Hacker News Reader

Comment by breezybottom | Hacker News Reader

Milton Friedman was a libertarian crank. I'm a consumer and I'm quite happy that doctors and lawyers are licensed.

You can have a regime that regulates who can practice medicine and law without having it run through private organizations that function like a cartel.

It's a little more-complicated in that one of the major bottlenecks comes not from the private organizations per se, but from Congress--though I wouldn't want to underestimate the effect of lobbying.

> In the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, Congress capped the number of residency positions that Medicare would fund at each teaching hospital at 1996 levels.

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5550556-residency-cap...

Yes, and the AMA, along with other associations, supported the cap, issuing a statement that claimed "compelling evidence that the United States is on the verge of a serious oversupply of physicians."

You can also buy from companies that hire licensed software engineers if you want to? The main thing that would stop people patronising licensed individuals is if there was no obvious skill gap between a licensed and unlicensed practitioner that justifies the price gap.

People don't need a government body to tell them to check for credentials. If people care they can ask (I had to give a copy of my degree certificate thingo to my employer a job or two ago, they cared that I was qualified). The whole and only point of mandating licensing is to raise prices for consumers.

EDIT

Just while I'm thinking about it, the law is expected to be easy enough for everyone to follow while simultaneously there is is an absurd legal fiction that only a licensed professional can talk sensibly about the law. It is internally inconsistent that lawyers would require a license.

I'm getting work experience to become a licensed software engineer, which is possible in my jurisdiction (Ontario).

Rarely does anybody care. I heard it's useful for safety-critical stuff but have never met anyone who has made use of the designation.

That's the absurd libertarian logic. I'm supposed to be able to assess the credibility of whatever credentials I'm shown? Despite having no expertise in the field?

The government can sponsor a credential if that helps you? The libertarian position isn't that the government can't have a position on what the standard should be, just that people who think there is a more cost-effective standard should be allowed to use them.

Much like how you can hire a programmer based on that you think their work is good or they made a lot of money programming, rather than just limiting yourself to the people who went to some fancy university. If you don't feel competent at assessing programmer quality then you can exclusively hire ex-Google or MIT programmers or what have you and pay an absurd premium for the most credentialed US developers. But most people don't need to do that.

> Milton Friedman was a libertarian crank.

That's not an argument.

> I'm quite happy that doctors and lawyers are licensed.

But you're not happy that you have to pay for 10 years of medical or law school for a broken bone or employment contract.

The government could license a gradient of qualifications to better match skills with services. (as they reluctantly started to do in medicine due to pressure to economize MDs.)

What advantage do you, the consumer, see to licensing over certification?

Liability for the professional that knows if they botch a job in horrendous fashion that they could lose the ability to continue practicing their profession.

What's the practical difference between that and certificate revocation? Maybe you can still technically do the job, but who is going to work with you when you are not certified?

But it's not certain you would even be able to continue to do the job if you botched things in a horrendous fashion. There is precedent for individuals being barred from working in certain industries if it is considered necessary to protect the public, even when those industries are unlicensed. Granted, it is rare and a lot more complicated than where licenses are found, but if you've botched things in a horrendous fashion anything is possible.

Au contraire, mon frere. Milton Friedman looks prophetic in 2026, especially his book "Free to Choose."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com