I'm not doubting that it might happen and may even actually happen in some cases. I'm asserting that society and government is built on compromises and a principle of taking the path of least harm. We shouldn't avoid a 90% solution because we can imagine possible flaws in it, particularly if we have close analogues already deployed in the real world and those flaws don't largely seem to manifest.

I don't know that bodies like FAA and ERCOT are really comparable to professional associations; the market conditions make them especially vulnerable to corruption because they both "oversee" such a small number of large players, so you end up with a revolving door. In any case, these are also odd examples to bring up, because in both cases their failure was not about market capture, it was about failure to protect the public. So it seems your argument is amounting to "the regulation provided by the FAA isn't perfect, so it shouldn't exist, just like regulation for security-critical software shouldn't exist."

I specifically asked for examples from "law, medicine, trades, engineering", because those are cases that I feel are much more aligned to what it would be with a professional body overseeing practices for secure software development— they're cases where you have a large number of mostly small-time practitioners, and where the professional oversight mechanism is working in terms of enforcing safe and consistent practices, while also evolving those over time in response to changing conditions.

>the regulation provided by the FAA isn't perfect, so it shouldn't exist

This is far from what I'm suggesting. I'm just saying that if it is a gov't regulated anything, those regulations will incur wacky decision making due to the influence of outside money. Nobody likes to be regulated against, and if they are in the position to do so, they will use any mechanism available to them to keep the status quo.

I'm also suggesting that any gov't regulation body is not always the panacea people may be dreaming it will be. Anytime a regulation body is proposed, I don't have rose colored glasses. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised that something turns out to be a good thing than having high expectations crushed.

But despite your cynicism about "any gov't regulation body", you would agree that professional associations have by and large been a success in protecting the public in areas like construction trades, engineering, law, and medicine?

Not necessarily. Recently, Miami condo collapes. In the not too distant past London building fire. I'm sure if we were to go looking, we could find more examples. Are these edge cases?

I have less experience with other trades, but you did call out construction separately. My family comes from construction backgrounds at various levels. The 80s in the US saw a boom in the 20 story building construction, and then saw a total collapse (no pun intended) in the construction industry. There are lots and lots of building contracts won by lowest bidder, and the only way to do that is cutting corners somewhere. Usually in quality of material, or reducing the "over-engineered" portions to the point of risking saftey, etc.

It's also widely known in construction that the permitting offices can be gamed. Talk to the right people with the write phrases. NYC is infamous in that people playing by the rules get absolutely nowhere. You have to start spending cash and using influence to get things done. It's all just pointless to being corrupt.

Interesting. I would see the occasional failure as actually a further indication that the system is working— that it's maintaining a balance wherein most practice is within the bounds of what is safe, but it's not NASA-level lockdown where there's massive waste due to unnecessary redundancy and safety factors.