Up until recently I agreed with this position because I, like you, thought that this was how licensed engineering disciplines worked. I thought that if you sign off on something you put your career on the line, making the potential penalty for signing off on bad designs worse than the one for saying no to a pushy boss.
Then the MAX crashes happened and Boeing is about to negotiate a sweetheart plea deal and there's absolutely zero talk of any of the engineering licenses that were used to sign off on the bad systems getting revoked.
If the licensing system doesn't actually include a threat of career-ending penalties for knowingly signing off on bad designs, or if the system allows executives to bypass engineer signatures, then it seems like the general consensus on here is right: it's useless overhead at best and regulatory capture at worst.
Then the MAX crashes happened and Boeing is about to negotiate a sweetheart plea deal and there's absolutely zero talk of any of the engineering licenses that were used to sign off on the bad systems getting revoked.
If the licensing system doesn't actually include a threat of career-ending penalties for knowingly signing off on bad designs, or if the system allows executives to bypass engineer signatures, then it seems like the general consensus on here is right: it's useless overhead at best and regulatory capture at worst.