6 ms·

In the absence of state licenses, how does one prevent license mills? Right now, there are "colleges" (Diploma/Degree Mills) that will hand you a B.A. or B.S.

In the absence of state licenses, how does one prevent license mills? Right now, there are "colleges" (Diploma/Degree Mills) that will hand you a B.A. or B.S. or Associate's degree based on "life experiences". You write them a nice letter about why you think you deserve the degree, wrap it around a $1000 check, and you get your diploma in 6-8 weeks. If we abandon state-run license boards for professions like doctors, lawyers, or architects, then within a few months anyone will be able to pay a few grand to hang up a "Joe Schmoe, Attorney at Law" shingle in front of his office. The end result will be a lot of confusion for consumers, because unless a consumer's able to do hours of research, determining which licensure boards have sufficiently rigorous standards will be an impossible task.

marshallp 17y ago
By things such as group purchases or consumer reports. There's no accredition board telling you which stock to buy, must people just let their mutual fund decide.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
  - marshallp 17y ago
    I think mutual funds shouldn't be licenses either, it just introduces friction in the system. Even then, they're not licensed in the same way. It only takes a small exam, not years of graduate school.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
bobbin 17y ago
Let's say there are no state licenses, and you need a doctor, so you go to a hospital. Would you be concerned about the quality of the doctor? Would you be the only one to feel that way? Would a hospital who is capable of addressing those concerns be more successful than one incapable of doing so? Would you as a training doctor be concerned of the public prestige of your license? Would you as a doctor be willing to work in a place who hasn't justified or proved its quality to the public? of course these questions don't answer your main concern, but you post assumes in the absence of a government monopoly in licensing, people would be incapable of creating quality control. There's a tendency to imagine a transition period and think it would be unsolvable because you can't think how it could be solved.
- btilly 17y ago
  The problem with your reasoning is that we have actually have lots of historical experience with what it is like when we don't license doctors. It was awful. I'm no fan of the AMA. But I like having doctors who know basic anatomy. On all of your reputation issues, people's judgment of the quality of doctors is almost entirely a function of their bedside manner, and not their competence. If you just go off of reputation, and reputation is based on the decisions of lay people, the result is that competent doctors get bad reputations and confident charlatans get excellent ones. And health suffers accordingly. A similar well-documented example are public health measures. My surface impressions of a restaurant are a bad guide for whether the cook washes his hands properly after going to the bathroom. And dysentery comes through infrequently enough that you won't discover this from your neighbor getting sick until far too late. But well-constructed licensing requirements solve this problem and save lives. (In fact there is good data suggesting that public health measures like these save more lives year in and year out than all of the advances of modern medicine.) We also know what happens with public engineering. Before licensing requirements were created, the USA averaged one random bridge collapse per week. That's pretty bad. It gets rapidly worse if you get an earthquake. I live in an earthquake prone zone, and I am a very firm supporter of having the buildings I am around and in be built to standards created by qualified engineers, then inspected by properly licensed inspectors. California is among the few areas where significant earthquakes don't tend to come with massive loss of life, and I appreciate that fact. I could multiply examples, but the flip side of the argument does not hold. The article is correct that there are a lot of stupid licensing requirements out there. The article is correct that the motivation is often restraint of trade. The article is correct that we're often all better off without those rules. But the article is dead wrong in concluding that we're better off removing all licensing requirements.
  - bobbin 17y ago
    I'll write a piece of an answer I gave to another person: > Lets say we want quality control in dentistry. You like the government quality control the government gives and would like your dentists to count with their approval. I, on the other hand, think it's requirements are excessive. Most of what my dentist does is find black spots in my teeth, drill them out, and then fill the hole. This does not require 4 years of study. If I ever get to need a root canal I would need someone with more studies but until then I'd me happy with someone with less studies, maybe a certification given by the manufacturer of the equipment, I don't know. If you like the government certification you can limit yourself only to government certificated doctors. No problem. A group of people should be able do give public approval of university courses and degrees. If you like the government that OK. I'm just object locking people in cages when they don't comply with these regulations. The violent monopoly is the problem. > But the article is dead wrong in concluding that we're better off removing all licensing requirements. The key word here is requirements. Not removing all licensing. The distinction is not expressed clearly. If you don't comply with the "required" licensing they lock you in jail, or the demand money from you, and if you don't comply, then you go to jail.
philwelch 17y ago
You can prosecute someone for fraud for claiming falsified or unaccredited credentials without requiring the government itself to accredit. Also, it's hard to justify why florists need to be formally accredited.
dkarl 17y ago
You license the licensers. It's called accreditation.

