Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site umcp-cs.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Credentials, State vs. private Message-ID: <1611@umcp-cs.UUCP> Date: Tue, 17-Sep-85 09:02:38 EDT Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1611 Posted: Tue Sep 17 09:02:38 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 20-Sep-85 01:43:21 EDT References: <4297@alice.UUCP> <1565@umcp-cs.UUCP> <126@l5.uucp> Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD Lines: 34 In article <126@l5.uucp> laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton) writes: >In article <1565@umcp-cs.UUCP> mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) writes: >>The problem with this is that in fact people aren't well enough informed to >>judge in general, and that changes in reputation generally lag changes in >>actuality considerably, often being completely unrelated to reality. A >>person living in rural Tennessee often does not have the resources available >>to find out whether the slick young man is really from Harvard, as he claims >>to be. >Okay, it sounds to me like there is a market for doctor-verification here. >The prospective patients will want this and the doctors will want this a >great deal. So someone will set up a doctor-verification agency. (Actually, >it will probably be more general than just doctor verification -- in >Libertaria this problem is going to crop up again and again.) It will >be constrained to be honest by the same constraints that make the AMA >(or Consumer Reports, or a high-minded public official) honest -- because >it will be staffed by people who are genuinely concerned with the problem, >because it will be staffed by people who are honoroable, because it will >loose all its customers if it prints lies and because people will sue it >for fantastic sums of money if it doesn't. Will it? If corruption is everywhere, then why not here as well? And what's going to prevent the appearance of phony certification companies? 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). Charley Wingate