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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Credentials, State vs. private
Message-ID: <140@l5.uucp>
Date: Sat, 21-Sep-85 15:15:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5.140
Posted: Sat Sep 21 15:15:17 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 08:18:51 EDT
References: <4297@alice.UUCP> <1565@umcp-cs.UUCP> <126@l5.uucp> <1611@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco
Lines: 39

In article <1611@umcp-cs.UUCP> mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) writes:
>Will it?  If corruption is everywhere, then why not here as well?  And
>what's going to prevent the appearance of phony certification companies?
>
Nothing will. But if they are fraudulent then they will get sued and sued
and sued.  Fraud is a big offense in Libertaria.  Also, remember, that
there is a limit to how many certification companies there can be, simply
because people will only be buying certification reports from a given number
of places. The lousiest ones are doomed to go out of business...either
because they cannot withstand the continuing cost of lawsuits or because
nobody is willing to pay for their services, or both.
>What bothers me more is that this governmental function has simply moved to
>a new location where it is even less accessible to pressure from ordinary
>folk.  The power that was wielded by the government through this function
>still remains; only now it is in the hands of a board of trustees, who
>aren't necessarily going to be responsible but to a few people (and
>certainly for different ends).

Wrong. wrong. wrong.  If you duplicate the government function then you
are more accesssible to the pressure of common folk. First of all, they
can vote with their wallets and not support lousy certification agencies
and second of all, they can sue fraudulent certification agencies for fraud.
(Have you ever tried to sue the AMA because it allows the existence or a whole
host of drugs that simply do not work as described? Have you ever tried to
sue the FDA because you have run laboratory experiments and have been
unable to duplicate the results they have used to declare a drug unsafe?)
Moreover, at a very simple level, the existence of other agencies will keep
any one honest. You cannot get away with calling Joe Quack (the brother
of the eldest trustee) a great brain surgeon if 10 other agencies are
calling him a butcher and a hazard -- even if you wanted to.

Finally, it is wrong to assume that the trustees will have different ends
than government agencies. Where do you get this?


-- 
Laura Creighton		(note new address!)
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa