On Wed, 25 Jan 1995, Charles Bell wrote:

how do we ensure that those skyscrapers don't fall down on us? That the surgeon who is going to open me up knows something about surgery? That my money is at least somewhat safe in the bank?

With non-government reptutation and certification agencies. Currently the government is saying 'there shall be one certification agency and it shall be us', whereas personally if I were hiring someone to design a skyscraper or cut me open I'd much prefer to pick someone who had a good rating from three or four independent agencies. The only difference is that you would have the choice of choosing someone cheap who didn't have a good reputation, not that we'd give up on them altogether (see the numerous past discussions of reputations etc on the list, and the Cyphernomicon).

....once we get past what seems to be your utter refusal to consider the possibility that government could ever do anything right ....

Another thing to consider is that the government monopoly has a lot less to lose by certifying people incorrectly than a commercial agency would. The government's reputation is low enough already that such errors won't affect it significantly, whereas a commercial agency would lose a lot of custom to its competitors. Mark