
You're Gonna Need a License for That - jseliger
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-17/you-re-going-to-need-a-license-for-that-job
======
imgabe
I'm a PE (electrical) and I think what most people don't realize is that the
licensing was largely driven by the insurance industry.

Let's say you pay some people to design a building for you. You get insurance
of course. A year later, the building falls down. You call your insurance
company to collect. The first thing they ask is whether you took every
reasonable precaution you could to prevent that from happening. Part of that
would include having a licensed structural engineer design the building. If
you let Joe Shmoe off the street design your building and it falls down, the
insurance company is going to say you're basically SOL, because you didn't
find a person you could verify was qualified.

It's really about transferring the liability from the building owner to the
engineer. If there's a mistake in the design, the engineer gets sued. Guess
what happens then? The engineer has professional liability insurance to pay
that! How does the professional liability insurance company decide who to
insure? Well, they insure people with licenses, of course. It's an elaborate
scheme to transfer money from one insurance company to another.

Is it necessary for a florist? Probably not. I can't think of a situation
where you'd need to sue a florist. Interior decorator might be more
problematic than people realize. First, it depends on whether it's a
_decorator_ or a _designer_. A _designer_ may move walls around, affecting
egress paths, and can possibly have some life safety implications, so they
should be able to take responsibility for that.

~~~
wrong_variable
The sad part is the industries that do actually need some quality control are
the ones that are completely unlicensed.

If a florist does something stupid - no one gets hurts.

But bankers,programmers treat their profession like the wild west.

~~~
Shivatron
"Bankers" is obviously a broad term, but I'd point out that just about
everyone employed in the financial industry in a role where they are giving
advice or soliciting/executing transactions have very strict licensing and
continuing education requirements. Just look at the list of FINRA licensing
exams: [http://www.finra.org/industry/qualification-
exams](http://www.finra.org/industry/qualification-exams)

(Of course, even licensed persons may choose to make poor choices. That said,
I've taken a few of those exams, and they are no joke.)

~~~
DavidAdams
And the FINRA licensing exams focus almost entirely on the laws that are
intended to protect consumers from bad actors. To study for those exams is to
have it drilled into your head what you can and can't do. Unfortunately, much
of what collapsed the US economy wasn't actually illegal, and in the case
where laws were broken, the bankers were comfortable with knowingly bending
the rules.

------
adekok
The attitude of "license all the things" comes from two places.

Existing groups use licensing to shut out newcomers. They are largely anti-
competitive, and anti-capitalistic.

The other is where unlicensed activities results in people dying. The outrage
from such events often ends up with "license the people", so that Bad Things
can't happen.

That's arguably a better approach, for mechanics, nuclear power technicians,
etc. Perhaps even hairdressers, who work with toxic chemicals and need to know
basic safety.

For me, the "health and safety" requirements make sense. Anything outside of
that is typically anti-competitive, and likely rent-seeking.

~~~
lucaspiller
As UK citizen it really surprises me how much things are licensed and
regulated in the US. I've been following /r/diy recently, and in some states
you need to be licensed to even change a light switch. I assume this is to
prevent someone from doing it wrong and burning down a 10 storey apartment
building, but come on? Can't you trust people to use their own judgement as to
whether they can do it sensibly or not?

Today I read a story about a car getting tickets for $100k [0], one of the
tickets was for being in a "hazardous and dilapidated condition", broken
headlights and cracked windows. I'm currently living in Rome, Italy - the
traffic wardens would have a field day here, basically every car has some sort
of damage from an incident.

Don't even get me started about HOA rules...

[0]
[http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/39/3958.asp](http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/39/3958.asp)

~~~
drhayes9
I don't know how I feel about this issue. Haven't decided.

But if my neighbor miswires a light switch and it starts a fire that burns my
house down because they're close together, that would suck. In that situation,
I would have wanted a say in whether my neighbor chose to do that themselves
or hire someone who knows what they're doing.

I'm living in a house that is filled with small jobs that seemed like they
were done by someone who didn't know what they were doing. Lots of scrap
lumber, mis-matching parts, electrical re-wires that just didn't work, etc.
I'm glad I don't need a permit to fix some of that myself, but I would've
loved to stop this guy before he did these things.

Or if someone's half-assery endangered otherwise innocent lives. Note: not
necessarily crying "save the children!" "Innocent" as in "couldn't influence
decision to get someone who knows what they're doing".

~~~
mseebach
What if your neighbour puts a large pot of oil on the stove and drops some
water in the boiling oil and the whole thing catches on fire (and the house
burns down and your house is near)? Or candles? Or cigarettes in bed?

I don't have numbers, but I would be fairly confident in a guess that many,
many more houses burn down because of a combination of open flames and
carelessness, than do because of low-level DIY electrical work.

~~~
startling
Carelessness and open flames are in many ways unavoidable. Badly wired light
switches are avoidable.

~~~
mseebach
Why not just simply require people to sit through a fire safety class and
issue them a fire safely license, which would be required for purchasing
candles, matches or lighters? And to have an extended "cooking with gas fire
safety" class as a requirement for having utility gas in your home?

~~~
nkrisc
Because we can choose to draw the line somewhere, however arbitrary it might
be.

Using matches to light a stove or fireplace is so common that we've as a
society decided to not place restrictions on that activity because the cost
outweighs the benefit.

However, doing electrical work on your house is not quite as common and the
result of your work will stay with the house and possibly affect future
owners. Added to that the work is generally hidden or not obvious and future
owners may not know about your substandard work.

Yeah it's a totally arbitrary line, but either we license nothing or we just
pick somewhere to draw it.

