Regulators and Mandatory Ongoing Education – A Learning Experience

The other day I was talking to a professional business woman about her continuing education courses. She indicated to me that she needed to study for one of these upcoming tests which went along with her continuing professional and ongoing education requirements. If she doesn’t study, and fails the test, she could be out of a job. She would have to shut down her entire business, and she would lose her license, and her livelihood. Okay so let’s talk shall we?

Now then, this gal I met works in California, and the California regulators, along with the federal regulators do require mandatory ongoing education. And they make no bones about it, if you fail to pass the tests, you are history. Nevertheless, they try to soften it up with wording such as; “you should treat this ongoing education and testing as a learning experience.” Well that’s really great, because if they fail the test they lose everything they’ve ever worked for – so, how convenient for a regulator to make it sound all warm and fuzzy when they are putting maximum stress on these individuals under the penalty of taking away their livelihood.

You see, I thought that we wanted to increase the number of people who have jobs the United States, not put people out of business, or take away their income. The only learning experience that one could get out of that whole procedure is to realize and learn that the government is out to make your life miserable, that they don’t care, and that they hold the power over you and your future. That’s what we are teaching our professionals in our society by all this mandatory ongoing testing. It’s gotten totally out of control, but then again the continuing education testing industry is a $2.5 billion industry in the US.

The industry is able to do this because they lobby our government to solve the problem that the government has with regulating industry. The government can’t regulate morality, and it just looks bad every time something goes wrong. Therefore they make more rules and regulations on top of other rules and regulations to the point of absurdity. Then the government says they are doing everything they can because they have ongoing education to help educate the professionals.

Trust me when I tell you, they aren’t educating anyone, they playing an old CYA trick, while trying to put the fear of God into the professionals out there, and keep them under threat of losing their livelihood, and it is a very mean-spirited theoretical strategy that they use. There is no honor in that. Indeed, this is abuse of power by the government, and crony capitalism for those that create the tests and continuing education programs.

I’d say we need the government employees and regulators to go through mandatory ongoing education classes, and if they fail the test, they lose their pension, their pay, their seniority, and their healthcare. That’s what we should do, because that is the threat that they make every time they give one of these tests to a hard-working independent professional in the free-market.

I would like you think about that good and hard because this is insane, and what we are doing is wrong. It’s a dishonest and a mean-spirited practice, it is akin to bullying. It needs to stop. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.