[idrios]

> We also don't really want amateurs vets opening up clinics and just winging it with people's pets.

In a couple decades, people will be saying this about to fresh veterinary school graduates who want to open their own hospital instead of joining one of the conglomerate private equity firms.

We don't have a backlog of trained unlicensed veterinarians because it's the training that's the bottleneck. You could be the most ambitious person in the world but if you don't get into vet school then that door is closed. You can't get a license if you don't go to an accredited institution.

I wouldn't get rid of the license requirement, but I would definitely change it to something that is not rate-limited by the number of available vet school seats per year. Imagine if drivers licenses were handed out the same way, if each DMV only offered the mandatory prerequisite training to 500 people per year and nobody else was allowed to drive. Driving would become an elite institution too, and we'd be complaining that it's better that way because nobody trusts amateur drivers operating these several-thousand lb machines.