<story><title>You&apos;re Gonna Need a License for That</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-17/you-re-going-to-need-a-license-for-that-job</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>imgabe</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a PE (electrical) and I think what most people don&amp;#x27;t realize is that the licensing was largely driven by the insurance industry.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;re basically SOL, because you didn&amp;#x27;t find a person you could verify was qualified.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really about transferring the liability from the building owner to the engineer. If there&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s an elaborate scheme to transfer money from one insurance company to another.&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary for a florist? Probably not. I can&amp;#x27;t think of a situation where you&amp;#x27;d need to sue a florist. Interior decorator might be more problematic than people realize. First, it depends on whether it&amp;#x27;s a &lt;i&gt;decorator&lt;/i&gt; or a &lt;i&gt;designer&lt;/i&gt;. A &lt;i&gt;designer&lt;/i&gt; 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.</text></comment>
<story><title>You&apos;re Gonna Need a License for That</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-17/you-re-going-to-need-a-license-for-that-job</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>adekok</author><text>The attitude of &amp;quot;license all the things&amp;quot; comes from two places.&lt;p&gt;Existing groups use licensing to shut out newcomers.  They are largely anti-competitive, and anti-capitalistic.&lt;p&gt;The other is where unlicensed activities results in people dying.  The outrage from such events often ends up with &amp;quot;license the people&amp;quot;, so that Bad Things can&amp;#x27;t happen.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;For me, the &amp;quot;health and safety&amp;quot; requirements make sense.  Anything outside of that is typically anti-competitive, and likely rent-seeking.</text></comment>