Unlicensed doctors and lawyers and pharmacists and home remodelers have the potential to kill maybe a dozen people if they are totally incompetent and perhaps damage for life hundreds more, either physically or financially, before the long arm of the law drags them before a judge.
They should expect to go to prison for their crimes, in addition to paying restitution to their victims, if they knowingly misrepresented themselves and violated the law.
But you know what? Unethical journalists -- reporters, editors, commentators, TV anchors -- have been known to defame patriotic Americans, smear conservatives, and even start wars in which thousands of Americans and others have died.
Isn't it about time these people start getting licensed?
After all, their idea of competition is whoever can make up the most outrageous stories and get away with it, to get market share and Emmy awards.
So if libertarian concepts don't cut the mustard in other professions, why not license news people to protect the public from abuse? Isn't that equally important?
Licensed doctors and lawyers and pharmacists and home remodelers have the potential to kill maybe a dozen people if they are totally incompetent and perhaps damage for life hundreds more, either physically or financially, before the long arm of the law drags them before a judge.
In fact, the license is likely to help them get away with it longer, and they will usually be protected by their fellow-licensed “peers”. Totally incompetent professionals often garner customers because they have a government piece of paper that the gullible trust.
See?
Hank
Common sense is not fearmongering. You are the one engaging in fearmaongering with your false “slippery slopes”. “If we require a medical degree and license to cut into a person’s brain, it will inevitbaly lead to government control over every minute detail of our lives!”
Honestly, I’m not willing to allow an untrained, unlicensed “doctor” kill a few dozen people, before he gets shut down by the government for manslaughter, or by a bunch of bad reviews on Yelp.com.
One of the biggest barriers to an efficient FREE MARKET is fraud and lack of tranparency. Individuals who sell products and services that are not what they appear to be (and can be deadly) destroy free markets. Reasonable licensing and regulation (and much current licensing and regulation is NOT reasonable) facilitates free markets.
Your “zero tolerance policy” for regulation is the exact same mentality fo those who implement “zero tolerance” policies in schools, for weapons and drugs that make no distinction between two-inch, plastic toy LEGO “guns” and loaded AK-47’s, or between dealing crack coaine in the halls and taking an Advil.
They are both blockheaded philosophies that assume that nobody is capable of exercising any common sense or judgment.
Libertarians would under-regulate everything for the same reason that Liberals would over-regulate everthing. Both groups are terrified of the idea of the exercise of common sense and judgment being required, once in a while. The Liberal solution is Nanny-Statism, the Libertarian solution is Anarchy. Both are fataly flawed and dangerous.