You're Gonna Need a License for That
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Let's say you pay some people to design a building for you. You get insurance of course. A year later, the building falls down. You call your insurance company to collect. The first thing they ask is whether you took every reasonable precaution you could to prevent that from happening. Part of that would include having a licensed structural engineer design the building. If you let Joe Shmoe off the street design your building and it falls down, the insurance company is going to say you're basically SOL, because you didn't find a person you could verify was qualified.
It's really about transferring the liability from the building owner to the engineer. If there's a mistake in the design, the engineer gets sued. Guess what happens then? The engineer has professional liability insurance to pay that! How does the professional liability insurance company decide who to insure? Well, they insure people with licenses, of course. It's an elaborate scheme to transfer money from one insurance company to another.
Is it necessary for a florist? Probably not. I can't think of a situation where you'd need to sue a florist. Interior decorator might be more problematic than people realize. First, it depends on whether it's a decorator or a designer. A designer may move walls around, affecting egress paths, and can possibly have some life safety implications, so they should be able to take responsibility for that.
If a florist does something stupid - no one gets hurts.
But bankers,programmers treat their profession like the wild west.
User themselves are, too: look at all these BSD-style "provided as-is, explicitly no guarantees" licenses that people take enthusiastically.
And for something aircraft-grade or medical-grade, you definitely meet with rather strict controls on a case-by-case basis (unlike the wholesale licensing).
(Of course, even licensed persons may choose to make poor choices. That said, I've taken a few of those exams, and they are no joke.)
A certification program endorsed by insurance companies seems like a great idea, as does contractor-maintained liability insurance. And in a field where contractors have little to differentiate themselves except reputation and word of mouth, many specifically advertise themselves as "licensed and bonded", and people seeking a contractor look for those specifically. (Some kind of trademarked certification seems even better, to avoid any ambiguity.) All of those seem sufficient to drive contractors to voluntarily step up and seek such certification.
None of that requires mandatory licensing, though.
Now can you do electrical 'work' on residential without a permit or license? yes and sometimes it might be ignored but if the inspector(s) want to not ignore it, they can make you go by the regulations of your area.
That's an unfair characterization. Licensure is not just about protectionism, it is also about making sure that people who need to know what they're doing actually know what they're doing. And while it's far from perfect, it's pretty effective. In the U.S. it is very rare for buildings to collapse, or faulty wiring to set buildings on fire. That is in no small measure because we enforce building codes and licensure requirements for structural and electrical engineers.
And if your insurance company doesn't want to be sued so much, it makes sure you have a certification or a license or basic professional degrees of competence before insuring you.
And to make it all seem like it operates on a fair and level playing field, some independent entity has to verify that the requirements for licensing are met.
And I think we all know what that has meant, historically: multiple choice tests graded by a Scantron machine.
I think that's missing the point (at least the point in theory; the point in practice might be different). The idea is that, if you're licensed, you're sufficiently unlikely to make mistakes that an insurance company can profitably insure people like you without having to charge any individual one of you too much money. In essence, it's a way of converting the concept "People who know what they're doing are less likely to screw up" into something the market can quantify and deal with and reduce variance on.
In theory, the amount of money the building owners pay their own building insurance company is exactly equal to the chance of their building falling down times the cost of that building (plus the overhead of calculating that risk, etc.). If you want that cost to do down, the most efficient way is to convincingly lower that risk. Assuming the market is reasonably effective at transmitting information (which is a big assumption), insurance seems like a perfectly reasonable way to use the market to calculate.
You ask for a policy on your house, they ask if a person qualified by XYZ standard approved it.
If we want to make certain protections mandatory, we can at least move the regulations up one abstraction level. Instead of "you must meet these standards", it could be something more general like, "you must have an insurance policy against these events for this much", and people go with whatever insurer is willing to take that risk. That would allow for more experimentation about which standards are good enough or too stringent, by the people who have something to lose if they're not strict enough, and provide an impetus for obsolete bits to be removed.
The role of the insurance industry is mostly a result of its having a vested interest in collecting data and mitigating risks. Keep in mind that "meeting code" is a standard for the worst legally allowed construction and hiring professionals is a market driven improvement over the provisions dealing with shoddy construction one finds in the Code of Hammurabi.
Existing groups use licensing to shut out newcomers. They are largely anti-competitive, and anti-capitalistic.
The other is where unlicensed activities results in people dying. The outrage from such events often ends up with "license the people", so that Bad Things can't happen.
That's arguably a better approach, for mechanics, nuclear power technicians, etc. Perhaps even hairdressers, who work with toxic chemicals and need to know basic safety.
