One of the principal factors in keeping ethical and professional standards high in various occupations is setting up barriers against entry into the profession. Usually these barriers take the form of educational requirements. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, clergy, all have strict education requirements without which one cannot enter the field. The easier it is to get into a profession, the more sleaze bags and incompetents you get. Take for example, realtors.
Nowhere is the idiot factor more obvious than in real estate. Every housewife or failed car salesman is a "real estate professional." In my thirty plus years of buying and selling real estate, and practicing real estate law, I have run across maybe three good realtors. Most of them don't even know how to pronounce the word (they usually say "real-la-tor").
As this is being written, I am trying to help my son buy a condo to qualify for the Obamaramadama $8K tax credit. Unfortunately, we have to deal with realtors representing (or misrepresenting) sellers. In all cases thus far, the realtors have been total morons, incapable of understanding the most rudimentary basics of real estate transactions, let alone more exotic deals such as short sales.
I wish some of these ersatz professions would have some stricter requirements about whom they let in.
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