> In many cases, these licencing schemes are put in place by incumbent trade groups, to prevent comeptition.
The worst is NAR and Realtors®. There's absolutely no professional instruction involved, just a morality test taken every few years that until the late-1940s early-1950s required that realtors maintain the racial character of neighborhoods (under penalty of disciplinary action.)
They managed to get themselves written into most state and local laws. Only the explosion of aspirational middlemen occasioned by the internet has recently managed to push back on that. Hopefully the recent antitrust case against them is catastrophic, but they spend $100M a year lobbying. Lobbying government is basically all the NAR actually does and all the real value that members are getting.
The worst is NAR and Realtors®. There's absolutely no professional instruction involved, just a morality test taken every few years that until the late-1940s early-1950s required that realtors maintain the racial character of neighborhoods (under penalty of disciplinary action.)
They managed to get themselves written into most state and local laws. Only the explosion of aspirational middlemen occasioned by the internet has recently managed to push back on that. Hopefully the recent antitrust case against them is catastrophic, but they spend $100M a year lobbying. Lobbying government is basically all the NAR actually does and all the real value that members are getting.
edit: https://www.notus.org/money/national-realtors-lobbying-polit...