Your mechanic definitely doesn't have sufficient data to make meaningful statements about which cars are safer. Your mechanic might have opinions about which models look better or worse after certain types of accidents but that says nothing about safety. Safety data is gathered by either recording accident outcomes or by simulating accidents. Your mechanic is doing neither of those. In fact the most important outcome is whether a passenger or driver dies, and your mechanic probably never sees those because the cars are generally totaled.
Most people don't demand to see the pediatrician's degree and certifications because the government regulates the industry.
You are right. He does not have sufficient data to make meaningful statement about all cars and his knowledge is probably incomplete even about specific cars. But yet what he sees is a real world data far more accurate than what is collected by some agency or simulations performed in the lab. He is a guy with some real skin in the game. I might not ask him if car X is good or bad but most certainly pay heed to him when he says car Y sees a lot of problems.
> Most people don't demand to see the pediatrician's degree and certifications because the government regulates the industry.
People refer to yelp, friends and other known patients before visiting a doctor. Or they rely on a reputable brand of the hospital which has all the incentive to employ good doctors. Government regulation or not people do not rely on mere certificate the doctor has and instead rely on other much more collaborative system to figure out who is a good doctor.
In the absence of government's heavy handed approach of medical regulation the market can perhaps develop a FICO like score for doctors.
Your mechanic has zero skin in the car safety game. He has nothing to gain or lose from giving accurate safety advice. This means he's not financially incentivized to push certain cars but also means he's not incentivized to gather or provide accurate or useful data.
I'm amazed that you're so distrustful of the government that you prefer tarot reading from your mechanic over the recommendations from the agency that literally crashes thousands of cars to gather data on how safe they are. This isn't healthy skepticism. This is blind hate.
> People refer to yelp, friends and other known patients before visiting a doctor.
People generally have no way of knowing the quality of a doctor. They recommend primarily based on whether they like the doctor on a personal level. Which is fine because the medical industry is structured to largely keep incompetent doctors out.
> In the absence of government's heavy handed approach of medical regulation the market can perhaps develop a FICO like score for doctors.
I'm just kind of at a loss here. FICO was such a screwed up system that the government had to step in and regulate it because people were unable to get loans because of bad data and they had no way to find out or fix it. This is hardly a good model for controlling quality in general.
When industries form bodies to self-regulate in the absence of government involvement, it generally doesn't help consumers. It helps the industry. It's also typically called collusion because it's such a harmful practice.
This is just insane... You're basically living about 300 years in the past, completely rejection of the scientific method.
Daily life must be fascinating. All these miracles – wireless phones, glowing globes, flying(like off the ground!). Experts are completely useless, so these things must be spiritual creatures, created for the pleasure of "street-smart" people.
I wish there were a way for such people to actually opt out the system they reject.
Experts are useless when they don't have skin in the game. A educational expert advising president about education is mostly as ass-hole where as a teacher, principle or private tutor might be far more trust-worthy.
Not one of that invention you list is made by experts working to help people. On the contrary they are a result of spontaneous order created by people pursuing self interest.
The "asshole" advising the president on education is generally a teacher. People don't magically become terrible just because they work for the government.
It's healthy to be skeptical of the government. It's not healthy to always assume malice, because it makes you so biased that you do things like assume your mechanic knows more about the safety of cars than the people whose only job is to determine the safety of cars.
Most people don't demand to see the pediatrician's degree and certifications because the government regulates the industry.