This is a nice story but I don't think it makes much sense. As you observed, by this definition surgeons are not professionals but the teenager who's the sole

This is a nice story but I don't think it makes much sense. As you observed, by this definition surgeons are not professionals but the teenager who's the sole employee at a lemonade stand is a professional. The former is extremely constrained by bureaucracy while the latter can do pretty much whatever they want as long as nothing burns down or gets too many people too sick. Bureaucracy and professionalism are largely orthogonal. There are horrible bureaucracies where some individuals have immense power. In fact, that's probably way more common than not. There are also relative anarchies where no one has any real power because the whole org is completely beholden to the market in every aspect of its operation; e.g., most corner pubs on a crowded business street. Even the owners have at best marginal control over their employees and rented space. A professional is just someone who does the same sort of skilled work year over year for pay. Most blue collar workers think of themselves as professionals, and you'll see plenty of discussion of "professionalism" in any trades training program. Historically, the connotative notion of a "professional" that you're using here -- basically, upper-middle class professions with a certain amount of social esteem -- were always the most bureaucratic occupations. Have they gotten even more bureaucratic with time? Sure. But they were always more bureaucratic than other occupations of their time (mostly farming). Medicine or law being more bureaucratic than than farming is not a new thing.