This. Take for example the American Medical Association: From Wikipedia: Economist Milton Friedman, [has] asserted that the organization acts as a guild and ha

This. Take for example the American Medical Association: From Wikipedia: Economist Milton Friedman, [has] asserted that the organization acts as a guild and has attempted to increase physicians' wages and fees by influencing limitations on the supply of physicians and non-physician competition. In Free to Choose, Friedman said "the AMA has engaged in extensive litigation charging chiropractors and osteopathic physicians with the unlicensed practice of medicine, in an attempt to restrict them to as narrow an area as possible." So AMA works to increase physicians' wages. Now let's think about what the ACM is doing: - Trying to increase international membership. This benefits ACM in terms of dues, but I'm not really sure how it benefits members as programmers. If anything, it could hurt them. Don't we face enough international competition as it is? - Promoting programming education as part of core curriculum in high school. WTF? Last thing I need is every dipshit who ever took a class thinking he can write software. TL;DR: American Medical Association serves its members. ACM doesn't seem to help its professional programmer members whatsoever. Edit: I suppose ACM is serving teachers on the above points? ACM has a lot of academic members. Maybe what's need is a separate programmer's association.