Throwing my weight around?
I have learned plenty, no thanks to the licencing system. The point of this thread is that people applying for licences often don't know anything about reptiles, and it wouldn't hurt to give them some information. I don't understand how giving someone information can possibly do harm, or any more harm than what could potentially happen without giving them any information.
As I said in my previous post (which I am pretty sure you didn't bother reading, because you didn't pick at it) the information that could be given to new licence owners can have basic information to get them started, and promote further research in books, courses, online and word of mouth so that they can make educated decisions about the care of their reptiles.
-penny
Giving out information can often be harmful.... I'll put it into simpler terms so that you might be able to understand it.
It is not, should not and can not be the responsibility of the government to educate people about how to look after their reptiles. Governments can only do so many things. If you know anything about the way government departments run (which unfortunately you seem not to), you'll understand that this sort of thing is just not something they would be capable of, even if we ignore the fact that the departments are run by office workers, not wildlife specialists.
Okay, so why can giving out information be harmful? First of all, it might not be correct; if the government was responsible for it, you can almost guarantee any pamphlet/booklet/book/manual etc would be littered with errors. This wouldn't really be the fault of the people working in the department, it would a symptom of them having been charged with a task which was beyond them. Hopefully you can understand that misinformation is damaging.
Okay, so let's assume that against the impossible odds, the information given out is good. That won't change the fact that it is extremely limited. As I said earlier, if it was possible to put everything you need to know about keeping reptiles into a booklet, people wouldn't be spending thousands of hours and dollars learning about it. One of my friends has a large room literally filled with reptile books - hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dollars worth (yes, really)... and his isn't the largest collection around. Read all of those books (or as many as you can in a few days or weeks!) and you'll see that over the years methods have changed, often very quickly, and even at any given time there is great diversity in recommended methods. Here is something you seem to have missed... pay attention, it is important... if you give someone a pamphlet along the line of "This is how you keep your animals", they will assume (very incorrectly) that they have all of the information needed to keep any reptile at all, so when they see something interesting advertised, they'll quickly buy it, assuming that the magical booklet will guide them beautifully, which of course, it won't.
I doubt that anyone here is naive enough to think that the government is a good source of information on any topic, we certainly don't want to dump the responsibility of educating new keepers. If the government gives out information, and that is the first information people are given, they will assume that the government is their primary source of reptile husbandry information, and that is an impression that no one in their right mind would want to give out. Government departments don't work in the same way to private individuals or private enterprises. Anything which gets done needs to go through committees, be approved, go through all sorts of crazy hoops, have dozens of forms send out to dozens of people, each in triplicate, etc etc etc, it leads to things being done inefficiently, errors are inevitable (somewhat strangely!) and any updates or changes are extremely difficult to get through because no one wants to go through that process again.
You say you've learned plenty, no thanks to the licensing system. This is exactly as it should be for all of us. The government doesn't teach us everything we need to know about everything in life. Society functions better when some responsibility is left to each individual. In recent years (the last 10-20), there has been a growing impression that the government should take on new responsibilities which in the past would have been unthinkable. We don't want to become mindless drones following the word of the government, even if we ignore the fact that the government isn't capable of leading us very well.
I did read the previous post of yours which you assume I didn't. I didn't bother responding because the same points have been brought up by many newbies every year for the last few and responding to them again is most tedious.
As for the standardised national licensing system, as I said, the fact that it is utterly impossible to introduce is enough reason not to worry about arguing the point. It's a good thing that it's impossible, because if it somehow was introduced, we'd all be begging and pleading for things to go back to the way they were! Sometimes people just don't know what they have until they no longer have it. I won't bother addressing the topic further.
