For those unfamiliar with Strong Towns, here’s a best-effort summary of what they do:
Strong Towns is a non-partisan non-profit that advocates for cities and towns to build financially solvent places. Many cities are perpetually broke because they owe more money in maintenance burden (fixing roads, pipes, etc) than they bring in in tax revenue.
This happens primarily because towns in North America tend to build out large neighborhoods all at once (think: suburbia). At the start, the developers pay for all the infrastructure, and then “give” it to the city to maintain.
At first, everything seems fine. The city gets plenty of new tax revenue! But come 20 or 30 years later, it turns out that the tax revenue is not enough to replace the roads, fix the pipes, and so on.
And so to pay for the repairs, the city then builds yet another neighborhood in the same strategy to collect the initial tax revenue. It’s effectively a Ponzi scheme.
When it crashes, you get Detroit.
The gist is that many low-density spread-out suburban neighborhood with large, expensive infrastructure are a huge cost center for a city. And since most North American cities build this way, we have a lot of cities that are “functionally bankrupt” or will be soon.
If you're a systems thinker who lives in a town that can't seem to fix it's potholes, you may want to check out the book they've published: "Strong Towns" by Charles L. Marohn Jr.
> And so to pay for the repairs, the city then builds yet another neighborhood in the same strategy to collect the initial tax revenue. It’s effectively a Ponzi scheme.
> When it crashes, you get Detroit.
> The gist is that many low-density spread-out suburban neighborhood with large, expensive infrastructure are a huge cost center for a city. And since most North American cities build this way, we have a lot of cities that are “functionally bankrupt” or will be soon.
Huh? Wasn't Detroit's problem that it was too dependent a small set of labor-intensive businesses in one industry that have been in a long term secular decline (as foreign competition as increased) while simultaneously becoming more automated?
Also, when city infrastructure needs to be repaired, don't they just assess specials on the affected properties? Metro areas can expand as you describe, but many/most cities can't (because they're boxed in by adjacent cities (i.e. suburbs)). For instance, the only buildable land left in my very suburban city are a couple of defunct golf courses. New construction activity mainly happening two cities away to the south.
(Huge disclaimer that I may be wrong in my understanding here)
> Wasn't Detroit's problem that it was too dependent a small set of labor-intensive businesses in one industry that have been in a long term secular decline (as foreign competition as increased) while simultaneously becoming more automated?
From my understanding, the Strong Towns folks would say that because Detroit spent years going into maintenance debt, and replacing it's financially productive areas with unproductive areas, it was unable to survive a downturn. In contrast, New York, suffered several different financial downturns, but was able to constantly reinvent itself as some other industry town. Though I think Strong Towns would also say that single reliance on any one industry is not considered "strong" either.
This is a good summary. To add a bit: since most suburban development doesn't generate enough in tax income to pay for its own maintenance, most places that have a steady trickle of suburban development end up in a cycle of decline as the older stuff starts to run down and the city has to use the development fees etc. from new developments to pay for maintenance on old ones, and eventually even that isn't enough, and everything starts to decline.
This can turn into a much worse vicious cycle when added to other issues like pension obligations, declining schools, natural disasters, etc.
You see the most of this today in inner suburban areas across the midwest, where they boomed all at one time, then ran out of land (as the wave of new suburban development moved into the next suburb's jurisdiction). Because the suburban pattern is very hard to redevelop, if an established community loses its appeal for any reason (houses have gone out of style, taxes are cheaper further out, whatever), then they tend to get into financial trouble as the maintenance obligations pile up and there's just not enough tax base to support it.
I have no idea how such an organization gets funded, but I'm glad somebody has the time to think deeply about such matters.
This summary tickled a part of my brain that has had thoughts about how we pay for this stuff. Those thoughts run down a different avenue, but I'll share them here just because.
In the U.S. it seems common that infrastructure is funded in significant ways by the federal government. Witness the current Biden plan. But also, federal money funds local schools, health initiatives, law enforcement, on and on. Some years ago I remember an important bridge falling down in Minnesota or some such place and there was immediately work in the U.S. Congress to pass funding for replacement construction. When the Flint water scandal broke, local and state officials immediately turned their attention (and outstretched hands) to D.C. for help. New York or Florida or well, everybody, immediately lobby D.C. after any natural disaster.
