The Right to Earn a Living

Just to be clear...the last 100 years have compelled me not to look to Germany for solutions. Great they have great craftsman in a tightly controlled society and they are not as efficient as people like to pretend for their organizational sacrifices. You are not the only one with foreign experience.

I thank local historian for his comments. As an educated citizen he noticed that a previous owner had done some shoddy work. But that was within the law, thus the law did not protect anyone from anything. Unfortunately that same knowledge has given you the impression that the license or the permit qualifies anyone. Park county construction is crap in general, but acceptable...and most is done by licensed and inspected people. I know people that have had their house torn down by Park County, literally, and now have lived in a tent for years...thanks Park for helping us all by kicking them out!!! (what a great country and county we live in where just justice can happen).

All the tales of being afraid or seeing a few poorly constructed houses are just tales. Let's do a cost benefit analysis. Again just like all the feel good stuff the Fed does, but it has just about cost us our economy. A bunch less people argue for more govt svs. now vs. a month ago. This is a numbers thing not a feel good thing. If you are going to strip my rights in my own home to protect me, at least have the balls to provide some stats. You will see the results of the National cost benefit analysis over the next decade or so and you might actually realize that these wars and programs were not worth it.

The problem is that the stats don't exist for any modern community, no one is doing the studies, just assuming all is worth it. Ask the people in most communities after they go through the building dept process and I would be money that most would pass on the process and most trust their builder far far far more than the inspector.

Remember also that many places do not have such systems in the US, esp rural places like Park (Park excluded). In those places, you can have no licenses, no inspections and the SAME insurance companies that deny you in Park because you did not do these thing, don;t care when there is no inspections. The prices don't go up, the service does not change. It is just no BD simply means they cannot demand it.

After living in both environments for much time, I can tell you that the big difference between an over regulated rural place like Park and a rural place that has retained property rights is that the people in Park tend to hate their govt and in the more free rural place, there is no one to hate and in Park the houses are far overvalued within a bubble and in the more free rural place, houses are affordable. In both places there is an occasional housing related issue, but Park seems to stand out with it's propane explosion(s) etc.

AT A MINIMUM. People with such high influence that you allow to invade your home and even kick you out of it should be elected. Anyone who has built a house in Park likely feels that John Logan has had the biggest influence on their lives vs. any other county official and he is generally disliked and appointed. Why would we elect a BOCC member and not the Building Inspector?

Remember that everything you inspect or license costs more and the amount is not able to be determined beforehand. Seems like some of you feel like there is extra money floating around out there or that the money being spent on what ever it is being spent on would be better directed for inspections.

Curious of the home socialists out there would feel ok with making older homes meet the same standards as new ones. A person is a person right, same rights to safety. Would your perspective not justify a yearly occupancy inspection with a potential to have to move out and correct anything that might concern the BD? Really, this is a question? We cannot debate the burden of such a thing as if you are building a home you might be expected to pay double at that time and may not have a home for an additional series of months or a year due to inspections. Why not burden the existing homeowner for the same safety standard. We have already given up our right to privacy in our homes and seem to generally agree that privacy and property rights are a thing of the past, that you are a steward of community property.

If you feel you don't have the ability to evaluate a person or an assembly, hire someone who can, that simple. The systems and the professionals are and have been available, they cost the same as the BD or less and will make an appointment and will talk to you with respect. They will not leave snarky inspections notes like Logan or they would be fired by you on the spot.

Please stop trying to design society (you don't have a license for that). There is a natural order of things and it often includes less discomfort, risk and distress than your organized version. Just perhaps a bit less predictable, but not always.

All these problems and debates tend not to happen where there are no licenses and rules. These procedures are also typically not demanded by the public, but dreamed up at BOCC meetings, and then couched in a way to make you wonder how we got this far without them. I know dozens of people that have called the BOCC to complain about the BD and the BOCC just say how great the dept is. 3 people call about trash in someone's lawn and we get a maint. code. This stuff only moves in one direction.

