*snip* because if it were cheaper, then you wouldn't *need* regulations.
That makes no sense whatsoever. The need for regulation is not predicated on the price of a service, but on the potential for damage, to the consumer and the economy as a whole, from incompetent practitioners.
Again, all of that is made up. It also assumes that the alternatives available are "fully licensed" and "totally unregulated with horrible quality." What about stuff like Underwriters Labratories, an "Independent, not-for-profit product safety testing and certification organization." In a dark and scary world where light bulbs were not tightly regulated by the government, couldn't you vote with your wallet and be like "Well I'm not buying light bulbs unless they're tested by this third party that has a good reputation."
The "vote with your wallet" argument is, in this context, disingenuous at best. Sure, the cost of waiting for the market to weed out shitty lightbulb manufacturers is relatively small, and the market will eventually produce a generally decent grade of lightbulb-makers. But we are not talking about lightbulbs. We are talking about professional services, many of which involve direct risk to human and economic health. It may cost the economy a few million dollars to weed out Shitty Lights, Inc., but the cost of weeding out shitty or marginally-competent doctors, engineers, and lawyers is astronomically higher. None of those people are going to be drummed out of business by one dissatisfied (or dead) client, or even a hundred, in a deregulated market.Consumers are generally poorly informed and unwilling to do much research when seeking professional services, and that is simply not going to change.
I would imagine for something important like surgery it would happen almost immediately. Now I have a choice. If I need a heart transplant, I'll go to an expensive doctor just like now. If I have a broken finger and I need some pain medication and a splint, well guess what it's not going to cost $1800 for a trip to the ER. I'll go to the hedge witch down the street for $50, no insurance required.
Yes, in that hypothetical. But you're pulling that out of thin air. You can't use it as an argument.
Unregulated services are not going to be uniformly horrible, but without a guarantee of minimum competence the services you get below a certain price point are going to tend to suck. Even if your $50 hedge witch gets things right 70% of the time, she is still screwing up 30% of peoples' broken fingers. Those mistakes have a much higher overall cost to the individual and the economy than the price difference between a licensed doctor and an unlicensed quack.
You are also ignoring the fact that you have a choice, now, too. The $1800 ER trip could just as easily be a $400 urgent care clinic trip, no insurance required. $400 is more than $50, but it's also much more reasonable to most people than $1800, and you also get the guarantee that the MD or RNFP seeing you knows what they're doing.