🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jul22.220222.22166@m.cs.uiuc.edu> marick@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Brian Marick) writes:
>jbw@maverick.uswest.com (Joe Wells) writes:
>
>>Licensing is an anti-capitalistic method to reduce competition and raise
>>prices, and that's it.  It has little effect on competency, since the kind
>>of things that can be tested have little to do with how safely the
>>licensed person works after getting the license.
>
>Actually, there is a way in which licensing does have an effect.  In
>medicine (veterinary medicine at least), to keep your license, you are
>required to get a certain amount of continuing education per year.
>That's important in a fast-changing field (which both medicine and
>software are).

Oh, gawd.

What is the deep seated and horrible social problem that this will
correct, pray tell?

All of us love to sit around and indulge in power fantasies. "If I
were king, all those tasteless people who drink Pepsi instead of Coke
would be thrown in jail."

In this case, we see a "I wish that programmers were better educated.
Wouldn't it be nice if the government forced them to?" fantasy.
Unfortunately, this fantasy is coming close to reality.

What you are saying, basically is this: in the absense of any great
social crisis (people are not dying in the streets because programmers
haven't taken enough "continuing education" credits), to satisfy a
matter of personal taste, you are prepared to see the government
enforce, at gunpoint, a ban on people programming without a license.
The guns are quite real: the cops will be wearing theirs when they
come to my house to arrest me for programming without a license,
because I don't intend to get one, never mind how easy it will be for
me to get it.

Every day, the polititians of this country get to satisfy their
childhood urges to play god, and the police provide them with the
muscle with which to enforce their fantasies. "I don't like people
watching dirty movies; its bad for them. Lets throw 'em in jail if
they don't obey." "I don't like people putting the wrong molecules in
their bodies." "I don't like people wearing silly hats." "I want to
explore space, and I think the public should pay for it."

Lets cut this fantasy off right here. No one has the right to see
their desire for their pet alteration to my carreer enforced with the
barrel of a police .45, and I, for one, will resist.

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