Comments on: Joe The Plumber And Professional Licensing Laws

By: tfr

tfr — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:20:13 +0000

And the hell of it is, after your house burns, you can’t sue the town for faulty inspection, ‘cuz the law says you can’t! I don’t know why insurance companies haven’t jumped all over this.

By: VRB

VRB — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:37:05 +0000

Doug and tfr,
The licensing system had not done it job. One house burns down another one doesn’t, the odds, doesn’t mean that you would have found the competent electrician another way.

By: Doug Mataconis

Doug Mataconis — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:29:41 +0000

tfr,

I had a client who had a house that was built by a licensed contractor, wired by an licensed electrician, and inspected by the county inspector — and it burned to the ground thanks to fault wiring.

By: tfr

tfr — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:01:44 +0000

So there was this house we had wired by a licensed electrician, inspected by the town building inspector, all signed off nice and legal, in which lamps would get a little dimmer when the switch was flipped, some lights did not work at all, etc… TWO levels of government “protection” failed miserably. I ended up fixing it all myself.

By: Doug Mataconis

Doug Mataconis — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:21:03 +0000

VRB,

Nobody’s talking about anarchy, we’re just questioning the idea, the rather naive idea actually, that you can depend on the state to ensure that professionals know what they’re doing.

By: Michael Micelli

Michael Micelli — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:14:05 +0000

I just came up with another great idea. I’ll explan it on my website within a week. Thanks, guys.

By: VRB

VRB — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 22:12:35 +0000

Doug,
I wouldn’t look to licensing for trustworthiness, but I don’t know if word of mouth would convince me that the person would know what a gas fitting was. Let say the recommendations were only customers that had water problems. I would like to have an entity that would tell me that person has the qualifications to tell if that person could install a gas appliance. I realize that would not be a guarantee, but are other customers really qualified to give me that kind of information. Safety would be the important reasoning for licensing. That is what I would expect government to do. I don’t see good government as a biased observer. I think government should protect and defend my life, which to me includes safety as much as it would provide for defense. No matter what economic system a society has, with this many people, static resources and the current level of technology, anarchy cannot exist or it would be the war of the worlds. Certainly then, liberty would cease to exist.

By: Nick M.

Nick M. — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 03:19:55 +0000

Yeah, typically it is the business that holds the contractors license. Not each individual plumber within the company, that’d be pretty retarded. Plumbers might have to individual certifications (Med Gas, certain welding certs, etc.) – which also are typically administered by third party testing companies (crazy, I know).

And of course the BA for the union is pissed. As a field engineer for a GC, I can say that union/non doesn’t matter, you get some guys that care and some that don’t. The bulk of them just show up for the paycheck.

By: Doug Mataconis

Doug Mataconis — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:06:12 +0000

VRB,

On what basis do you assume that the skill level or trustworthiness of any contractor is “tested” in the licensing process ?

I can tell you for a fact that it’s not and that I’ve represented a pretty fair number of people who have been the victims of incompetent contractors, or contractors who took their money and never did a lick of work.

In nearly every case, those people had all the proper licenses from the relevant government agencies.

By: Doug Mataconis

Doug Mataconis — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:04:38 +0000

Jeff,

There already are services like that in some parts of the country.

The best known one that I’ve heard of is called Angie’s List. It’s not a rating system so much as it is a list of contractors, tradesmen, and other service providers who have been identified by their customers as providing good service. Sort of an expanded version of getting references from friends and family.

My wife used it several times when she lived in Ohio in an older home where repairs were an issue. I’d trust a service like that long before I’d rely on a government agency merely telling me that someone was “licensed.”

By: Jeff Molby

Jeff Molby — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:06:36 +0000

SC & VRB

Of course it’s important to have some sort of rating system for tradesmen. Your assumption seems to be that the market wouldn’t provide such a thing.

By: VRB

VRB — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:08:50 +0000

I agree with SC. For some things I would not care if a plumber was licensed or not, only when it was necessary to have a gas appliance repaired or replaced. At that time, I would have hoped that his skill would have been checked in the licensing process. Word of mouth may not work, because that plumber may have done A where I need B to be done.

By: SC

SC — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:55:18 +0000

Well… as much as I normally agree with you (and I do agree that there are more licenses required for things that really shouldn’t require a license), I tend to side with the idea of a license being a good idea in the case of trades like plumbers, electricians, etc, where there are potential health/safety issues. To me the real licensing issues are really 1) does the licensing process really reflect an honest attempt to ascertain that the individual has a certain level of competence or knowledge in the licensed field, and 2) is obtaining a license unnecessarily expensive and/or beaureaucratic? Yeah, testing for a license isn’t always a guarantee (people get lucky, people cheat, etc.), but then again, holding a college degree isn’t a guarantee of competence either.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:36:33 +0000

I can’t speak for Doug (who is also an attorney), but as an attorney myself, I can say in no uncertain terms that attorney licensing is a complete joke with exactly zero connection to the practice of law. The effect of it (combined with the effect, in states not called “Virginia,” of requiring an equally meaningless JD) is to dramatically raise the costs of entry into the profession, thereby discouraging and even preventing people from lower to middle class families from entering the profession. I’ve seen too many brilliant paralegals capable of doing terrific attorney work, and too many totally incompetent attorneys to think that having an “Esq.” after your name has any real meaning beyond whether the law permits you to appear in court. Of course, it should be no surprise that legal licensing laws were amongst the first to get passed – after all, legislatures have long been composed of an abnormally large number of attorneys.

One other point – Yglesias is taking a stance against licensing laws? Maybe my prediction of an eventual left-libertarian coalition will come true sooner than I expect. (FWIW- I’ve never set forth a timeline in my many predictions of such a coalition, but I’d be surprised if it took less than 10 years to come together in a meaningful manner).

By: thomasblair

thomasblair — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:56:23 +0000

So I assume you’re petitioning, phoning all manner of congressmen and state representatives, and drafting resolutions to do away with bar requirements for attorneys?

After all, the purpose of professional licensing is to protect incumbents, restrict supply, and raise prices.