[namdnay]

> Licenses that anyone can get, but are purely graded on a curve in order to protect existing members. Finally we get to the actuarial licenses! Similar licenses would be Michelin star restaurants and wine sommeliers. Only a very small community appreciates these licenses, but the value to those that have them is high via the artificial scarcity. In order to keep them fair they offer the test(s) to anyone, but grade on an absurdly difficult curve to make them essentially random, and then take only the top scorers to preserve their scarcity. The process to get the license is to cram test exams ad infinitum and continue to take the test until you randomly get the top score. They ultimately mean nothing, at least compared to the amount of people who deserve the license vs. those that have them.

If I follow you correctly, this last category is basically all "competitive examinations"? I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss them (maybe that's because I live in France, where competitive examinations are the third national pastime, just behind moaning and striking).

Michelin stars for example are supposed to distinguish the best restaurants, so of course they're going to be competitive! Would you complain that we only give three Olympic medals per event?

These competitions can be useful in case of limited availability (e.g. number of places every year in an elite engineering college), but also just as a signal that you're dealing with the best of the best. For example, if you go to a Boulangerie held by a "Meilleur Ouvrier de France", you know you're going to get some of the best croissants in the world.

[civilized]

> These competitions can be useful in case of limited availability (e.g. number of places every year in an elite engineering college), but also just as a signal that you're dealing with the best of the best.

When you're dealing with actuaries, you're definitely not dealing with the collective "best of the best" (although individuals may happen to be excellent). You're dealing with people who were willing to memorize and practice and grind a very specific set of exams because they had no other options or didn't want to do anything else.

[seibelj]

I would argue that there should be way more Michelin-star restaurants than exist, but they artificially cap the supply to keep them rare. It's a form of the same thing.

[civilized]

I think there's an incentive system at work that I'm not sure I've seen articulated before. If the people controlling a rating system want the best ratings to be rare, they will often have to resort to a combination of opacity, arbitrariness, and fine distinctions that are largely meaningless to the consumers of the ratings. Because True Quality can't be reliably recognized by some ratings committee... and yet, they must rate.

[nradov]

A Michelin star rating is not a license. It has no legal force. It's simply a restaurant review, like you can read in any newspaper. Some consumers choose to trust Michelin reviews more than other sources.

[namdnay]

Indeed, just like an olympic medal. The MOF is a better example IMHO