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To: Alberta's Child
That would be OK, but I'm referring to cases where it's not the customer who needs to be protected as much as the general public.

That's a reasonable position, but first, how often do you think that situation arises outside the context of building design, construction and maintenance?

Second, architects who design self-destructing buildings or contractors who do self-destructing building work will not be doing that for long, and people who want to go into these trades know that. (In addition, just on grounds of basic decency alone, most although not all businessmen don't want to kill people.) If someone can make a lot of money on a few collapsible buildings or exploding gas lines and then disappear, this problem becomes serious, but I don't think that characterizes any market. Competition is a very powerful regulator of any market where it is free to operate, IMHO. But I am not in construction, so I certainly will defer to this point to people who are.

9 posted on 09/06/2014 9:29:21 AM PDT by untenured
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To: untenured
If someone can make a lot of money on a few collapsible buildings or exploding gas lines and then disappear, this problem becomes serious, but I don't think that characterizes any market. Competition is a very powerful regulator of any market where it is free to operate, IMHO.

Competition may be a powerful regulator, but in many cases it doesn't stand a chance against people who are pathologically cheap. You can look at any urban sh!t-hole in the Third World dump to see how that works.

Construction and building maintenance are probably the best examples of this, but I think licensing would be appropriate for any field where there is a public interest outside the interests of the customer and the business owner. Waste management is probably another good example.

11 posted on 09/06/2014 5:36:49 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("What in the wide, wide world of sports is goin' on here?")
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