"Doug Miller" wrote in message ...


Why stop there? Because incompetent travel and tourist guides,
incompetent funeral attendants, incompetent home-entertainment installers,
incompetent florists, incompetent makeup artists, incompetent interpreters
for
the deaf, and incompetent animal trainers don't pose a clear danger to
public
health or safety. Incompetent doctors, incompetent pilots, incompetent bus
drivers, incompetent demolition contractors, and incompetent electricians
do.

Where is it written that that the only public harm worth protecting against
is death or injury?

Real estate brokers or accountants or lawyers can cost you huge sums of
money if they screw up despite you having suffered no physical injury, is
that a convincing argument that they shouldn't need extensive training and
certification?

What happens when an unlicensed contractor (who thus has no insurance) makes
a mess of your house, takes out a load-bearing wall and drops an upstairs
bedroom into the kitchen? Who do you sue, some hack who moved two states
over before your lawyer could file the papers and is now installing lawn
sprinkler systems under another name? You didn't suffer any broken bones,
does that mean you didn't lose anything? Insurance companies like licensing
for a reason, it reduces the number of checks they have to write by helping
to keep incompetent hacks out of the business.

Sure, professional organizations can play games to keep the price of their
services high--the American Medical Assoc. and it's policy of restricting
the number of med school graduates comes to mind. But that isn't a sound
argument against requiring doctors to be licensed.

There simply is no case to be made for government licensing of any trade
or
profession in which incompetent performance poses no threat to life,
health,
or safety. Why on earth should a license be required in order to work as a
makeup artist? Go on, let's see you make the case for that one.

Ever get a makeup brush jabbed in your eye? No? Well then, you aren't
qualified to speak to the horrors of unlicensed makeup artists running amuck
leaving chaos in their wake.

Many years ago I knew a woman who applied her lipstick using a little sable
brush, it was one of the most intensely erotic things I ever saw. She
actually had been trained in makeup application though she probably wasn't
licensed, I'll grant you that.