People need food to eat; that doesn't mean that food regulations are wrong. People need healthcare to remain healthy instead of not dead; that doesn't mean medical licensing is bad.
I have no idea whether these particular regulations for recruiters make sense or not, but just because something is fundamental to living doesn't mean regulating it is automatically a bad idea.
I disagree with the premise that regulations are necessary. They're bandage patch solutions.
Artificially restricting the number of people who can go to medical schools by imposing ridiculous requirements is not going to make better surgeons; it will mostly just drive up prices like in the US.
About food regulations; if a product uses dangerous chemicals (for example), in a proper free market, that should give alternative products a competitive advantage. The problem is not lack of regulations; it's the lack of a free market and free exchange of information.
Regulations exist to prevent abuse. If companies couldn't get away with abusing their customers (without going bankrupt), we wouldn't need regulations in the first place.
In any case, large corporations which essentially have immunity from the law usually find clever ways to work around the regulations without fixing the underlying problem.
A better solution would be to stop propping up big corporations with infinite fiat currency; big corporations are riddled with blind spots and they are devoid of any sense of accountability due to inherent flaws in the concept of corporate personhood; big corporations are not meant to exist and they wouldn't exist if not for all that free fiat which is creating an artificial anti-competitive moat around them. Competition and churn is necessary for a proper functioning capitalist system.
Our current monetary system is all about propping up zombie corporations by giving them unlimited free money which allows them to get away with everything.
The way our economy works now is basically like a son who is CEO and who keeps getting caught doing drugs and getting in trouble and then rich daddy keeps bailing them out over and over again and then bribing journalists to keep quiet so that nobody finds out... Regulations are the equivalent of sending the son to rehab; except it's all a PR stunt and the son will be back to doing drugs and causing problems within a few weeks. The solution is to fire the spoiled brat and let someone else do the job; someone who is passionate about it and can do it right.
Supply-side economics have distorted the way people think about the economy. Instead of figuring out what consumers need and working backwards from that, companies are constantly trying to figure out how to use up all available resources (e.g. capital, people, raw materials) and then resorting to advertising to convince consumers that they need whatever it is that they ended up producing. It's madness. All the talk about 'product-market fit' is delusional; it's mostly about fitting the customer to the product than the other way around. Advertising and A/B testing is not about improving the product to fit the user, it's about manipulating the user to buy the product.
> Artificially restricting the number of people who can go to medical schools by imposing ridiculous requirements is not going to make better surgeons; it will mostly just drive up prices like in the US.
This doesn't prove anything. One can always cherry-pick and refute certain peripheral points but that doesn't address the core premise of the argument. The only way to disprove such argument wold be exhaustively and that is simply not possible.
For example, just off the top of my head, I can think of one aspect which was not mentioned; the number of years of training that are required to become a doctor; this is in itself a limiting factor which reduces the number of applicants and therefore graduates. Do doctors need so many years of training; who decides that? Maybe they could specialize sooner and still yield excellent results? Another aspect would be cost; it's likely that the high costs of education themselves are limiting the number of applicants.
Unfortunately, these types of debates are always going to end up being a case of trusting authority versus trusting your own critical thinking (and common sense). Showing a bunch of arbitrary data doesn't mean anything unless you can prove that all the relevant aspects have been covered exhaustively and this never happens in practice. In practice, the main use of data is to lend credence to profitable narratives.
The foundation of our modern economy is to draw attention towards convenient facts and suppress inconvenient ones even when both are true and equally relevant.
> About food regulations; if a product uses dangerous chemicals (for example), in a proper free market, that should give alternative products a competitive advantage. The problem is not lack of regulations; it's the lack of a free market and free exchange of information.
Absent regulation, how do you expect consumers to know about chemicals used in the product? We didn't get those nutrition facts and ingredients labels out of the grace of the manufacturers.
>> Absent regulation, how do you expect consumers to know about chemicals used in the product?
The internet. If corporations were not hoarding up all the money and media and censoring critics, we would have many competing services which would allow us to do quick and accurate product lookups.
> Artificially restricting the number of people who can go to medical schools by imposing ridiculous requirements is not going to make better surgeons; it will mostly just drive up prices like in the US
Perhaps! But how about having reasonable requirements instead of ridiculous ones?
> About food regulations; if a product uses dangerous chemicals (for example), in a proper free market, that should give alternative products a competitive advantage.
