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From:scot <scot -at- HCI -dot- COM -dot- AU> Date:Tue, 9 Jan 1996 09:33:08 +1100
>Second off, if we _were_ regulated by the states (which I think will happen on
>some Feb. 31 in Clinton's sixth term), what would that mean for us? Let's
start
>a list of regulated professionals and see what they have in common. I think
>we'll find that we just don't fit the pattern. Here's a start:
>Doctors
>Nurses
>Lawyers
>CPAs
Well, certainly here in Australia, the last two (if you take 'lawyers' to
mean 'barristers') function as old-style medieval trademan's guilds (which
is where the whole idea of professional associations comes from anyway). To
practise as a barrister, you just need to be admitted to the bar association
(the 'bar' being a gate at St James, meaning, the King recognised your right
to represent others in his court). In practice this means you have to first
be a solictor (with state approved methods of becoming one), but in theory
at least, you don't.
To illustrate further my earlier post about certification just being an
excuse to operate a racket, a tradesman's guild was given exclusive licence
(by the King) to operate a monopoly of a particular type of service within a
local area.
Now, we all know that modern professional organisations serve many more
useful functions that this; but to my mind, certification (and particularly
comparing Lawyers' and Accountants' certification) serves merely to
artificially restrict the market for the sole benefit of the existing
practictioners, that's its historical function, and that continues to be its
function today.
We don't fit the pattern because our profession is a modern dynamic
professional occupation that's only a few decades old, not a stuffy,
slow-witted, monopoly-driven guild dating from AD 1372.