At some level it makes sense that an entire nation can chip in to bail out unfortunate victims easier than the local residents could do so. But I actually think this is false because it isn't everybody helping out on one isolated incident, it is everybody helping out on every single incident. At that point, we might as well have all just paid for our own local incident. The money comes out the same.
Of course, 350 million people can raise $350 million in a day every day of the year for just $1/person/day. So it does improve liquidity. And there are probably other benefits.
But here's the huge downside. All that money flows from little dinky Anywhere, U.S. to Washington. Then it comes back to Anywhere in their time of need. Except that it doesn't all come back. A large chunk is consumed in the federal bureaucracy. And some is eaten by graft. And maybe those two losses would occur at a local or state level, too. But the big gotcha for me is that the money comes back with strings attached.
We'll give federal highway funding to Montana, but they have to comply with speed limits set by somebody from Chicago. Arizona can get funding for a hospital but they have to bow to some immigration policy set by people from Vermont.
The redistribution of the wealth is a source of enormous power and attracts the power-hungry. It is a design for corruption and manipulation. And because it centralizes such enormous money/power, it must be said that it is designed to attract corruption and manipulation on an enormous scale. So while the little hospital in Arizona might have attracted some small fish to take advantage of the opportunity if it were locally funded, federal funding subjects it to the biggest fish in the world.
To bring this back to the subject, imagine if city and state taxes went way up to pay for water distribution, pot hole repair, etc. and federal taxes went way down. Then, property taxes might actually cover regular city maintenance. And at no added cost to taxpayers. The city could reduce its federal lobby budget because they aren't going to get any federal aid so quit paying somebody to keep asking. If they need more money, they can raise local taxes.
I know that this is terribly naive in many ways, and just ignorant in other ways. I'd love to hear any criticism.
But he won his case and the court declared that he could say he's an engineer, even though he was not a "licensed professional engineer" according to the Oregon state licensing board.
This September, Wiley & Sons will publish Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: A Strong Towns Approach to Transportation, a book written by Charles Marohn that is deeply critical of the standard approach to transportation used by many American engineers.
The complaint here is literally that the strongtowns founder has criticized other engineers. That's it (edit: the complaint also involves a technicality motivated by this criticism, see below).
The thing about this situation is that, in the US, a large number decisions that are effectively "policy", questions of how we live, wind-up buried inside supposedly technical/professional regulations - zoning, codes and other standards.
This situation means that attacks for "violations of technicalities" easily wind-up the means by which special interests maintain their position.
No? The whole complaint, with the backstory, is linked to the article. Marohn was a practicing civil engineer until 2012; he kept his license in good standing until 2018, when it lapsed; between 2018 and 2020, he gave talks identifying himself as a professional engineer despite not having a license in good standing; someone complained (in May 2020); he reinstated his license (in June 2020); the licensure board fined him; he sued.
He has my sympathy in this case and I hope he wins, but the details are more complicated than your summary suggests. It's pretty basic stuff, as I assume a lot of us know, that part of the deal with licensed engineering professions is that you have to have the license to represent yourself as such --- people are always coming up with dopey arguments that the same applies to software engineers.
- Marohn renewed his license before the licensing board presented a complaint against him.
- License lapses like this are common and there's a standard procedure for "late renewal" which Marohn followed, including paying a late fee, and the board accepted the renewal.
Remember Mats Järlström? He was an engineer, but not a "licensed professional engineer" who complained about traffic light timings, and the state board tried to fine him $500?
The final order requires Marohn to agree that he made an “untruthful statement,” a “false statement,” and “engaged in conduct involving misrepresentation.”
Edited above - the first complaint was for criticizing engineers, the second was saying he was an engineer during the time his license had lapsed. So sure, technically more was involved in the complaint. Effectively, the complaint was about the criticism.
>dopey arguments that the same applies to software engineers
Which used to be a thing but were so unpopular they were discontinued.
Whether this lawsuit is silly or not, it's hard to be completely unsympathetic to the idea that someone claiming a specific professional certification who does not in fact have it is in the right.
(While being completely in the camp that one can call themselves an en engineer is they want to.)
> in the US, a large number decisions that are effectively "policy", questions of how we live, wind-up buried inside supposedly technical/professional regulations - zoning, codes and other standards.
While I see your point, I would state it somewhat differently: in the US, there are, roughly speaking, two opposing viewpoints on "policy" about "how we live":
(1) The viewpoint that a central authority should figure out some "best" way to live, and impose it on everyone, or at least everyone in a significantly-sized geographic area, via technical/professional regulations, zoning, codes, etc.
