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From: ark@alice.UucP (Andrew Koenig)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Credentials, State vs. private
Message-ID: <4297@alice.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Sep-85 11:29:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: alice.4297
Posted: Tue Sep 10 11:29:48 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Sep-85 07:47:42 EDT
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Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
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Bill Tanenbaum says:

> But when I go to a doctor, I want to know that he/she has gone to medical
> school, had some experience as an intern, and passed that exam.  So
> does virtually everybody else, except Libertarian utopians.

That, of course, is not in dispute.  What is in dispute is whether
or not the government should be in the certification business.

Medical schools have reputations, and reputations are not easily
gained or kept.  Do you really think that Harvard is going to start
letting incompetents graduate just because the government stops
looking over their shoulders?

In a free society, if you wanted to know whether your doctor had
gone to medical school, you would ask.  If you didn't get a
satisfactory answer, you could go elsewhere.  The only role the
government would play is that if the answer you got were a lie,
you could press fraud charges.