🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9107222047.AA12078@corwin.barra.com> marc@barra.COM (Marc Berkowitz) writes:
>/gnu-misc-discuss/wessels@thor.cc.nd.edu (Andy Wessels)/22 July 91:
>    "[License & exam for programmers is analogous to bar exam]. This type
>    of exam is a _professional_ certification.  Programmers are a
>    _professional_ group of people."
>
>No, the essential reason that lawyers & doctors are professionals is
>that they are each organized as a powerful guild that controls entry
>into their business, and enforces a code of "ethics" or professional
>practice. Mandatory licensing is something these guilds have won from
>the state to entrench their power.

true.

>In this discussion thread, the comment has been made several times
>that restriction of entry is bad for the economy as a whole. Maybe so:
>but professionalization hasn't stopped American medicine from growing
>enormously, or advancing technically. Why should it be different for
>software? And it seems obvious that the economic and status benefits
>to the professionals, the doctors, have been great. 

As a libertarian, I would rather nail my foot to the floor than
benefit myself through the abuse of state power. Yeah, I would
probably benefit personally by the restriction of entry into my field.
I would also benefit personally by robbing a bank, and I consider it
to be more or less on the same moral level.

I, for one, will never get a programmers license. They can throw me in
jail (or try to) when they come around looking for unlicensed
"software professionals".

Perry Metzger
-- 
"Live Free or Die!"
For information on the Libertarian Party, call 1-800-682-1776