Barriers To Entry

This is your world with no barriers to entry.

 

Angus and I are still going back and forth on professional licensure, barriers to entry, etc. His points are worth noting, and merit proper consideration.

As my latest reply is really too long for a comment there (or anywhere else), I post it here:

I absolutely understand barriers to entry, including both intended and unintended consequences to same.

In the original example you've cited, that's exactly what was in play. It was also gross stupidity to no intelligent purpose whatsoever. It demonstrably encouraged fraud, by creating an attractive nuisance in letting someone completely untrained, unlicensed, and uncertified demonstrate excellence in a position where obviously no professionalism (nor basic morality) was in any way needful to meet and surpass the employer's needs or expectations. 

In 90% or more (if not 99+%) of registered nursing jobs, that barrier to entry is both necessary and prudent.

You've cited an outlier where it was neither. I can generally count those on my thumbs.

The tip-off to that is anyone doing a job so well despite a total lack of training or education, they were being considered for a "charge nurse" position after mere months. (That's granting that the media report(s) we're relying on for the example was anything close to accurate and correct. The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect says that's pure hopeium in play, but that's another issue.)

I wasn't citing the shortage of nurses as refutation that a barrier exists, I cited it to point out that erecting that barrier over positions that don't need it is immensely stupid and clearly makes no sense. It's like requiring an electrical engineering degree for a job changing common 60W light bulbs - asinine and pointless, to no discernible benefit to anyone: not the end user, the employer, the employee, nor to any person or reason articulable or imagined.

It's quite simply stupidity in action.

IOW, most of what bad HR does pretty much every day of the week.

There's barriers to entry for brain surgery too, and we generally don't consider them a drawback.

When someone requires the same level of barriers to entry for the person who cuts and combs your hair as they do for neurosurgery, however, it's obviously become asinine.

Your example was the latter, by a country mile.

That example is so narrow in the field specified as to require measurement with an electron microscope.

What it's not, is proof that that's either the trend, nor even common practice.

There was once a time when anyone could claim the title "nurse". It was generally either nuns, or hookers too old to pull clients.

This was back when "doctors" had less medical expertise than that currently possessed by a reasonably intelligent paramedic, and the death rate from "medical practice" of all types was commensurately horrible.

Current barriers to entry in the entire medical field, be it licensure, education, etc. is a net plus, otherwise the hue and cry to get rid of them would be deafening.

While there are endless examples of times and places where barriers to entry to any field may be flat-out idiotic (as the original one you cited), in the medical field in general, including nursing, it's a positive boon to all concerned.

The alternative is hiring African witch doctors off the street, and according them co-equal status, which is like  letting retards who can't grasp grade-school math hang out a CPA shingle.

Was there a barrier to entry for a position in the original example? Yes.

Was it needless, pointless, and egregiously stupid? Also yes.

Does it therefore prove that barriers to entry are therefore always pointless and stupid? Absolutely anything but. I don't think you were or are arguing that.

And that example is so breathtakingly stupid and rare anywhere in the medical arts that calling it "remarkable" is where using that word falls far short of accuracy.

The only thing I can see is that it also beggars the word "moronic" when describing the employment entity and management of same precisely for requiring licensure for a position far in excess of requirements, as well as in violation of basic common sense and napkin-math economics.

But that's really about all it does.

FTR in anything medical, the rule is generally the exact opposite, to wit letting people far less than competent do things far beyond their abilities or preparation, whether it's letting techs perform procedures without anything but a brief OJT, or state medical boards letting anyone practice plastic surgery with nothing more than having graduated medical school, both of which examples are the exact opposite of barriers to entry. And with predictable outcomes.

For another example of the problem with lack of barriers to entry, currently, the only barrier to entry to riding an e-bike hereabouts is someone (or someone's parents) having the means to purchase one. No age limits, no license required, no training regimen prescribed, nothing. Consequently, anyone who can reach the handlebars can ride one, and in a year or two, e-bikes have moved into the Top Five causes for trauma visits to local ERs, and we see 1-5 cases a day, nearly every day, since e-bikes first hit the stores.

They're like handing out live hand grenades to toddlers, and wondering what will happen.

In both cases, carnage.

It's a situation absolutely begging for barriers to entry, where the item in question should require no less training, licensure, and safety equipment (i.e. a helmet) than that required to legally ride a motorcycle on city streets. Just to keep the accident toll down to single digit percentages.

Until that happens, letting anyone ride e-bikes is simply the unwritten Orthopedic And Trauma Surgeon's Full Employment Act of 2005.

In a fair world, they'd also require that anyone injured by riding one recklessly be cared for only by "doctors" and "nurses" with no licensure or certification to practice as such.

Sauce for the gander, and turnabout is fair play.

FTR, I'm also fine with only caring for drug overdoses and drunks with specific specialty hospitals staffed solely by personnel absolutely working while high as f**k, and/or with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit.

It would be hilarious on pay-per-view, and give us something to do with all the doctors and nurses with revoked licenses for substance use, while having Darwin's acolytes rolling on the floor in fits of laughter.

Just like comedian Gallagher's plan for giving all those houses under the airport's flight path to deaf people.

(Safety Tip: No flying monkeys need respond at Angus' site, nor are they invited by either of us. Like most blogs, he has posting guidelines. Ignore them at your own peril, and on your own head be it.)