I'm sure you will admit a persons credit report is one of the most important items for an American to keep clean and error free.
As you show, anyone can open up a collection agency. Pay your fee's to the three credit reporting agencies and you've got instant access to every Americans credit report. Not only access to look at it, but the ability to place items on it.
You have no laws requiring you to train your employees on the laws, consumer rights and such. You have no laws requiring that you do a background check on your employees to make sure they are not convicted felons or other types of people who should not have access to the most personal information on every American.
You claim 40% of your industry are "pond scum", that's 40% pond scum who can and do break laws, ruin peoples credit, harass, intimidate and use illegal practices to collect debts that many times aren't even the person's or are so past the statute of limitations it's not even funny.
That should be scary to anyone. What we have is a billion dollar a year industry with little to no oversight, no requirements on who can receive consumers personal information and no training/licensing requirements for who they hire.
Almost all states regulate collection agencies in some form or another. The licensing process is extremely rigorous and does require background checks, etc. but only on the principles, not employees and it can be quite expensive to be licensed in some states.
You do need to investigate a wee bit more before making a blanket statement regarding credit reporting. There are penalties for malicious erroneous entries, failing to report payments, etc. and the onus for the original legitimacy of the debt is the responsibility of the client, not the agency. That is one reason why there is a 30-day period after initial contact to resolve any disputes prior to actively initiating any collection action, including derogatory entries on retail credit reports and why we carry an enormous fidelity bond.