What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?
First, there are plenty of jobs, but not enough people that have decided to develop themselves enough to have the skills to do them. For example (a real life one, unfortunately for me): I need a biopsy of a mass near my heart, but the current waiting time for this procedure here in Seattle (at both major hospitals) is two months.<p>What we do have is plenty of regulations that constrain the supply of physicians, services, medical supplies, insurance, and everything else needed to perform operations. It is one of the most <i>un</i>-free markets in America, with predictably disastrous results. Sure, those laws prevent <i>a few</i> people from being duped by charlatans, but they also prevent <i>people like me</i> - who are willing to sit on the phone for hours and days, and willing to do research for weeks on end - the possibility of a longer life.<p>--<p>There are also plenty of regulations that are limiting career mobility, both in medicine and in other fields. An example of this is that anything that makes it hard for employers to fire people also makes it more costly for them to hire different people (because that new person is an unknown, and therefore risky, as the employer has to hold onto them longer, even if they aren&#x27;t willing&#x2F;able to produce.)<p>--<p>EDIT: I&#x27;d like to add that the idea that some people are destined to be doctors (and some aren&#x27;t) is completely wrong. I was a premed in college (molecular biology degree, worked in a research lab on campus full-time for two years after graduating), and I gave up on the MD track after talking to a few younger doctors. They all told me to quit while I could because they were all in 200k+ in debt, and couldn&#x27;t switch out of their careers because of it, <i>and</i> they were miserable (tons of useless paperwork, not a lot of progress either in research or with patients). So I went into software, where you don&#x27;t have to convince a committee to give you permission to make a new app.