Incredible. Do you really believe it's possible to make a safe food market without regulations?
> Regulations exist to prevent abuse. If companies couldn't get away with abusing their customers (without going bankrupt), we wouldn't need regulations in the first place.
What on Earth will make a company selling, fake protein, which is actually poisonous melamine, to go out of business? They got paid before anyone ate the poisoned food, and really, there are no regulations, so what are you suing them for? What did they do wrong?
Must you trust a large, well marketed brand name or else worry about fly-by-night manufacturers making a quick buck on adultered goods and then dissapearing? Are trademark regulations still enforced in this "no regulations" world or if the counterfeit is close enough that you can't tell the difference then caveat emptor?
Every libertarian secretly _loves_ regulations, as long as they get to choose which. "Enforce property rights because I have property" or "Enforce nothing because I already have guns and that makes me the enforcer".
> People need healthcare to remain healthy instead of not dead; that doesn't mean medical licensing is bad.
In the US, you can legally go see a chiropractor (100% nonsense quackery), but getting $2 of antibiotics generally costs upward of $100 just for the office visit.
I wouldn't personally be using this model of an example of a working system.
Licensing systems frequently (usually?) do more harm than good. Look at optometry licensing and prescription control in the US, for example: it's 100% price fixing and protectionism. Same with hairdressers.
TulliusCicero says that regulation in general isn't automatically a bad idea. You're giving specific examples of purportedly bad regulation, which doesn't challenge the point that there exists some potential system of regulation for these industries that is better than no regulation.
I live in Germany, and while the healthcare problems here aren't as severe as in the US, there is still the issue of people (and at least some insurance) accepting homeopathic 'medicine'.
If you have a difficult to treat condition doctors will completely ignore you, blame you, or just give you anti-depressants.
Some conditions have diagnosis times 5-10+ years. For me it took 20 years of asking. Then 3 years of dozens of visits to get answers.
At a certain point people give up and look elsewhere. Communities are friendlier. Certain things like diet changes or supplements can help.
Unfortunately it’s also were the crystal healers hang out.
This might vary between countries. Chiropractors here have a protected title (like doctors, lawyers), and a 5 year regulated training that isn’t exactly homeopathy. I rarely notice any difference between the surgeon general-approved naprapathy practitioners, and chiropractors. They do mostly similar treatment and charge similar money for it.
I have never seen any new-agy or pseudoscience-like stuff come up in treatments. They just snap my spine into place and some times rough up a muscle just to prevent it snapping back out of location again.
I too have heard people say it’s pseudoscience and humbug (usually e.g in the US) but could this vary? What are the pseudoscience parts? Could loose regulation in some countries have led to it becoming a market for pseudoscience whereas in other places it hasn’t?
Chiropractors are 100% quackery with zero basis in reality.
The entire field was based entirely on the idea that all diseases were caused by lesions of the nervous system (called subluxations) therefore all diseases could be cured by manipulation of the spine.
Back pain related therapy in general is filled with “qualified” people ready to dole out “treatments” in exchange for money, including MD surgeons who do back surgery.
The problem is succinctly explained in this clip, starting at 2min:
As the video says, we’re using a clothesline as a flagpole. Other than squats, deadlifts, and core workouts, keeping your weight low, and avoiding work that stresses the back, I doubt there’s real solution, and even those are probably just pushing the back pain into the future. It’s probably inevitable as you get older.
In America chiropractors claim to treat diabetes, etc.
It was invented by a guy who practiced healing with magnets and said that a ghost taught him about spinal adjustments - it has always been pseudoscientific nonsense. There may well be places that have extracted only the meaningful parts, but I’d be skeptical.
In fact, historically Chiropractors were strongly opposed to vaccination because they believed that all diseases were caused by lesions of the nervous system (subluxations), so vaccines couldn't possibly work to prevent disease.
Honestly, "They just snap my spine into place and some times rough up a muscle just to prevent it snapping back out of location again." sounds pretty suspicious to me. What does "snap my spine into place" mean, exactly? Were you literally paralyzed or handicapped in some way until they did this thing?
Muscles "snapping out of location"? How does that work?
I just mean the extremely common condition when you have one or more thoracic vertebra that ”feels” out of place (As I understand it, it’s not -it’s just a muscular thing). Typically due to stiff muscles surrounding it. Muscles aren’t out of location. Muscles are tense near the spine, causing pain and stiffness.
