CDR: RE: was: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?

[Trei, Peter]

> Tim May[SMTP:tcmay at 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.