For me, the "health and safety" requirements make sense. Anything outside of that is typically anti-competitive, and likely rent-seeking.
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/06/22/155596305/episo...
A recent ruling negated the requirement:
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/09/158498244/its-n...
So part of the ruling negating the requirement took into consideration that braiding had none of the associated threats to public health and safety. This sounds like things working as they should with regards to overreaching. It's a shame she had to shut down and sue, but the right call was made by the judge.
This person happened to be able to get the Institute for Justice behind her. Most lower class people do not. They simply get squeezed out, and a la Bastiat we never see them.
I trust the average person to give safe haircuts 100/100 times.
If the hairdresser is noticeably disturbed or drugged, I'll be moving on. I can leave at any point in the process if I feel I am in danger.
Out of curiosity, I searched for haircut related deaths and they were all customers killing the hairdresser because they were upset about how they looked. Based on the actual danger, I would suggest licensing someone to receive a haircut may be the more effective method of increasing haircut safety.
But if you're very lucky, the chemicals will kill the lice, and you'll be too worried about your new disease to be concerned about your hair!
"Hair stylists work with extremely sharp implements extremely close to major blood vessels."
Which implies something more than a knick on the skin that the injured customer then refuses to treat resulting in an infection.
As for hair dyes, as long as you can buy these things in regular stores, and people generally not getting hurt by them, why would the specific act of putting it in your hair be so dangerous that special government licencing would be required?
It's easy for a bunch of high-achieving people to imagine that these requirements are all great and easy to follow, but there are people in this world who are never going to finish college but still know how to cut hair or cook food or arrange flowers for other people. These people seldom have any significant lobbying voice and when they are choked out you don't see them. You just have some honest person trying to provide honest labor and being told "no" by the nobility.
The people passing these licensure requirements should stop and think really hard about what it's like for a person of little means but with genuine interest to comply with them, and only make the requirements the minimum necessary to satisfy public safety.
I'm okay with that. A hair stylist shouldn't need to complete a cosmetology degree, as in that NPR story. But I would very much* like for them to have taken a test that, at some point, at least asks them if they're aware that you can spread certain diseases if you're not careful about what you do.
But when you set up in business the people paying you money need to know you're not incompetant and that you're not going to cause them chemical burns.
Some of the chemicals - (EG sodium hydroxide) - can be pretty harsh.
(I'm not sure the expensive US method of regulating hair dressers is correct, but it's not totally stupid to regulate people putting sodium hydroxide on your head)
Teenagers have bought sodium hydroxide and hydrogen peroxide and heaven know what other nasty chemicals and plastered it in their own and their friends hair at home for decades, and there's no epidemic of permanent disfigurement from chemical burns (if there was, we'd have people up in arms over these chemicals being sold freely).
In other words, the putative argument for requiring hair dressers licenses is solving a theoretical problem.
Before you start doing business with someone, spend a few seconds evaluating the place. Maybe get a recommendation. If it's busy, that's a lot of other people vouching for it, it's probably at least OK. If it's a repurposed lemonade stand in a back alley, it's probably not (even in a jurisdiction that requires licenses!). It's really just basic common sense.
Yeah, that is some requirement you made up. Just because you want your stylist to be regulated should have no bearing on me. Please keep your laws off my body.
It's easy to imagine that my kid wants to be a barber and so I could front the money for him to do whatever licensure requirements there are. But it's really hard for some poor person to hop through those same hoops, when all they are trying to do is earn an honest living by offering services for which people will give them money.
A lot of "well what's the harm in requiring hairdressers to take 100 hours of classes" are things which strictly benefit the middle- and upper-class (they aren't really going to notice paying 50 cents more for a haircut), but could really put the screws to the lower-class.
In my experience, it's a very lower-middle or lower socioeconomic status profession. The licensure requirements certainly haven't meant (in my experience) that we're limiting the field to wealthy people.
It probably could be better/easier, but again, given all the chemicals that get combined, the pace at which they work, and the sharp instruments, I don't think 2.5 weeks of fulltime training is unreasonable.
1) Dyes/bleaches/etc. are often extremely dangerous industrial (as in, cannot be purchased easily at home) chemicals that used wrong could easily cause severe burns or at best an inhalation hazard.
2) Without properly cleaning cutting tools (scissors, clippers, razors, etc.) you run a high risk of spreading disease. With hair and nails the concern is often fungal, but if the last guy who got a buzz cut had lice you're in for a bad time if nobody cleans the clippers.
These are the crazy assholes, after all, that shut down businesses that do nothing but cornrow braiding for lack of licenses.
