Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site l5.uucp Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!qantel!ptsfa!l5!laura From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Credentials, State vs. private Message-ID: <126@l5.uucp> Date: Mon, 16-Sep-85 13:36:22 EDT Article-I.D.: l5.126 Posted: Mon Sep 16 13:36:22 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 19-Sep-85 05:45:59 EDT References: <4297@alice.UUCP> <1565@umcp-cs.UUCP> Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton) Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco Lines: 25 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. -- Laura Creighton (note new address!) sun!l5!laura (that is ell-five, not fifteen) l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa