Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 exptools; site ihlpg.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ihlpg!tan
From: tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Credentials, State vs. private
Message-ID: <1224@ihlpg.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Sep-85 11:11:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihlpg.1224
Posted: Wed Sep 11 11:11:25 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Sep-85 09:20:48 EDT
References: <1208@ihlpg.UUCP> <4297@alice.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 35

> > [Me]
> > 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.
------
> [Andrew Koenig] 
> 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.
------
Personally, I would rather know ahead of time that whomever I choose
to be my doctor has the basic qualifications.  I don't want the burden
on me to determine my doctor's credentials.  Anyone who would practice
without having gone to medical school would have no hesitation in lying
about it.  Of course, I could press fraud charges, but by that time
I might be dead, or at least impoverished from the quack's bills.
I don't really care in principle whether the government or a private group
does the credentialling itself.  But I want the government to enforce it
ahead of time, not ex post facto when it may be too late.
	Of course, if multiple private groups do the credentialling, I might not
want to have to become an authority on WHICH private groups to trust.
So I might want the government to approve the private credentialling
groups.  But that is another issue.
-- 
Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL  ihnp4!ihlpg!tan