As for "the spread of disease", they aren't back-alley abdominal surgeons. The only disease that runs any real risk of being spread are lice... and there's no need to license that. Licenses don't help prevent that. Nor does anyone need 1400 hours of training to know how to identify them, or how to clean combs and brushes.
Sloppy people with licenses will still spread them, careful/clean people without licenses will never spread them. Enforce health codes instead of insisting on licenses that just put large barriers of entry in front of people trying to make a living.
Today I read a story about a car getting tickets for $100k [0], one of the tickets was for being in a "hazardous and dilapidated condition", broken headlights and cracked windows. I'm currently living in Rome, Italy - the traffic wardens would have a field day here, basically every car has some sort of damage from an incident.
Don't even get me started about HOA rules...
In a condo building though, I don't know how you can get around an HOA.
Condos pretty much have to have an association to manage them. You typically own the interior of the unit. The association owns the exterior and the land.
But if my neighbor miswires a light switch and it starts a fire that burns my house down because they're close together, that would suck. In that situation, I would have wanted a say in whether my neighbor chose to do that themselves or hire someone who knows what they're doing.
I'm living in a house that is filled with small jobs that seemed like they were done by someone who didn't know what they were doing. Lots of scrap lumber, mis-matching parts, electrical re-wires that just didn't work, etc. I'm glad I don't need a permit to fix some of that myself, but I would've loved to stop this guy before he did these things.
Or if someone's half-assery endangered otherwise innocent lives. Note: not necessarily crying "save the children!" "Innocent" as in "couldn't influence decision to get someone who knows what they're doing".
I'm more or less in the same boat, but leaning towards "not licensing."
Here's how I look at it: in your scenario, would licensing have really prevented any of that from happening? It might give us grounds to sue for damages, but I don't think it would deter idiots from doing what idiots are going to do. Seems more likely to hinder conscious people who can be bothered to look up "the right way" to do something in the first place.
In industrial cases though I absolutely see the need for licensing where safety is concerned - I don't want an untrained person working on the aircraft that's about to transport me across 3000 miles of land mass.
The distinction I would make is a matter of scale and significance I suppose.
Scale feels like a good metric for this. Like, if you're a builder making a lot of houses get a permit. If you're a homeowner fixing your own stuff, you're okay. Maybe education? Like, "You're buying a house! Have a free handyman course on us!" or something?
Yep, that seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
I don't have numbers, but I would be fairly confident in a guess that many, many more houses burn down because of a combination of open flames and carelessness, than do because of low-level DIY electrical work.
Using matches to light a stove or fireplace is so common that we've as a society decided to not place restrictions on that activity because the cost outweighs the benefit.
However, doing electrical work on your house is not quite as common and the result of your work will stay with the house and possibly affect future owners. Added to that the work is generally hidden or not obvious and future owners may not know about your substandard work.
Yeah it's a totally arbitrary line, but either we license nothing or we just pick somewhere to draw it.
My original comment was because in the UK most of this stuff isn't licensed* - even installing a gas stove doesn't need a license, which I'd argue is a lot easier to screw up than a light switch.
There are 'regulations' on how things should be done, but these are merely guidelines in most cases - you won't have any issues with the authorities when trying to sell your house or with insurers if it's not up to scratch. It would be interesting to see how accidents caused by this compare in the UK and US.
On the other hand two things we do strictly regulate are 'listed' buildings and the removal of trees in your garden.
*I think the same is true for most of Europe.
EDIT: What's the emoji for "my tone is sincere, I'm misunderstanding what he's saying you downvoting heathens?" ( =
Individually, yes, you can expect people to act in their best interest. When doing things for others, not so much. Look at the #ventyourrent movement for examples of the way people are being treated in pursuit of profit -- not high rents, but the sheer number of landlords that either fail to maintain, or negligently maintain their properties in a way that puts tenants at risk.
The US has a serious problem with licensing and regulation, but that also seems to be a product of their litigious culture as a whole.
When I commented about this previously though, I was told it reflected strong union etc. rules in Australia.
In practice, in the US, lots of people do some amount of their home repairs including electrical. I'm sure, in many cases, that work is theoretically supposed to be done by a licensed electrician, plumber, etc.
You might enjoy the long-running series of photo galleries called "Home Inspection Nightmares" on the "This Old House" site: http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/info/0,,20211283,00.html
No, you can't. And it's not a matter of "sometimes you can't trust people to do the job right", it's that more times than not an amateur will cut corners, or more accurately, won't know enough to even know that they're cutting corners. For example, my wife and I bought a VW Westfalia camper van a few months ago. After 35 years it's been through a few owners. I wouldn't let any of the previous owners anywhere near my house wiring. Stuff works, but it's half-assed in a lot of places. Twist two wires together, cover it in tape. I'm a solder-and-shrink-tubing guy myself, but c'mon, at least use a Scotchlock or something.
