I’m doing research for some personal writing that I’m doing. My current topic is licensing. I want your opinion on what are legitimate and illegitimate licensing regulations. Also any historical anecdotes relating to the topic.
Some thoughts I have been bouncing around:
Business licensing limits competition and makes it more difficult for smaller business to operate.
Motor vehicle licensing is legitimate because roads are managed by a governmental institutions and as such they can set their own standards.
To what extent is zoning and building regs and licensing legitimate? Doesn’t irresponsible development “damage” near by property?
Also: a good historical point about the effects of licensing was the destruction of Mutual Benefit Societies by the mandatory licensing of medical doctors. Any comments on that.
Anyway, my first post, and looking forward to a good discussion.
Private certification/licensing has its place in the world due to the nature of specific industires like construction (road, and building), IT, and medicine to name three. In which it is advantageous to offer such licensing/certification as a means to verify to insurers that you are capable of doing the task.
But when governments get involved in such licensing/certification, there is often the unintended consequence of choking off possible candidates to enter the market as you stated yourself. But, furthermore, there is also the ever present fact that now licensing/certification is a political affair in which the specifics of the procedures to be certified/licensed now isn’t decided based on technology or technique, but rather on who you know and what you can bribe them for. Thus, it destroys the meaning and nature of licensing/certification which is to minimize the threat to insurers of incompetent practioners/workers in a given industry. Which ultimately leads to higher prices and lower quality of services.
Good point on the fact that such licences don’t have to be in the relm of the government but (as in some cases they are) can (or actually should) be issued by other businesses. Businesses can in turn subject themselves to volentery regulation in return for a licence, which would give them more credibility, trust, ext… Licences would become like products in themselves.
I would argue that certification & licensing (in some form) will always be desired (to some extent) based on the how valuable individuals within society view them as.
In the stateless society, for instance, if one subscribes to a PDA, and a representative from a rival PDA comes knocking on the door pulling ye olde impersonating trick, the subscriber may demand credentials (& further may contact the real PDA) to confirm legitimacy of the representative.
Even with Creative Commons & various copyright licenses, one is required to utilize some form of identification of the license by a simple web graphic on one’s page, or at least a link to the specific license that one is using, & so on.
Back to your original question, acting individuals within the market (or more generally, within society) determine what is legitimate & what is not (or in the case of non-free markets, this & the coercive actions of The State also interfere with this process & influences outcomes).
If you look at any product becoming tainted & being re-called, you’d have excellent example to derive thoughts on when a legitimate product risks becoming illegitimate, how people influence this based on their actions (i.e. diverting purchases towards rival products if rival products provide a service or a purpose that the recently illegitimatized product no longer has), etc.