One can move to Germany to get German standards. I just cannot get those high race standards out of my mind. And if I think about it, the old cronies in the towns and govt. running things were likely alive when they, their friends and their families were cooking, raping and gassing other human beings or ignoring those that were. Please read that last sentence again. I know there are locals that would kill a Jewish person just for being so if they could get away with it, but most of us know this is not right. It is going to be another decade or two until those people running things that had a hand in the holocaust are all dead, even longer till their influence is gone, it is still alive in Park County today (deny it personally, but they are out there "neighbors"). I really have a hard time trying to emulate anything these people do, especially organized degrading of society and its members. I look at Germany like a kid that just burnt the neighbor's house down and will treat them as such. We don't jail children, but we don't go on pretending they did not do it. If that kid does really good porch painting, I still would not hire him. I know Germans are not bad by nature, but the old cronies in that country were bad. That nature that compelled them to kill and control others is in all of us. The best of us resist it or harness this energy for good or be productive in our own lives.

posteryoyo wrote: Just to be clear...the last 100 years have compelled me not to look to Germany for solutions. Great they have great craftsman in a tightly controlled society and they are not as efficient as people like to pretend for their organizational sacrifices. You are not the only one with foreign experience.

I thank local historian for his comments. As an educated citizen he noticed that a previous owner had done some shoddy work. But that was within the law, thus the law did not protect anyone from anything. Unfortunately that same knowledge has given you the impression that the license or the permit qualifies anyone. Park county construction is crap in general, but acceptable...and most is done by licensed and inspected people. I know people that have had their house torn down by Park County, literally, and now have lived in a tent for years...thanks Park for helping us all by kicking them out!!! (what a great country and county we live in where just justice can happen).

All the tales of being afraid or seeing a few poorly constructed houses are just tales. Let's do a cost benefit analysis. Again just like all the feel good stuff the Fed does, but it has just about cost us our economy. A bunch less people argue for more govt svs. now vs. a month ago. This is a numbers thing not a feel good thing. If you are going to strip my rights in my own home to protect me, at least have the balls to provide some stats. You will see the results of the National cost benefit analysis over the next decade or so and you might actually realize that these wars and programs were not worth it.

The problem is that the stats don't exist for any modern community, no one is doing the studies, just assuming all is worth it. Ask the people in most communities after they go through the building dept process and I would be money that most would pass on the process and most trust their builder far far far more than the inspector.

Remember also that many places do not have such systems in the US, esp rural places like Park (Park excluded). In those places, you can have no licenses, no inspections and the SAME insurance companies that deny you in Park because you did not do these thing, don;t care when there is no inspections. The prices don't go up, the service does not change. It is just no BD simply means they cannot demand it.

After living in both environments for much time, I can tell you that the big difference between an over regulated rural place like Park and a rural place that has retained property rights is that the people in Park tend to hate their govt and in the more free rural place, there is no one to hate and in Park the houses are far overvalued within a bubble and in the more free rural place, houses are affordable. In both places there is an occasional housing related issue, but Park seems to stand out with it's propane explosion(s) etc.

AT A MINIMUM. People with such high influence that you allow to invade your home and even kick you out of it should be elected. Anyone who has built a house in Park likely feels that John Logan has had the biggest influence on their lives vs. any other county official and he is generally disliked and appointed. Why would we elect a BOCC member and not the Building Inspector?

Remember that everything you inspect or license costs more and the amount is not able to be determined beforehand. Seems like some of you feel like there is extra money floating around out there or that the money being spent on what ever it is being spent on would be better directed for inspections.

Curious of the home socialists out there would feel ok with making older homes meet the same standards as new ones. A person is a person right, same rights to safety. Would your perspective not justify a yearly occupancy inspection with a potential to have to move out and correct anything that might concern the BD? Really, this is a question? We cannot debate the burden of such a thing as if you are building a home you might be expected to pay double at that time and may not have a home for an additional series of months or a year due to inspections. Why not burden the existing homeowner for the same safety standard. We have already given up our right to privacy in our homes and seem to generally agree that privacy and property rights are a thing of the past, that you are a steward of community property.

If you feel you don't have the ability to evaluate a person or an assembly, hire someone who can, that simple. The systems and the professionals are and have been available, they cost the same as the BD or less and will make an appointment and will talk to you with respect. They will not leave snarky inspections notes like Logan or they would be fired by you on the spot.

Please stop trying to design society (you don't have a license for that). There is a natural order of things and it often includes less discomfort, risk and distress than your organized version. Just perhaps a bit less predictable, but not always.

All these problems and debates tend not to happen where there are no licenses and rules. These procedures are also typically not demanded by the public, but dreamed up at BOCC meetings, and then couched in a way to make you wonder how we got this far without them. I know dozens of people that have called the BOCC to complain about the BD and the BOCC just say how great the dept is. 3 people call about trash in someone's lawn and we get a maint. code. This stuff only moves in one direction.