marshallp 17y ago

By things such as group purchases or consumer reports. There's no accredition board telling you which stock to buy, must people just let their mutual fund decide.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
- marshallp 17y ago
  I think mutual funds shouldn't be licenses either, it just introduces friction in the system. Even then, they're not licensed in the same way. It only takes a small exam, not years of graduate school.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]

bobbin 17y ago

Let's say there are no state licenses, and you need a doctor, so you go to a hospital. Would you be concerned about the quality of the doctor? Would you be the only one to feel that way? Would a hospital who is capable of addressing those concerns be more successful than one incapable of doing so? Would you as a training doctor be concerned of the public prestige of your license? Would you as a doctor be willing to work in a place who hasn't justified or proved its quality to the public? of course these questions don't answer your main concern, but you post assumes in the absence of a government monopoly in licensing, people would be incapable of creating quality control. There's a tendency to imagine a transition period and think it would be unsolvable because you can't think how it could be solved.

btilly 17y ago
The problem with your reasoning is that we have actually have lots of historical experience with what it is like when we don't license doctors. It was awful. I'm no fan of the AMA. But I like having doctors who know basic anatomy. On all of your reputation issues, people's judgment of the quality of doctors is almost entirely a function of their bedside manner, and not their competence. If you just go off of reputation, and reputation is based on the decisions of lay people, the result is that competent doctors get bad reputations and confident charlatans get excellent ones. And health suffers accordingly. A similar well-documented example are public health measures. My surface impressions of a restaurant are a bad guide for whether the cook washes his hands properly after going to the bathroom. And dysentery comes through infrequently enough that you won't discover this from your neighbor getting sick until far too late. But well-constructed licensing requirements solve this problem and save lives. (In fact there is good data suggesting that public health measures like these save more lives year in and year out than all of the advances of modern medicine.) We also know what happens with public engineering. Before licensing requirements were created, the USA averaged one random bridge collapse per week. That's pretty bad. It gets rapidly worse if you get an earthquake. I live in an earthquake prone zone, and I am a very firm supporter of having the buildings I am around and in be built to standards created by qualified engineers, then inspected by properly licensed inspectors. California is among the few areas where significant earthquakes don't tend to come with massive loss of life, and I appreciate that fact. I could multiply examples, but the flip side of the argument does not hold. The article is correct that there are a lot of stupid licensing requirements out there. The article is correct that the motivation is often restraint of trade. The article is correct that we're often all better off without those rules. But the article is dead wrong in concluding that we're better off removing all licensing requirements.
- bobbin 17y ago
  I'll write a piece of an answer I gave to another person: > Lets say we want quality control in dentistry. You like the government quality control the government gives and would like your dentists to count with their approval. I, on the other hand, think it's requirements are excessive. Most of what my dentist does is find black spots in my teeth, drill them out, and then fill the hole. This does not require 4 years of study. If I ever get to need a root canal I would need someone with more studies but until then I'd me happy with someone with less studies, maybe a certification given by the manufacturer of the equipment, I don't know. If you like the government certification you can limit yourself only to government certificated doctors. No problem. A group of people should be able do give public approval of university courses and degrees. If you like the government that OK. I'm just object locking people in cages when they don't comply with these regulations. The violent monopoly is the problem. > But the article is dead wrong in concluding that we're better off removing all licensing requirements. The key word here is requirements. Not removing all licensing. The distinction is not expressed clearly. If you don't comply with the "required" licensing they lock you in jail, or the demand money from you, and if you don't comply, then you go to jail.

philwelch 17y ago

You can prosecute someone for fraud for claiming falsified or unaccredited credentials without requiring the government itself to accredit. Also, it's hard to justify why florists need to be formally accredited.

dkarl 17y ago

You license the licensers. It's called accreditation.