(2) The viewpoint that individual people, or groups of people who have something in common, should figure out how they want to live and set themselves up that way, and decisions about how various people and groups who happen to be in the same geographical area interact should be made by negotiation and consensus among the people and groups who are affected. Input can certainly be sought from technical professionals to inform those decisions, but at the end of the day, the people who make such decisions should be the people who have to live with the consequences. And to the extent that top-down, large-scale policies play a role, it should be to ensure that individuals and groups have the tools they need to make such decisions for themselves.
What strikes me about this dispute, as with pretty much all such disputes that I have seen, is that both sides adhere to viewpoint #1; they just have different views on what the "best" way to live is that should be imposed on everyone. Practically nobody in such discussions even considers viewpoint #2 at all.
You're an engineer if you do engineering, regardless of your credentials. You aren't an "<insert-credential-here> Engineer", but the mere noun doesn't assert that. The Minnesota Board of Engineering Licensure is a bully that should be leashed by the first amendment.
This is how every state backed/endorsed (or state operated, but those are less common) professional licensure board or trade association that gate-keeps licensing works. They all aggressively defend and try to expand their turf, even when it's stupid and harmful to society.
The only reason we don't hear about the plumbing cartel going after the home repair business that isn't licensed for plumbing in every state it operates in but wrote "plumbing" on its vans in all states is because HN doesn't really concern itself with those sort of matters.
>This is how every state backed/endorsed (or state operated, but those are less common) professional licensure board or trade association that gate-keeps licensing works.
I wouldn't limit that statement to state-backed: it is how most (or at least many) private organizations and unions work too, from teamsters to fifa to the NRA. State backed organizations just have the extra advantage of being explicitly state backed.
It's a really hard task to compare engineering to plumbing.
I mean the board that licenses Civil Engineers, for example, should be very stringent. We don't live in buildings that aren't structurally sound or drive on half-assed bridges.
Professional Engineers hold themselves to an ethical standard that they're not even legally required to uphold, yet they still do because this organization keeps them in check.
Any university can hand out an honorary doctorate. You can also call yourself Dr. Whatever with zero credentials without getting into legal trouble. You will not have the license to practice medicine in the state, but that's not really what the word "doctor" means anyways.
It isn't credible to assume that anyone who identifies themselves as an engineer is fraudulently asserting to be a National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying Professional Engineer. It's a huge linguistic power grab to call that confusing. "Here's a common noun for a profession, and now you can't use it without paying us" is a nice business plan for collecting rents indefinitely.
While I generally oppose attempts to regulate the term "engineer", I do think Reason was a little fast and loose here. It wasn't like they went in and objected to the term "sound engineer" in a recording studio or "software engineer" at google. This was a case of using a term in a situation where it could cause confusion, although even in this case, I side with the person who wants to use the term, and against the PE regulators. I do think that professional engineering associations do have the right to create a terminology. I would just be much more restrictive in scope.
I looked into regulations around Industrial Engineering, since I have an MS in this field (my undergraduate is in math). As far as I understand, licensure in Industrial Engineering is a title designation. In other words, there's no specific practice you're allowed to do as a licensed professional industrial engineer that you wouldn't be allowed to do without this license. It simply gives you the right to professionally represent yourself as a licensed PE.
I support the licensing bodies rights to restrict narrowly defined terminology that clearly references licensure, but my personal feeling is that the scope should be very limited. In other words, I believe I should be allowed to casually refer to myself as an engineer, I think it's fine to say you're a data engineer rather than a data scientist depending on what you do. I even think it's ok to refer to myself as an industrial engineer (though I wouldn't personally especially want to).
The ambiguity creeps in if I refer to myself as a "Professional Industrial Engineer". I personally wouldn't do that, it would feel a little fraudulent, but that's a feeling, not something I'd enforce through law or even social pressure. To stay on the right side of scope, I think I'd be ok with someone doing that as long as they didn't throw in "licensed".
As for "engineering" as a general term, I think it's truly absurd that PE bodies would think they have a general right to prevent others from using this descriptive term in job or work titles, it's as general as "scientist".
This seems like an odd point to make, since Marohn did pass all the necessary exams and had been previously licensed. Are you saying that, in addition to not practicing civil engineering professionally, that he has to scrub the entire internet of his title the moment his license expires?