One can move to Germany to get German standards. I just cannot get those high race standards out of my mind. And if I think about it, the old cronies in the towns and govt. running things were likely alive when they, their friends and their families were cooking, raping and gassing other human beings or ignoring those that were. Please read that last sentence again. I know there are locals that would kill a Jewish person just for being so if they could get away with it, but most of us know this is not right. It is going to be another decade or two until those people running things that had a hand in the holocaust are all dead, even longer till their influence is gone, it is still alive in Park County today (deny it personally, but they are out there "neighbors"). I really have a hard time trying to emulate anything these people do, especially organized degrading of society and its members. I look at Germany like a kid that just burnt the neighbor's house down and will treat them as such. We don't jail children, but we don't go on pretending they did not do it. If that kid does really good porch painting, I still would not hire him. I know Germans are not bad by nature, but the old cronies in that country were bad. That nature that compelled them to kill and control others is in all of us. The best of us resist it or harness this energy for good or be productive in our own lives.

The focus here is on licensing, not building codes, or for that matter a diatribe about your historical opinion on Germans. Let is suffice that it is comforting to know that you can stereotype and impersonalize someone to keep your view in a "proper" perspective. Stow plying the Jewish card. It's time to let go. The Germans of today are not the ones of long ago whom you wish to see continuing to exist in all of us today. I and many German friends happen to have lots of wonderful Jewish friends, muslim friends, even a few hindu and Buddhist friends, we see human beings first and foremost, not race creed or color, something you apparently continue as a focus.

I find it interesting you have so much to say about German society, yet contradict yourself by saying you don't look there. How in the world do you know what is actually going on today? Some of us actually lived there, have relatives we visit regularly, etc. And what is this thing about tightly controlled??? I guess you must be thinking about Germany 60 to 70 years ago. It is not the Germany of today.

Germany does have a proven licensing program and proven quality workmanship. It has nothing to do with whether or not Germans are efficient or inefficient or as you seem to think as you seem to find imperative to establish as part of your desire to cut others down to make yourself or American craftsmanship look better. If you don't want to look at a proven model, then go ahead an make up your own or leave it for what it is currently.

And if you think modern housing construction is so great in the US, you obviously have no basis of comparison unless you want to compare with third world construction. My experience is most are slapped together with little craftsmanship involved. This is as true today as it was yesterday. You can make all kinds of excuses for why house were only built to certain standards, but in the end it still adds up to shoddy workmanship. The fact so much building code exists is itself a reflection of recognized poor construction and it comes back to the craftsmen that did the work. This is why we built and more recently oversaw the building of our own home. Yes, thank you, I'm very familiar with building dept process, having gone through a couple of years ago. And homes are just one area employing craftsmen and not THE only focus. This thread proports that legislating licensing (in this case interior designers) prevents one from working. My thesis is that it does not and that it has benefits such as superior expertise if done correctly.

Cost benefit can be summed up as:" You can pay me now or you can pay me more later"

From your statement

All these problems and debates tend not to happen where there are no licenses and rules.

it is obvious you and I are talking about two totally different things. We are not talking about procedures or new building regulations, we are talking about insuring a minimum degree of competence by an individual within a field of specialization, something wanting in many "self-made professionals". Just because I've taken car engines apart and rebuilt them does not mean I'm a qualified to hire myself out as a car mechanic. Just because I know how to wire my house according to code, does not automatically qualify me as a electrician. Even my passion as a cabinet maker, thought skilled, still does not necessarily qualify me as one for hire. That is the crux of the debate, licensing individuals as I see it for a field of work, recognizes achievement of a certain standard of competence, not just knowledge of the current code. It does not matter what segment of history you wish to examine, skilled craftsmen take pride in their work and do NOT condone shoddy work regardless of what code is in place. If the licensing of professional currently in place supports this type of work, then there is something wrong with the licensing program. Likely this is where you and I differ in our opinion. That is fine with me. We are all just offering opinions.

Edited to add: I'm shameless. If I see excellence, I borrow or imitate it. In this case, I simply looked at a model that I knew about and impressed me in terms of its effectiveness.

Just a small note - I'm not a he, nor have I ever been remotely confused for one, except online, by people who don't pay attention or who make assumptions based on my writing.

