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I appreciate your consistency, but you must admit that the consequences of hiring an incompetent doctor are much worse than the consequences of an incompetent f

by hugh3 16y ago

I appreciate your consistency, but you must admit that the consequences of hiring an incompetent doctor are much worse than the consequences of an incompetent florist.

roel_v 16y ago
Yes I do. The question is where you draw the line. Once you admit that there are professions where certification / professional associations with legal rights to enforce entry to the profession / licensing etc. are needed or at least a less bad solution than the alternatives, the discussion will degenerate into everybody falling over each other to have their professions declared 'difficult' or 'a risk to public health'. Of course I choose the florist and the doctor because they're two ends on the spectrum, but where do you draw the line? Case in point: jacuzzi salesman. Doesn't sound like much of a problem, does it? Couple of years ago there was a show or trade fair of some sort around here where a jacuzzi salesman failed to disinfect the water in his sample jacuzzi. Salmonella developed in it, people walked by (thousands of them) and 10 or so died. Could this have been prevented with a licensing mechanism for jacuzzi salesmen? Probably. Is jacuzzi salesman a bigger health risk than florists? I don't know. Once a florist screws up and sells a flower with a fungus on it or whatever that they could've recognized, there will be calls for 'professional standards' and what not. Because of this slippery slope, I oppose all forms of registration. But yeah that probably means that there'll be some quacks who call themselves medical professionals. It'll be up to the patient to check if a hospital employs doctors who didn't go to medical school, or the mortality stats of a certain hospital. Let organizations like Consumer Reports find out who are trust-worthy and who aren't. I don't consider that a government job, let alone a job that we can reasonably expect the profession to self-regulate.

by hugh3 16y ago

I appreciate your consistency, but you must admit that the consequences of hiring an incompetent doctor are much worse than the consequences of an incompetent florist.

roel_v 16y ago

Yes I do. The question is where you draw the line. Once you admit that there are professions where certification / professional associations with legal rights to enforce entry to the profession / licensing etc. are needed or at least a less bad solution than the alternatives, the discussion will degenerate into everybody falling over each other to have their professions declared 'difficult' or 'a risk to public health'. Of course I choose the florist and the doctor because they're two ends on the spectrum, but where do you draw the line? Case in point: jacuzzi salesman. Doesn't sound like much of a problem, does it? Couple of years ago there was a show or trade fair of some sort around here where a jacuzzi salesman failed to disinfect the water in his sample jacuzzi. Salmonella developed in it, people walked by (thousands of them) and 10 or so died. Could this have been prevented with a licensing mechanism for jacuzzi salesmen? Probably. Is jacuzzi salesman a bigger health risk than florists? I don't know. Once a florist screws up and sells a flower with a fungus on it or whatever that they could've recognized, there will be calls for 'professional standards' and what not. Because of this slippery slope, I oppose all forms of registration. But yeah that probably means that there'll be some quacks who call themselves medical professionals. It'll be up to the patient to check if a hospital employs doctors who didn't go to medical school, or the mortality stats of a certain hospital. Let organizations like Consumer Reports find out who are trust-worthy and who aren't. I don't consider that a government job, let alone a job that we can reasonably expect the profession to self-regulate.