Shouldn’t government licensing be one of the easist things to convince people are god awful. From a moral/practical/ logical and economical standpoint there really is no good ground it can stand on for anything (well maybe guns, because that is a hot button/media loves to talk/you get lectures in school about it type issue). But yet many people seem to be in favor of the concept.
Isn’t all licensing is, is just showing how the courts and police fail to maintain to do the jobs they are supposed to do (holding people accountable for their actions)? Or is it more of a union type cartel trying to remain in power and reap the money? Is their any good articles on the history of licensing, or is it just all pretty much related to guilds and such? Or is it more of a way for the govt to make money and force us through a cumbersome educational system? Licensing seems like such an obvious evil and yet no one seems to care.
On a side note, I guess I kind of, sort of, in it’s own twisted logical way, see the point of a drivers license. They are government roads after all, so I guess the government can tell us we need to get a government liscense to drive on a government road. Kind of, sort of, I guess.
Licensing started out as a way for states and cities to make money aside from sales taxes. They could say taxes went down, when fact is, they raised license fees which is a kind of tax.
Licensing serves two purposes, one of which has been hit on. That is to raise revenue for the state. The other is to limit who can do certain jobs, and to supposedly show who is studied and capable and who is not. I like private certification, but licensing is highly over done. The reason I like private certification is that it can show a proficiency in an area, giving us an idea of possible ability, but will not limit who can do a job just because they do not go through a formal program or spend money to get a piece of paper saying what they should be able to do.
That’s just it though, it happens with private enterprise. You can show people it happens w/o the govt telling them that it has to. But what really confuses me is how normal people (usually, but not always more of the leftist types) defend it. It is something that can be so easily refuted (as just one small example: showing how this actually will be picked up by private enterprise), and something that i see they should have no sympathy for.
I can at the very least see for example, why people want and support universal healthcare, social security, and welfare. I think all of those are at least a little more indirect and not as plain as day , bold faced evil, asinine, half assed idea as government licensing. I can’t even relate to the idea. I would love to read an Austrian viewed history of how this came to be.
I laughed long and hard at this. I guess it was the imagery of people walking blindly like sheep onto operating tables where an unknown doctor would perform experiments on the hapless ignoramous. Help me, Big Brother! I can’t make important decisions on my own!