When I was a child, my parents were house shopping - ready to buy a home of their own. We looked at a new complex, and as my 40lb sister ran across the floor upstairs from us, you could see the floor flex. If a 40 lb person can make a floor/ceiling flex, how exactly does this make the home livable? (Note, this home was empty - before the whole "staging" deal was implimented. one 1970s larger piece of furniture on the second floor, and wam - bedroom is now in livingroom, is now in basement.)

Building code is there for a reason, and a designer needs to know building code just as much as the original builder before they mess up the wiring, move a load bearing wall, something equally potentially damaging to a home. Most do NOT learn this on the job; most have to be trained somewhere.

Yes, I've met licensed people without a clue - too many teachers who never should have been allowed to get that far, but they were licensed on how well they knew their subject matter and convey it, not on how well they interact with children. Or humans in general. So yes, licensure can only show the knowledge, not the implimentation of it.

You talk about the best mechanic you know not being licensed. Yes, that used to be a true thing- and I know a few people around here like that. But that applied to cars of yesteryear, not today. Does your mechanic have the knowledge to fix the computer system found in modern cars, or does he just rip it out and put in new, charging you more for it? That's not expertise; anyone with a basic knowledge of the parts and how to use a wrench could do the same. Or is he lying to you, claiming to repair it when he only replaced a whole system that might only have needed one tiny part replaced? And don't tell me the whole board just needs to be tossed - I know people who can fix them, and interestingly enough - they are licensed to do so.

I cannot say I would always trust word of mouth either, since my standard of acceptability for that item may be different than someone else's standard.

I can, however, hold a licensed person more accountable than a non licensed one. And that is a simple fact. So if a licensed mechanic irrepairablely messes up my car, or a licensed interior designer causes a hole to be cut in my roof that damages the intergrity of the whole roof, I can go to court on it, and I will win.

Licensure is a two edged sword. It can protect the licensee, or it can screw them.

Let me ask you - if you didn't know me, would you feel more comfortable leaving your children with me at the school knowing I was licensed, knowing I would know rules of conduct, how to deal with your children and will actually be teaching him or her something of value? Or would you just do it anyway, and take the risk? Any thinking parent is going to want and demand a licensed educator in the schools - it's how the licensure process came about in the first place. This isn't 1860s, where any single man or unmarried woman who passed the 8th grade testing could teach. Same thing goes for licensure of medical practice.

So I should just let other aspects of my life go to risk, just based on someone's word that they are an expert?




If you want to get into history, then you shouldn't hold Americans as having any value either, because our history is filled with some mightily messed up people right here at home. To continue to hold the whole of a country for something very few of their ancestors did almost 60 years ago is a false position, and shows you know very little of the history of that country for that time; if so, you would know that a large majority of Germans disliked the whole deal but feared for their own lives, many risked their lives to help those persecuted, including the standard soldier who was conscripted.

Shall we hold every white American responsible for slavery as well, especially that baby born yesterday? Cause you know, that baby was right on the tip of the whole slavery movement, right?

Or do you recognize that the people of today are NOT responsible for the actions of their forefathers? If you cannot, then you have other issues to deal with none of us can help you with.

Just a side note - the work done on one of my homes by the previous owner was NOT done within the law, actually. He built an addition, wired it, etc all without the required permit, and all without a proper inspection of the work in progress, nor the finished item. This is easy documentation to find out about.

Luckily, the faults were fairly easily repaired. Building a new addition is not the same as replacing your counter; something most of us could do.

Opps - did you make an assuption there? Why yes, you did.

LH, you have made very good points. All is much appreciated. Licensing is indeed a double edged sword and not something that should just be implemented without considerable thought regarding the process. I think there are examples where the process seems to work well, and others where it has inherent failures, much of what you pointed out. I want to believe that everyone in a profession seeks to be the best they can be and take pride in their work. The reality is much different and I;m certain there are various explanations for this. Regardless, licensing should not inhibit a person from being able to work in that field. It may be a pain to go through the process of meeting the entry level requirements, and that should provide a starting point for a lifetime of learning even more about your field of endeavor.

In summary, the expertise and ability to carry out the skills of your chosen profession become a personal matter in which you either take great pride or perform without . Licensing plays only a minor role as implemented in the US. Other countries deem it desirable to grant licenses that reflect technical expertise much like formal education grants BS, MA, and PhD. degrees. And, just like it's necessary to cull the wheat from the chafe among people with similar degrees, so it is with licensed technical people. Not all are created equal, but you know that a person with a low ranking license or 4 year degree likely is not to have the same level of expertise as those with higher degrees, all else being equal.