Professionalisation
Professionals are paid for their work, as opposed to amateurs who work
for the love of it. Professionalisation is the process by which amateurs are replaced by
professionals. Whenever this happens, we move closer to a world in which
money, not
love, is the main motivating force.
The pressure for economic growth is bloating the economic sphere as
other arenas diminish in importance. Increasingly many activities such as
looking after the eldery or bringing up children, previously motivated largely by
social factors, are now being done on a professional basis.
By replacing personal
relationships with financially regulated ones,
professionalisation weakens
friendship, crowds out
altruistic transactions and minimises individuals'
room to exercise personal considerations,
eroding the give and take that make up a healthy community. It is also part of the vicious
social cycle underway in many societies, in which productive activity
is threatened by a spiralling of competitive claims over resources.
Apprenticeships and other relationship-based methods of
education skill sharing are replaced by formal, automated methods of instruction
and stricter, top-down certification of competence.
Rent-seeking
centralised bodies are established that monopolise assessment of competence.
Laws are passed, often citing grounds such as public safety, that make more and more activities
the exclusive remit of certified 'professionals' - that is, individuals
who have bought in to a particular power structure.
Professionalisation is often justified on grounds that it raises standards,
but in fact this is just one of many possible effects. The clearest effect it has on professionals
is probably a homogenisation of the range of services provided and a rise in their prices.
The effect it has on non-professionals is clearer.
Erecting such barriers of entry to 'professionalised' activites increases their potential
for revenue by discouraging individuals from engaging in (or even understanding) such activity
themselves. Feelings of
powerlessness abound as individual consumers are encouaged to trust
neither in their own, nor one anothers' capabilities,
but only in accredited 'professionals', whose main motivation is money.
Professional training is the big brother of
schooling. Although it damages both the individual and the social
interplay that characterises a healthy community, it continues apace because it is associated
with economic growth. We at
altruists are privileged to do our work as amateurs, who aim to
ignore money and work for love instead. Our work on an
altruistic theory of economics is an effort to extend this freedom to others.