That's a myth. You can absolutely work an engineering job and call yourself an engineer in Canada without any certification. Look up all the "software engineer", "systems engineer", "marine engineer", "audio engineer", "application engineer" etc. job listings in any Canadian city. None of them are looking exclusively for certified/licensed engineers, and the people working for them aren't doing so illegally. Canadian courts have ruled many times over that professional licensing organizations do not have exclusive rights to the word "engineer".
And when I last looked at doing certification, the core requirements had literally nothing to do with what I practiced (fluid dynamics for a software engineer? Take a hike)
It's all a racket. I'm an unlicensed, non-PE software engineer. Am I allowed to call myself that?
Which is interesting, because I have a Bachelor of Software Engineering from Australia, and am certified by the Australian Institute of Engineers... but there were a TON of Engineers at the big Canadian Telco I worked for who were hell-bent on me NOT calling myself an Engineer.
One thing we seem to be overlooking is the difference between representing yourself as X versus engaging in the professional rendering of X services to the public.
This is a significant distinction. While I'm generally opposed to the majority of occupational licensing requirements but I can understand the function of regulating professional offerings.
So in both this case and the referenced Oregon case from another comment, the "charge" by the licensure body is that the individuals are using the term engineer while doing things that aren't "rendering the service of engineering for payment."
I am a reasonably decent electrician and feel confident fiddling with my own outlets. The electrician's body does not have the right to regulate that activity. Nor can it regulate my saying I'm a decent electrician.
It does, however, have the right to regulate my rendering those services to the public for payment (with some legal gray area around rendering it for free).
This is what makes this a first amendment case that seems justified.
EDIT: I do understand by using electrician as an example, I invite comments about how I might be breaking fire code or my home insurance covenants. That's correct but it's a different externalities problem.
disclosure: I am not a licensed professional engineer (PE), but I do research that intersects frequently and extensively with the boundary negotiation between engineering training, licensure, the profession, and calling oneself an engineer.
My immediate take is two groups that dislike each other mutually acting like children in hopes of scoring cheap points and feeling superior.
I assume/expect that the professional speech doctrine will come heavily into play here [0]. This doctrine is grounded in either a 1985 or a 1945 supreme court case depending on who you ask. It has come into play in weird ways in engineering before because the term 'engineer' vs. 'professional engineer' vs. 'licensed professional engineer' may or may not be confusing to lay people...or at least confusing enough that people are willing to spend money on lawyers related to bicker about it [1].
Basically, if one is speaking using the auspices of a regulated and licensed profession, than commentary and comments related to that profession are bound by the responsibilities, ethics, laws, etc. governing it. If one was speaking as a member of the public - does not apply - but the boundaries are fuzzier than I think a lot of people would like. That being said, generally the red line has been the use of professional knowledge and expertise with a specified client. In those cases, it has been deemed in the public interest for the state to regulate speech...because the person is speaking in part with the backing of an assertion of qualification from the state. I suspect this is one of those cases where someone on the board took whatever strong towns has been doing (never heard of them before) a little personally...and is willing to cause problems by investigating whether this engineer stepped over the line.
Examples of its application include:
* preventing doctors from advocating for sexual orientation conversion therapy (CA)
* compelling doctors to make certain statements about abortion (e.g., PA)
This feeds into a bigger issue that Freakonomics rails against often: Restrictive licensing.
In a lot of states you need special qualifications or licenses to do all sorts of jobs. You can't cut hair without spending thousands on a hair cutting course and passing an exam and paying a registration fee.
Sure, that makes sense for (say) doctors. Maybe engineers too? But barbers? Why bar-people? Interior decorators?
Most of the benefits of licensed professions come from the ability to revoke licenses, not from the ability to grant them. There are some professions where you genuinely need them but the vast majority of professions only need to get rid of the bad apples to set an example, the rest will follow the law on their own.
Any occupation where there is a risk of personal (or pecuniary) injury to the client should (and does) require some form of licensing. The license ensures that a minimum standard of competency has been met by the person offering the service.
Wasn't the same thought of with taxis and hotels though?
But we found that an Uber drive isn't meaningfully more dangerous than a licensed taxi drive. And an Airbnb stay isn't meaningfully more dangerous than a licensed hotel stay.
I legitimately think we should consider replacing all licenses with certifications and just require anyone who practices a profession without a certificate to be totally upfront with their clients about that
Readit News
Strong Towns is a non-partisan non-profit that advocates for cities and towns to build financially solvent places. Many cities are perpetually broke because they owe more money in maintenance burden (fixing roads, pipes, etc) than they bring in in tax revenue.
