Libertarian version—remove almost all licensing. People use third party rating agencies to decide who to trust if they so desire.
Market version—remove almost all licensing requirements but require liability insurance. Insurance markets will effectively prevent unqualified candidates from practicing by pricing them out with expensive policies.
Better version of what we have now—Remove all degree requirements and test directly for competence. The test should be sufficiently thorough that passing it means you’re qualified. Every profession will have bootcamps spring up that teach you exactly what you need to know to be competent as quickly as possible.
Any of these approaches should dramatically lower the cost of most professional services.
The problem is, licensed people have made an investment and expect to repay it by reaping profits from the protected market. Some have borrowed money to get in and may have to file for personal bankruptcy. So they will oppose the reform by any means at their disposal, for which I don’t blame them (even if it is obviously against the general interest).
Such a reform would be doable in the following cases (1) it compensates the losers in some way (2) it’s so gradual that current licensed will mostly retire before it’s fully implemented (3) it is decided by a political faction that has no interest in the votes of the licensed and no sympathy for their concerns, while the licensed have no “hard power” to block the reform (and this third will never be fulfilled for a blanket effort on all licenses: in practice you get a party punching down on the least powerful people in the opponent’s coalition).
As you see, it’s a whole other order of complication with respect to the case presented in the post...
Perhaps a targeted campaign for reform in the area of highest impact. Medicine comes to mind but that also seems like the scariest area to mess with.
I also forgot to mention that these reforms would dramatically lower the cost of education as people could choose to skip formal rigid degrees entirely.
I agree it would be very good, and possibly an economic no-brainer. My point is just that what is discussed in the post works for a political no-brainer, by which I mean something that no one would bother to oppose. To get what you want you need a real political campaign, or a large scale economic education campaign. Even then it’s difficult, imo, unless your proposals fit one of the cases I mention above.
That said, of you are thinking of the US there is an easy proposal to be done for medicine, which is making medical school equivalent to a college degree and eliminating the requirement of having already done college before to enter (see https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/, which notes it’s done that way in Europe, I add it’s the same for law school etc.). It’s not an earth-shaking reform but it could work exactly for that reason.
Right now the bottleneck for becoming able to legally practice medicine as a doctor in the US is the number or residency positions for training medical school graduates, not the number of people graduating from medical schools.
Next target—occupational licensing
Libertarian version—remove almost all licensing. People use third party rating agencies to decide who to trust if they so desire.
Market version—remove almost all licensing requirements but require liability insurance. Insurance markets will effectively prevent unqualified candidates from practicing by pricing them out with expensive policies.
Better version of what we have now—Remove all degree requirements and test directly for competence. The test should be sufficiently thorough that passing it means you’re qualified. Every profession will have bootcamps spring up that teach you exactly what you need to know to be competent as quickly as possible.
Any of these approaches should dramatically lower the cost of most professional services.
The problem is, licensed people have made an investment and expect to repay it by reaping profits from the protected market. Some have borrowed money to get in and may have to file for personal bankruptcy. So they will oppose the reform by any means at their disposal, for which I don’t blame them (even if it is obviously against the general interest).
Such a reform would be doable in the following cases (1) it compensates the losers in some way (2) it’s so gradual that current licensed will mostly retire before it’s fully implemented (3) it is decided by a political faction that has no interest in the votes of the licensed and no sympathy for their concerns, while the licensed have no “hard power” to block the reform (and this third will never be fulfilled for a blanket effort on all licenses: in practice you get a party punching down on the least powerful people in the opponent’s coalition).
As you see, it’s a whole other order of complication with respect to the case presented in the post...
Perhaps a targeted campaign for reform in the area of highest impact. Medicine comes to mind but that also seems like the scariest area to mess with.
I also forgot to mention that these reforms would dramatically lower the cost of education as people could choose to skip formal rigid degrees entirely.
I agree it would be very good, and possibly an economic no-brainer. My point is just that what is discussed in the post works for a political no-brainer, by which I mean something that no one would bother to oppose. To get what you want you need a real political campaign, or a large scale economic education campaign. Even then it’s difficult, imo, unless your proposals fit one of the cases I mention above.
That said, of you are thinking of the US there is an easy proposal to be done for medicine, which is making medical school equivalent to a college degree and eliminating the requirement of having already done college before to enter (see https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/, which notes it’s done that way in Europe, I add it’s the same for law school etc.). It’s not an earth-shaking reform but it could work exactly for that reason.
Right now the bottleneck for becoming able to legally practice medicine as a doctor in the US is the number or residency positions for training medical school graduates, not the number of people graduating from medical schools.