In article , "DGDevin" wrote:
"Doug Miller" wrote in message ...

No, it's not. If a real estate broker or accountant or lawyer screws up
and
costs you a lot of money, you sue him and recover your money. If a doctor
screws up and ruins your health, you can't sue him and recover your
health.

Training and certification are a good way of preventing the damage in the
first place. No, that doesn't mean I figure a kid should need a license to
set up a lemonade stand. But I sure check the license of any contractor I'm
considering hiring, and I wouldn't hire one who didn't have a license. Your
insistence that monetary damages are not serious enough to be prevented by
licensing sounds ideological than practical.

Correct. It *is* ideological; I believe that Thomas Jefferson was correct:
"That government is best, which governs least."

You didn't lose anything that can't be replaced. That's the crucial
difference
that you seem determined to fail to understand.

What do you figure the odds are that a contractor who neglected to be
licensed has insurance? Why is it a reasonable thing to require me to chase
him for years in hopes of maybe getting paid for my loss?

Because you were the idiot who hired him. If you hire an unlicensed, uninsured
contractor, you should not be surprised if he screws up and costs you money.
Why do you think there should be a law to protect you from your own
foolishness?

Wouldn't it be
better to require contractors to be licensed, with insurance a condition of
being licensed?

No, I don't think it would be. Leave it up to the consumer to evaluate the
tradeoffs, and decide whether he's better off paying more to hire a licensed,
insured contractor, or taking the risk of hiring a cheaper, but unlicensed and
uninsured one. This is not a proper role of government.

So let the insurance companies deal with it. Keep the government out of
it.

There are reasons why govt. is the preferred entity for licensing, not the
least of which is the lack of profit as a motive to influence how they
administer licensing.

LMAO at that one! "Lack of profit motive"? You've *got* to be kidding me.
There's plenty of "profit motive" in the adminstration of contractor licensing
in several states and cities. Not *legal* profit, mind you...

I'll go out on a limb and guess you're not well
disposed towards trade unions being able to charge people to work at a
particular job, but now you're in effect arguing on behalf of people needing
to pay a private company to get the license they need to work.

WRONG. I am doing nothing of the kind. I oppose the very idea that they need
to get a license in order to work.
[irrelevant paragraph based on above mistaken assumption deleted]

I never claimed there were arguments against requiring doctors to be
licensed;
in fact, I acknowledged that there *is* a compelling public safety
interest in
doing so.

Your insistence that there is no public interest unless blood is spilled is
ludicrous, most of the civilized world has moved past such a position.

I did not say there is no public interest. I said that there is no
justification for laws requiring a license to work in trades or professions
where incompetence poses no threat to public health or safety.

Do I
think licensing can be taken too far? Of course I do, but I also believe
your contention that life and limb have to be threatened before we can
justify licensing is simplistic and dogmatic.

I _did not_ say that. My objection is not to licensing, but to laws that make
licensing a condition of being able to work.

Please stick to debating what I actually wrote, not what you imagine you read.