This happens primarily because towns in North America tend to build out large neighborhoods all at once (think: suburbia). At the start, the developers pay for all the infrastructure, and then “give” it to the city to maintain.
At first, everything seems fine. The city gets plenty of new tax revenue! But come 20 or 30 years later, it turns out that the tax revenue is not enough to replace the roads, fix the pipes, and so on.
And so to pay for the repairs, the city then builds yet another neighborhood in the same strategy to collect the initial tax revenue. It’s effectively a Ponzi scheme.
When it crashes, you get Detroit.
The gist is that many low-density spread-out suburban neighborhood with large, expensive infrastructure are a huge cost center for a city. And since most North American cities build this way, we have a lot of cities that are “functionally bankrupt” or will be soon.
If you're a systems thinker who lives in a town that can't seem to fix it's potholes, you may want to check out the book they've published: "Strong Towns" by Charles L. Marohn Jr.
Great channel for those interested in urbanism.
> When it crashes, you get Detroit.
> The gist is that many low-density spread-out suburban neighborhood with large, expensive infrastructure are a huge cost center for a city. And since most North American cities build this way, we have a lot of cities that are “functionally bankrupt” or will be soon.
Huh? Wasn't Detroit's problem that it was too dependent a small set of labor-intensive businesses in one industry that have been in a long term secular decline (as foreign competition as increased) while simultaneously becoming more automated?
Also, when city infrastructure needs to be repaired, don't they just assess specials on the affected properties? Metro areas can expand as you describe, but many/most cities can't (because they're boxed in by adjacent cities (i.e. suburbs)). For instance, the only buildable land left in my very suburban city are a couple of defunct golf courses. New construction activity mainly happening two cities away to the south.
> Wasn't Detroit's problem that it was too dependent a small set of labor-intensive businesses in one industry that have been in a long term secular decline (as foreign competition as increased) while simultaneously becoming more automated?
From my understanding, the Strong Towns folks would say that because Detroit spent years going into maintenance debt, and replacing it's financially productive areas with unproductive areas, it was unable to survive a downturn. In contrast, New York, suffered several different financial downturns, but was able to constantly reinvent itself as some other industry town. Though I think Strong Towns would also say that single reliance on any one industry is not considered "strong" either.
Also yes. Also white flight.
This can turn into a much worse vicious cycle when added to other issues like pension obligations, declining schools, natural disasters, etc.
You see the most of this today in inner suburban areas across the midwest, where they boomed all at one time, then ran out of land (as the wave of new suburban development moved into the next suburb's jurisdiction). Because the suburban pattern is very hard to redevelop, if an established community loses its appeal for any reason (houses have gone out of style, taxes are cheaper further out, whatever), then they tend to get into financial trouble as the maintenance obligations pile up and there's just not enough tax base to support it.
This summary tickled a part of my brain that has had thoughts about how we pay for this stuff. Those thoughts run down a different avenue, but I'll share them here just because.
In the U.S. it seems common that infrastructure is funded in significant ways by the federal government. Witness the current Biden plan. But also, federal money funds local schools, health initiatives, law enforcement, on and on. Some years ago I remember an important bridge falling down in Minnesota or some such place and there was immediately work in the U.S. Congress to pass funding for replacement construction. When the Flint water scandal broke, local and state officials immediately turned their attention (and outstretched hands) to D.C. for help. New York or Florida or well, everybody, immediately lobby D.C. after any natural disaster.
At some level it makes sense that an entire nation can chip in to bail out unfortunate victims easier than the local residents could do so. But I actually think this is false because it isn't everybody helping out on one isolated incident, it is everybody helping out on every single incident. At that point, we might as well have all just paid for our own local incident. The money comes out the same.
Of course, 350 million people can raise $350 million in a day every day of the year for just $1/person/day. So it does improve liquidity. And there are probably other benefits.
But here's the huge downside. All that money flows from little dinky Anywhere, U.S. to Washington. Then it comes back to Anywhere in their time of need. Except that it doesn't all come back. A large chunk is consumed in the federal bureaucracy. And some is eaten by graft. And maybe those two losses would occur at a local or state level, too. But the big gotcha for me is that the money comes back with strings attached.
We'll give federal highway funding to Montana, but they have to comply with speed limits set by somebody from Chicago. Arizona can get funding for a hospital but they have to bow to some immigration policy set by people from Vermont.
