> Most people don't bother any more, which has lead to a much smaller number of PE-Engineers many of whom are relegated to being mere license-holders who sign drawings for others, who do the actual engineering.

To some extent this happens in Australia as well, although there is a movement both to require things to be signed off by a PE (or CPEng here), and to have those engineers provide documented supervision of the work they sign off on.

> As far as that goes, I've met a number of pedigreed folks who can't engineer their way out of a wet paper bag.

No argument there, certification is never proof positive of competence. I've met very good engineers who aren't Engineers with a capital E, and very bad Engineers who knew enough to fool a test board, but not much more.

The existence of these licensing schemes is far from perfect, but better than nothing IMO. Applying the concept to general purpose software is another discussion entirely!