What could have been done differently?

Tue Jan 28 19:12:12 UTC 2003

--On 28 January 2003 10:42 -0600 Andy Putnins <putnins at lett.com> wrote:

> How does one find a "clueful" person to hire? Can you recognize one by
> their hat or badge of office? Is there a guild to which they all belong?
> If one  wants to get a "clue", how does one find a master to join as an
> apprentice?

In the long term one might presume market forces would provide better
answers than speculation & ...

> Society requires that some kinds of engineers be licensed

... economic theory suggests that licensing etc. is only a good idea when
the externalities of failure cases exceed the benefits of licensing by more
than the costs of its imposition (including barriers to entry etc.).

I do not think we have come to the point where this has been
demonstrated yet. Note licensing does not have a 100% success
record in protecting against failure (viz. Andersen).

> This is therefore a request for all of those who possess this "clue" to
> write down their wisdom and share it with the rest of us, so we can

This industry has been pretty good at that, despite recent economic
circumstances militating against it. No argument there.

Alex Bligh