or jump off a cliff, I think that should be their right since those decisions don't significantly affect anyone else. Again, just my opinion on an ethical matter, a reasonable person could disagree. 2. My understanding is that there are few government-mandated certification systems because they tend to gradually evolve towards licensure, due to political pressure from producer groups. There are many private certification systems that work quite well. The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval is a private certification system for household products. Stores such as Target certify the value of the products that they sell in order to guard their own reputation. I'm hesitant to mention this because I don't know much about it, but I believe accountants are also certified rather than licensed.
- nommm-nommm 11y agoInsurance significantly effects other people - thats why the state requires you to have it in order to register a motor vehicle.
- st3v3r 11y ago"I was just stating my opinion. If somebody wants to go to an incompetent insurance broker, or do dangerous drugs, or jump off a cliff, I think that should be their right since those decisions don't significantly affect anyone else." This has been proven false time and time again. I know libertarian types like to pretend it, but you are not an island. You do not exist in a vacuum.
- mcguire 11y agoHow would you know you're dealing with an incompetent broker?