The redistribution of the wealth is a source of enormous power and attracts the power-hungry. It is a design for corruption and manipulation. And because it centralizes such enormous money/power, it must be said that it is designed to attract corruption and manipulation on an enormous scale. So while the little hospital in Arizona might have attracted some small fish to take advantage of the opportunity if it were locally funded, federal funding subjects it to the biggest fish in the world.
To bring this back to the subject, imagine if city and state taxes went way up to pay for water distribution, pot hole repair, etc. and federal taxes went way down. Then, property taxes might actually cover regular city maintenance. And at no added cost to taxpayers. The city could reduce its federal lobby budget because they aren't going to get any federal aid so quit paying somebody to keep asking. If they need more money, they can raise local taxes.
I know that this is terribly naive in many ways, and just ignorant in other ways. I'd love to hear any criticism.
https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-li...
The complaint here is literally that the strongtowns founder has criticized other engineers. That's it (edit: the complaint also involves a technicality motivated by this criticism, see below).
The thing about this situation is that, in the US, a large number decisions that are effectively "policy", questions of how we live, wind-up buried inside supposedly technical/professional regulations - zoning, codes and other standards.
This situation means that attacks for "violations of technicalities" easily wind-up the means by which special interests maintain their position.
He has my sympathy in this case and I hope he wins, but the details are more complicated than your summary suggests. It's pretty basic stuff, as I assume a lot of us know, that part of the deal with licensed engineering professions is that you have to have the license to represent yourself as such --- people are always coming up with dopey arguments that the same applies to software engineers.
- Marohn renewed his license before the licensing board presented a complaint against him.
- License lapses like this are common and there's a standard procedure for "late renewal" which Marohn followed, including paying a late fee, and the board accepted the renewal.
https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-li...
The final order requires Marohn to agree that he made an “untruthful statement,” a “false statement,” and “engaged in conduct involving misrepresentation.”
Which used to be a thing but were so unpopular they were discontinued.
Whether this lawsuit is silly or not, it's hard to be completely unsympathetic to the idea that someone claiming a specific professional certification who does not in fact have it is in the right.
(While being completely in the camp that one can call themselves an en engineer is they want to.)
Deleted Comment
While I see your point, I would state it somewhat differently: in the US, there are, roughly speaking, two opposing viewpoints on "policy" about "how we live":
(1) The viewpoint that a central authority should figure out some "best" way to live, and impose it on everyone, or at least everyone in a significantly-sized geographic area, via technical/professional regulations, zoning, codes, etc.
(2) The viewpoint that individual people, or groups of people who have something in common, should figure out how they want to live and set themselves up that way, and decisions about how various people and groups who happen to be in the same geographical area interact should be made by negotiation and consensus among the people and groups who are affected. Input can certainly be sought from technical professionals to inform those decisions, but at the end of the day, the people who make such decisions should be the people who have to live with the consequences. And to the extent that top-down, large-scale policies play a role, it should be to ensure that individuals and groups have the tools they need to make such decisions for themselves.
What strikes me about this dispute, as with pretty much all such disputes that I have seen, is that both sides adhere to viewpoint #1; they just have different views on what the "best" way to live is that should be imposed on everyone. Practically nobody in such discussions even considers viewpoint #2 at all.
Deleted Comment
The only reason we don't hear about the plumbing cartel going after the home repair business that isn't licensed for plumbing in every state it operates in but wrote "plumbing" on its vans in all states is because HN doesn't really concern itself with those sort of matters.
I wouldn't limit that statement to state-backed: it is how most (or at least many) private organizations and unions work too, from teamsters to fifa to the NRA. State backed organizations just have the extra advantage of being explicitly state backed.
I mean the board that licenses Civil Engineers, for example, should be very stringent. We don't live in buildings that aren't structurally sound or drive on half-assed bridges.
Professional Engineers hold themselves to an ethical standard that they're not even legally required to uphold, yet they still do because this organization keeps them in check.
As someone that spent hundreds of thousands to get answers, and majority of my answers came from other people going through same nonsense.
For anything complicated you have to become your own doctor. Medical community is broken on all but straightforward cases.
You can't legally present yourself as a professional engineer without that license.
Reason magazine posted an article on this:
"https://reason.com/2021/05/25/minnesota-threatens-to-fine-th..."
