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We license engineers and many other similar professions.. perhaps we need an "executive" license, complete with certifications and standards and a long "journ

We license engineers and many other similar professions.. perhaps we need an "executive" license, complete with certifications and standards and a long "journeyman's training" period before we trust you with the massive amount of power, both real and abstract, that can come with one of these positions. We may never be able to hold them criminally liable with much success, but we could much more easily invalidate their license and prevent them from holding any similar position for a very long time. Which, for some reason, seems far more just than simply jailing and possibly fining them.

perl4ever 7y ago
Would it make sense to you to also have a licensing scheme for politicians? After all, we don't even require them to be non-criminals under existing law (at least in my jurisdiction).
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  And coming up next, a licensing scheme for people who invent licensing schemes.
- nraynaud 7y ago
  In France a lot of politicians went to an administration school (real dorky stuff, state accounting rules, procurement rules, how to interact with other countries etc.), but we have the same complaints about them. Also to be fair they have slightly better objective result with a longer life expectancy, but nothing extremely better.
java-man 7y ago
We don't license software engineers, who essentially create the foundation of modern society. Just today, there was a news story about Boeing employing offshore contractors at $9/hr to write software for 737 MAX. Nearly all large software companies utilize whiteboard coding quizz as a way to measure the quality of their candidates. Imagine what would happen when the modern crop of javascript developers start working on avionics? I don't know what's worse - an incompetent politician or an incompetent software developer. Think heartbleed, microsoft windows updating in the middle of surgery, Mars mission crashing because someone mixed imperial and metric units... We may never be able to hold them liable (because people who write the laws are also corrupt and incompetent), and we will never be able to weed out incompetence in our technical infrastructure (because, frankly, most of us [me included] are lazy, incompetent, greedy, and selfish.

perl4ever 7y ago

Would it make sense to you to also have a licensing scheme for politicians? After all, we don't even require them to be non-criminals under existing law (at least in my jurisdiction).

CamperBob2 7y ago
And coming up next, a licensing scheme for people who invent licensing schemes.
nraynaud 7y ago
In France a lot of politicians went to an administration school (real dorky stuff, state accounting rules, procurement rules, how to interact with other countries etc.), but we have the same complaints about them. Also to be fair they have slightly better objective result with a longer life expectancy, but nothing extremely better.

java-man 7y ago

We don't license software engineers, who essentially create the foundation of modern society. Just today, there was a news story about Boeing employing offshore contractors at $9/hr to write software for 737 MAX. Nearly all large software companies utilize whiteboard coding quizz as a way to measure the quality of their candidates. Imagine what would happen when the modern crop of javascript developers start working on avionics? I don't know what's worse - an incompetent politician or an incompetent software developer. Think heartbleed, microsoft windows updating in the middle of surgery, Mars mission crashing because someone mixed imperial and metric units... We may never be able to hold them liable (because people who write the laws are also corrupt and incompetent), and we will never be able to weed out incompetence in our technical infrastructure (because, frankly, most of us [me included] are lazy, incompetent, greedy, and selfish.