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In article <46549@netnews.upenn.edu> yee@mipgsun.mipg.upenn.edu (Conway Yee) writes:

>What's the problem?  Licensing merely mandates a minimum
>level of competency.  Many other professions have licensing procedures
>for exactly that reason.  Would you prefer to be treated by a doctor who
>did not have a license to practice medicine?

This is a common argument, and one which I might have gone for until
last year.  I was swayed by a very compelling book, "More Like
Us," by Atlantic Monthly Asian correspondent James Fallows.  It should
be required reading for policymakers, IMHO.

I can't do justice to his argument in one page, but here's my
quick summary: 
o America is a great power because of social mobility, vs. the more rigid
  class distinctions which brought down the feudal system and many
  great powers before and since.
o Proponents of professional licensing always cite professionalism and
  protection of the public as reasons why it is necessary.  After-the-fact
  studies have not shown quality to improve in "professions" which took
  up licensing.  He gives details -- read the book.
o The effect of licensing, which has been the same since the medieval
  trade guilds and before, is to create barriers to entry to a craft,
  thereby increasing the salary commanded by those accepted into the group.
  Society loses in such a transaction (remember the dead-weight loss area
  in the monopoly supply/demand curve from microeconomics).
o He cites various anecdotes and statistics which I don't have at hand:
  state X has n hundred licensed "professions", including (some ridiculous
  job) and (some ridiculous job).  A PhD physicist can't teach a junior
  high school science class (no certificate) even though the person
  who is teaching the class knows nothing about science and is imparting
  wrong information to the students.  A paralegal is prosecuted for
  helping people with gov't forms (this one was on 60 Minutes, I think).
  Etc.
o He makes some distinction for life-critical professions like M.D.
  Before comp.risks people cry "software *is* life-critical": Fallows
  has much to say about the abuses of licensing even for MDs.  Various 
  surveys show that doctors themselves don't think thousands of hours
  of memorization followed by hundreds of weeks of sleepless nights in
  residency are the best ways to make a good practitioner, etc.  I think 
  he also talks about airline pilots: in order to have really *useful*
  licensing, you'd have to follow their lead, with periodic competency
  reviews, minimum flying-hours-per-year, etc., which is a very expensive
  way to go.
o The way for America to succeed in world markets (here's the Asian
  angle; apologies to readers outside the U.S.) is not to copy Japanese
  or other styles, which wouldn't work here anyway, but for us to
  be "more like us," i.e. to emphasize the values which were responsible
  for American success in the 40s and 50s, including (especially) the
  kind of social and professional mobility which worked for us then.

James Fallows, MORE LIKE US, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.
$8.95 (list) in paperback, & well worth it.

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