Tim May[SMTP:tcmay@got.net] wrote:
Jeesh.
(From a practical standpoint, here in the Bay Area there is a growing oversupply of lawyers. According to the newspapers, modulo their biases and inaccuracies, many lawyer larvae are accepting "paralegal" positions. As with past "shortages of doctors" and "shortages of teachers," the boom-bust cycle continues. [...]
Doctors, lawyers, teachers... All three groups share a certain property: They have effective control over who may practice their profession. In their own self-interest, they act to stifle competition. There are, of course weasel words to justify this: 'maintaining standards' being the most common ones. Teacher's unions rail against merit pay and vouchers, which would provide some notion of a competitive market in education. The unions insist on a seniority system. They even attempt to ban volunteer part-time teachers on 'quality' grounds, so you can't go in and give a computer class if you wanted to, since you don't have a teaching degree. Similar points can be made about doctors, and the use of IANAL indicates the fevered grip the bar associations have on legal advice and representation. Howver, the teaching and medical professions can't act to increase their feedstock - uneducated-as-yet children and ailing people respectively. Idle tort lawyers can, and do, dream up new ways to sue and generally make the world a nastier place as they enrich themselves. Only rulers are worse. Imagine if the software business were like this - that the programmers of the late 40's had formed an American Programmers Association, and it was unlawful for anyone without APA certification to write code for money. Ditto for using software not blessed by the APA. Entrance to the hallowed membership would, of course, require a four year electrical engineering degree followed by a post graduate degree from an accredited computer school. I'll leave it to others to imagine the world with an APA. I think it would be a much poorer place. Peter Trei Disclaimer: the above represents my opinion only. IANAL.