~~~
lucaspiller
> we license nothing or we just pick somewhere to draw it

My original comment was because in the UK most of this stuff isn't licensed* -
even installing a gas stove doesn't need a license, which I'd argue is a lot
easier to screw up than a light switch.

There are 'regulations' on how things should be done, but these are merely
guidelines in most cases - you won't have any issues with the authorities when
trying to sell your house or with insurers if it's not up to scratch. It would
be interesting to see how accidents caused by this compare in the UK and US.

On the other hand two things we do strictly regulate are 'listed' buildings
and the removal of trees in your garden.

*I think the same is true for most of Europe.

------
tn13
Here is what Adam Smith said about occupational licenses centuries (1776) ago
:

"The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original
foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The
patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and
to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity of his hands; and to
hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks
proper without injury to his neighbour is a plain violation of this most
sacred property."

Certification driven by insurance industry makes sense, criminalizing people
without licenses is a conspiracy against poor.

------
JacobJans
This article seems quite specific at first – but when you dig down, it is
actually rather vague. For example, the author complains that his mother needs
a license to bake food. What kind of license? What state? Maybe a food
handlers license? These are incredibly common, and very easy to obtain. Maybe
a business license? Again – most states are falling over themselves to make it
easy to give you a business license. It's hard to tell exactly what is being
argued against. Food safety is incredibly important – and food handler's
licenses are easy to obtain. States need to collect taxes, that's the basic
reason a business needs to get a license. Neither of these things are
controversial. That's why I'm guessing the author of this article didn't go
into specifics.

~~~
unsignedint
The business, may require a food service permit (unless they are selling
packaged food) in addition to a business license, too, in combination with
food handler's permit for workers. At least, that's the case for the county
where I live. (King County, WA) In fact, places like Trader Joe's (where they
don't sell, but merely give away food sample) require an appropriate license
to do that, too.

They are also inspected fairly routinely, and every couple does get shut down
for incompliance (problem with temperature, separation of raw meat, etc.) and
I can see why these would require a license in order to prevent food-borne
illness.

------
Rmilb
Does anyone else see a future where programmers need to get a licence to
practice their craft?

~~~
cududa
Then perhaps we can put to bed the stupid "Engineers or developers" argument

~~~
urda
It's not that difficult to put that to bed today.

Did you receive some form of a Computer Engineering degree from an ABET
institution (just using the U.S. for this example)? Congratulations you are an
_engineer_.

Did you receive a Computer Science degree, Computer Information Systems
degree, boot camp graduate, self taught or otherwise? Congratulations you are
a _developer_.

~~~
jedberg
So you're saying you have to have a four year engineering degree to be an
engineer, and you don't count a computer science degree?

Did you know that MIT, Stanford, Berkeley and Harvard do not offer Computer
Engineering degrees (only Computer Science or Electrical Engineering or EECS).

Also you've completely discounted self taught practitioners, some of whom are
often far more competent than people with actual Computer Engineering degrees.

Hence, it really isn't "put to bed" yet.

~~~
danielweber
Computer Science and Engineering:

[https://www.eecs.mit.edu/academics-
admissions/undergraduate-...](https://www.eecs.mit.edu/academics-
admissions/undergraduate-programs/course-6-3-computer-science-and-engineering)

~~~
jedberg
That's a single course, not a degree.

~~~
danielweber
This was really annoying to go dig up in my attic, but I found it:

[http://i.imgur.com/eiF1INY.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/eiF1INY.jpg)

Did I say this was really annoying? Because it was. At least it wasn't as
tacky as posting my diploma. Please don't tell people from MIT what MIT
offers.

~~~
jedberg
You could have just linked to the website. :) I guess things have changed in
20 years.

But really you only proved my point. OP said that a computer engineering
degree makes you an engineer and a computer science degree makes you a
developer. So what does a computer science and engineering major make you?

My main point was you can't decide if someone is an engineer based on the name
of the degree they were granted.

------
HillaryBriss
Yet another possible reason licensing requirements have proliferated is that
we have a less trusting and less trustworthy society, a much more fluid and
transient society, today than in the past. We literally don't know anybody out
there.

Where I live, people from a wide variety of locations across the globe are
constantly arriving, setting up shop, and offering some kind of service or
other (legally or otherwise).

It's not clear they're offering a high quality service or that they'll be
available later to fix any problems they may create. It's not clear which
community they belong to (if any) and are accountable to (if any). It's not
clear how long they'll even be in country.

On the surface then, government licensing seems like it might be a tool that
transforms a "Random, Unknown, Migratory Service Provider from Somewhere Else"
into a "Locally Known, Certified, Accountable High Quality Service Provider"

------
mohsinr
I read a recent news about proposed law being drafted in India related to
needing a license for mapping the country, I clicked on this story thinking it
was about exact issue I just read. Here is link :
[http://www.voanews.com/content/proposed-law-on-use-of-
maps-s...](http://www.voanews.com/content/proposed-law-on-use-of-maps-
satellite-images-prompts-outcry/3333805.html)

------
intrasight
"license" is too loosey goosey a term. It could be related to insurance/safety
regulations, or it could be in relation to a trade group's attempt to limit
competition. An article that fails to clearly say what they mean by "license"
isn't going to make any clear point.