I've owned houses with outlets that had no ground because the person that put the outlets in couldn't be bothered, so they snipped the ground wire so that it was out of the way. Yeah, you plug stuff in and it would work, but would you trust the culprit to wire your house? And so on, and so on.
The summary is, I've seen enough half-assed work over the years (and some of it from "professionals" that people paid money for) that I do not trust people to use their own judgement. Do I think a license should be required to install a light switch? That's a different question. Are you going to trust the person that took a database class a few years ago to "use their own judgement as to whether they can do it sensibly or not" when it comes time to write the backend for your contact management system? I'll bet you they'd eventually deliver something that mostly works. Do you want to maintain it?
Which is exactly what I will do, because though I've been doing wiring of various sorts at a smaller scale since the '70s, I very much want someone double checking my plans and work. And this makes sense in many ways, e.g. there's about a foot separating my and my neighbor's garages, and while more between our houses, if mine were to catch fire, the fire department would have to earn their pay to keep it from catching on fire.
And echoing others, yeah, all people, pro and diy types, most certainly cannot be entirely trusted to do it right.
But even though government intervention tried to cut risks, or to ban offensive activities, they still exist. Look at how many "hairdressers" from "Pakistan" are in the west, or how much "slavery" still exist although its illegal. Banning alcohol made it go into the underground route and made Capones rich.
The decline of western civilization is happening right now.
"The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour is a plain violation of this most sacred property."
Certification driven by insurance industry makes sense, criminalizing people without licenses is a conspiracy against poor.
I don't think licensure brings any advantages - because dont forget - its not the business that needs a license, its the individual working for a low wage that does - its just an extra burden for the guy trying to find a job - and I'll note, the state (in California at least) doesn't even issue these things (or seem profit from them) - its issued by private entities.
They are also inspected fairly routinely, and every couple does get shut down for incompliance (problem with temperature, separation of raw meat, etc.) and I can see why these would require a license in order to prevent food-borne illness.
Did you receive some form of a Computer Engineering degree from an ABET institution (just using the U.S. for this example)? Congratulations you are an engineer.
Did you receive a Computer Science degree, Computer Information Systems degree, boot camp graduate, self taught or otherwise? Congratulations you are a developer.
Did you know that MIT, Stanford, Berkeley and Harvard do not offer Computer Engineering degrees (only Computer Science or Electrical Engineering or EECS).
Also you've completely discounted self taught practitioners, some of whom are often far more competent than people with actual Computer Engineering degrees.
Hence, it really isn't "put to bed" yet.
https://www.eecs.mit.edu/academics-admissions/undergraduate-...
http://i.imgur.com/eiF1INY.jpg
Did I say this was really annoying? Because it was. At least it wasn't as tacky as posting my diploma. Please don't tell people from MIT what MIT offers.
But really you only proved my point. OP said that a computer engineering degree makes you an engineer and a computer science degree makes you a developer. So what does a computer science and engineering major make you?
My main point was you can't decide if someone is an engineer based on the name of the degree they were granted.
A civil engineer pointed out to me that the licenses come when it really starts to affect people and infrastructure. Programming does this by proxy, but not directly enough yet.
New York State's bitlicense was the closest to burdening software engineers with licensing requirements, until the one person at the head of the financial agency clarified it wasn't intended to be interpreted that way, and modified the wording of the law.
Thats all it comes down to.
When programmers are doing things that actually endanger people's lives directly, actually alter the physical living environment directly, then you will see governing authorities pushing for licenses.
I think the key difference is certifying the product when there are multiple instances of the product being made is cheaper. For civil engineering, most of the projects are unique (and even if the design is something of a copy - then the sites present unique challenges). So maybe it makes more sense there to license the engineers.
Toyota famously had some issues with their software and fatalities. It'd be hard to license software development though because it's such a quickly changing field.
In my first engineering job (offshore drilling rig design and construction), pretty much all the senior engineers had PEs.
Not that I know of.
[1] http://theinstitute.ieee.org/ieee-roundup/opinions/ieee-roun...
Where I live, people from a wide variety of locations across the globe are constantly arriving, setting up shop, and offering some kind of service or other (legally or otherwise).
It's not clear they're offering a high quality service or that they'll be available later to fix any problems they may create. It's not clear which community they belong to (if any) and are accountable to (if any). It's not clear how long they'll even be in country.
On the surface then, government licensing seems like it might be a tool that transforms a "Random, Unknown, Migratory Service Provider from Somewhere Else" into a "Locally Known, Certified, Accountable High Quality Service Provider"