The area is easily seen/felt with a finger on the spine near where the issue is.
Apart from pain it can give a sensation of tension or a feeling you can’t take deep breaths.
The diy fix is having someone lift you from behind as you exhale (a snap-crackle-pop sound will be heard), or rolling with your back on a foam cylinder.
I thought almost everyone, at least those with desk jobs and not enough excercise had this issue occasionally. I go to either a chiro or a naprapathy person to sort it. And as I said they do the same thing or very similar.
The same authority that certifies doctors certifies these people, so it’s literally under the surgeon general’s oversight. Which is why I think they basically have to practice something very similar to naprapathy, and can’t make claims to treat anything but the areas actually treated. Basically back muscles.
Japan also has some of the worst job satisfaction and work happiness in the developed world. (I googled "Japanese job satisfaction" and the trope of the overworked Japanese salaryman seems to check out.)
Restricting the job seeking/information process (something that should be completely open) can't possibly be helping out.
Perfect information about all jobs available to you would surely be ideal for worker happiness by helping you find a job you hate the least.
While Japan has great national health insurance, you still have to pay 30% of it. So a month supply of Concerta will still cost you $100, which is a lot better than in the US without insurance, but it's not free.
What's nice are the yearly comprehensive medical checkups, what's not nice is your employer pays for it and gets a copy of the results too.
Japan has monthly and yearly caps, as well as discounts for chronic diseases and for people with low or no income. So while it's true that you pay 30% yourself, the people who would have difficulty paying that 30% are also taken care of.
They also have debt of about 200% of GDP, with a quickly diminishing population, that's a very bad situation. High debt levels are understandable during eras of rapidly increasing productivity but not otherwise.
It's a giant, very well manicured, thoughtfully attended 'house of cards'.
But none of this means that job boards necessarily need to be regulated.
Montana has an unemployment rate of 3% and very few homeless as well, very stable economy.
Worse, Japan's bonds were 'backed' by its manufacturing industry - much like US ones are 'backed' by its tech and military. S.Korea and China are eating Japan's lunch; this can't be good for the country.
In other countries -- the US for instance -- we have restrictions on connecting jobs to people. We prohibit, for example, job boards that are explicitly designed to favor (or be exclusive to) members of one race. Even if there are a lot of employers and employees who would appreciate such a service.
If you don't think THOSE rules are wrong, then are you REALLY sure you want to criticize how Japan chooses to organize their own approach to the topic? They have chosen to license the people who do the connecting rather than introduce legal liability for those who discriminate (and are sloppy enough about it to leave enough evidence to prevail in court).
I'm not saying control of discrimination is the reason that Japan licenses job recruitment, but I DO think that it requires a more thoughtful and open-minded approach that asks more about the benefits gained before dismissing out of hand the approach of requiring a license.
Whenever you see pointless licensing it's usually a symptom of union or cartel like behavior used to limit supply by limiting access to the old boys club. If I were part of a union I would want to limit access to that union so that the supply stays low and my salary stays high. So you can think of what's going on in japan as a sort of recruiting union formed to keep out the rif raff and keep wages artificially high.
Licensing does have a very good side however and that side is that it guarantees that the holder of a license jumped through the right educational hoops to get that license. For example nobody wants to get treated by an unlicensed quack doctor... so it's a case by case situation whether or not something should be regulated.
Doctors are also a good example of the other side of the coin when regulation starts to produce a cartel where doctor supply is throttled. There's no other country that makes MD licensing harder to achieve than the US and by sheer coincidence doctors in the US are also one of the highest paid in the world. Also ask any doctor, they will tell you that 4 years of unrelated undergrad that includes all chemistry up to organic chemistry is all useless to the actual job along with the majority of stuff they learn in med school as well.
Sorry for the unrelated rant on doctors but it's actually a very common phenomenon and is basically exactly what is happening here for recruitment in japan.
As a distinction between a communications service, and a "head hunting" service, I'm at least initially optimistic about regulation of professionals in this domain being a possibly good thing. Like how CPAs and Lawyers and Doctors are regulated. Though some of those regulations might go a bit too far towards monopoly power rather than quality and protection for consumers (and could thus use some market reforms).
The law is wrong.