While I generally oppose attempts to regulate the term "engineer", I do think Reason was a little fast and loose here. It wasn't like they went in and objected to the term "sound engineer" in a recording studio or "software engineer" at google. This was a case of using a term in a situation where it could cause confusion, although even in this case, I side with the person who wants to use the term, and against the PE regulators. I do think that professional engineering associations do have the right to create a terminology. I would just be much more restrictive in scope.
I looked into regulations around Industrial Engineering, since I have an MS in this field (my undergraduate is in math). As far as I understand, licensure in Industrial Engineering is a title designation. In other words, there's no specific practice you're allowed to do as a licensed professional industrial engineer that you wouldn't be allowed to do without this license. It simply gives you the right to professionally represent yourself as a licensed PE.
I support the licensing bodies rights to restrict narrowly defined terminology that clearly references licensure, but my personal feeling is that the scope should be very limited. In other words, I believe I should be allowed to casually refer to myself as an engineer, I think it's fine to say you're a data engineer rather than a data scientist depending on what you do. I even think it's ok to refer to myself as an industrial engineer (though I wouldn't personally especially want to).
The ambiguity creeps in if I refer to myself as a "Professional Industrial Engineer". I personally wouldn't do that, it would feel a little fraudulent, but that's a feeling, not something I'd enforce through law or even social pressure. To stay on the right side of scope, I think I'd be ok with someone doing that as long as they didn't throw in "licensed".
As for "engineering" as a general term, I think it's truly absurd that PE bodies would think they have a general right to prevent others from using this descriptive term in job or work titles, it's as general as "scientist".
(wow, apparently I can't even ask...)
I am a Software Developer - I did not graduate from an Engineering college. I am not an Engineer. The stuff I do does not kill people when it fails.
99% of people that claim to be Engineers (at least in Software) are not.
It's all a racket. I'm an unlicensed, non-PE software engineer. Am I allowed to call myself that?
Deleted Comment
This is a significant distinction. While I'm generally opposed to the majority of occupational licensing requirements but I can understand the function of regulating professional offerings.
So in both this case and the referenced Oregon case from another comment, the "charge" by the licensure body is that the individuals are using the term engineer while doing things that aren't "rendering the service of engineering for payment."
I am a reasonably decent electrician and feel confident fiddling with my own outlets. The electrician's body does not have the right to regulate that activity. Nor can it regulate my saying I'm a decent electrician.
It does, however, have the right to regulate my rendering those services to the public for payment (with some legal gray area around rendering it for free).
This is what makes this a first amendment case that seems justified.
EDIT: I do understand by using electrician as an example, I invite comments about how I might be breaking fire code or my home insurance covenants. That's correct but it's a different externalities problem.
My immediate take is two groups that dislike each other mutually acting like children in hopes of scoring cheap points and feeling superior.
I assume/expect that the professional speech doctrine will come heavily into play here [0]. This doctrine is grounded in either a 1985 or a 1945 supreme court case depending on who you ask. It has come into play in weird ways in engineering before because the term 'engineer' vs. 'professional engineer' vs. 'licensed professional engineer' may or may not be confusing to lay people...or at least confusing enough that people are willing to spend money on lawyers related to bicker about it [1].
Basically, if one is speaking using the auspices of a regulated and licensed profession, than commentary and comments related to that profession are bound by the responsibilities, ethics, laws, etc. governing it. If one was speaking as a member of the public - does not apply - but the boundaries are fuzzier than I think a lot of people would like. That being said, generally the red line has been the use of professional knowledge and expertise with a specified client. In those cases, it has been deemed in the public interest for the state to regulate speech...because the person is speaking in part with the backing of an assertion of qualification from the state. I suspect this is one of those cases where someone on the board took whatever strong towns has been doing (never heard of them before) a little personally...and is willing to cause problems by investigating whether this engineer stepped over the line.
Examples of its application include:
* preventing doctors from advocating for sexual orientation conversion therapy (CA)
* compelling doctors to make certain statements about abortion (e.g., PA)
[0] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1551/professional-s...
[1] https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2018/12/federal-judge-finds-...
In a lot of states you need special qualifications or licenses to do all sorts of jobs. You can't cut hair without spending thousands on a hair cutting course and passing an exam and paying a registration fee.
Sure, that makes sense for (say) doctors. Maybe engineers too? But barbers? Why bar-people? Interior decorators?
But we found that an Uber drive isn't meaningfully more dangerous than a licensed taxi drive. And an Airbnb stay isn't meaningfully more dangerous than a licensed hotel stay.