“Cutting off a means of income” should not be looked on so callously either. It is only a few ideological hops away from “terminating someone’s life.”
The revoking of professional licenses is not (and should not be) intended as punishment of the individual in question, but rather limiting the damage to society of their recklessness.
That can sometimes be a slippery slope of its own, but I will argue that it’s a somewhat different slope (the “for the greater good” slope) from the “totalitarian government hates nonconformity” slope. Sometimes they intersect though.