Unfortunately the problem is that minimum technical standards are what surveyors and licensing boards typically try to use as ethical standards. Unfortunately technical standards don't have any impact on ethical practice. Therein lies the challenge.
I would like to see proposed language for ethical standards for land surveyors...
Perhaps the AMA Ethical Standards are a place to look for guidance.
Would a state specific standard be best? Or a national standard?
It's for the children
> Couching an argument in a context that can't be disagreed without seeming to put the counter argument on lesser moral grounds is a great debate tactic.
> But the fact is that MTS's address competencies rather than societal or social norms. Professional licensing boards have regulations that address unprofessional conduct or ethics. MTS's are more like a uniform fire or building code.
Well, ethical rules are merely rules of conduct and rules of professional ethics are rules specific to the conduct of a professional activity. So, details establishing what at a minimum a service should entail are part of a the same set of principles that govern all other dealings with members of the public. If the consensus is that a ccertain practice is required for a service to be of even some threshold value to anyone, then that is perfectly in the same vein as a rule that might, say, be formed with the idea of guaranteeing any other benefit to the public, such as requiring truthful representations.
> MTS's benefit some consumers but certainly not all. The real benefit is to the market stabilization for the people providing the service, as I think you mentioned.
But that generally is a huge benefit to consumers. Otherwise, in the alternate scenario where anything goes, the general cost to consumers goes up. Below some minimum standard, any service performed will only tend to shift costs elsewhere, either to future owners or to adjoining landowners who have to hire surveyors to clean up the sort of mess that is almost invariably a result of the quick and careless.
> The questions that should be asked are; what is the likelihood of harm, what type of harm (physical safety or financial), of what degree (life or death, financial ruin, inconvenience, closing costs that prevent compliance with federal mandates, etc..), what does it cost to taxpayers (including those who don't own property).
The more concrete costs are (a) costs of increased litigation, (b) cost of decreased property values resulting from uncertainties in location or utilization, and (c) cost of future surveys after substandard work has created a mess.
> Versus; what is the benefit to individual consumers, taxpayers (including those who don't own property), the profession.
The benefits to individual consumers have to be considered over a meaningful period of time. If the consumer is just some builder who is preparing to unload a property on an unsuspecting victim and wants to contract with a surveyor to provide a service designed to facilitate that (under the Primacy of the Contract Theory of Land Surveying), the obvious benefit of standards that prevent that should be plain.
> And then why not make the standards extensive enough to eliminate any other possible disagreement. Theoretically this could be done and eliminate the need for long years of education and experience.
Actually, it could not be done, neither in theory nor practice as long as attorneys can argue two or more sides to any question related to real property and real property boundaries.
> But well trained surveyors who can make wise and appropriate decisions in consultation with client needs, without regulatory interference, seems much less burdensome to the general public.
The market forces are shaping the surveying profession as the downward pressure on cost of services makes surveying less attractive as a career to these ideal candidates for licensure you describe. Without minimum standards to set a floor under the downward movement, what reason is there to think that the present dynamic will ever reverse? Minimum technical standards serve both the public good and the interest of the profession.
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> Unfortunately the problem is that minimum technical standards are what surveyors and licensing boards typically try to use as ethical standards. Unfortunately technical standards don't have any impact on ethical practice. Therein lies the challenge.
>
> I would like to see proposed language for ethical standards for land surveyors...
I think it's quite incorrect to separate minimum standards of practice from ethical rules. Ethics is, after all, merely a set of rules to guide conduct and what land surveyors do has some common components that need not exist as the sort of airy aspirational statements that "codes" of ethics typically amount to.
> Perhaps the AMA Ethical Standards are a place to look for guidance.
Those AMA statements of ethical principles are an excellent example of what to avoid. A realistic code of ethics needs to really get down to the unequal relationship between the professional and his/her clients, the reciprocal facts of providing services in a marketplace for services, as well as to discuss the professional's obligations to the system within which he/she operates.
It's for the children
That's a great post Duane!
Well sir... We shall disagree on the separation of technical standards and ethical standards.
It's for the children
+1
It's for the children
Well, were a question of "anything goes", then I could agree more easily with your position. But what you are suggesting is that after 8-10 years of education and experience and exams, the government still needs to hold the hand of the licensee in performing standard services.
I'm all for more regulation of business and corporate structures that, unchecked, tend to the unethical performance of business. But I believe in individual real people and their ability to perform ethically if they have the know how to do so.
So, my position is that there is something wrong with the licensing process if there is a problem with substandard work. And, the MTS will not solve that problem, because the unprepared will find a way around them, or a way to comply to the letter of the regulation without really complying, or sophisticated clients will find a way around it. For instance, they could search to the creation of the lines, but not know enough to know what they have found or how to apply the information to the situation at hand. Then they can say, hey I complied with MTS, I'm untouchable.
On the other hand, legislated requirements for subdivisions must be passed by democratic vote and if people don't like it they can vote their representatives out of office. These are really MTS's in that they address new creations and how they must be documented, rather than professional judgements. Regulations that circumvent that democratic process and professional judgement usually spiral out of control in the application stage if not in the formative stage. And subsequently do more harm than good.
It's for the children
> Well, were a question of "anything goes", then I could agree more easily with your position. But what you are suggesting is that after 8-10 years of education and experience and exams, the government still needs to hold the hand of the licensee in performing standard services.
Well, weren't you earlier arguing that whatever service a surveyor contracts with a member of the public to provide should be permissible? That was the alternative that you proposed to some ethical standard that required a certain level of research be performed in boundary surveys. So, in what way is "whatever the contract says" different from "anything goes"?
> I'm all for more regulation of business and corporate structures that, unchecked, tend to the unethical performance of business. But I believe in individual real people and their ability to perform ethically if they have the know how to do so.
Well, if the ethical rules can be stated and there is no serious objection to the principles they embody, what exactly is the objection to making those rules public and stating them formally? The "just do a good job" type of ethical rules have no practical consequences and so are mainly cosmetic rather than of any real benefit.
> So, my position is that there is something wrong with the licensing process if there is a problem with substandard work.
That ignores the fact of the marketplace. As long as land surveyors offer our services to members of the public in a marketplace in which fees are subject to negotiation between surveyor and client, the marketplace will tend to drive fees to as low a level as possible. In a situation where there is no bottom to how low the lowest level can be, things fall apart. Ethical practitioners find some other line of work and the lowest common denominator becomes the norm.
More importantly, the question isn't what a person would do if they were able to rewind history and start again, but how to proceed from the present to achieve certain long range goals that are both in the interest of the public and the profession. Setting minimum standards and enforcing them is a much more practical solution.
> Well sir... We shall disagree on the separation of technical standards and ethical standards.
Are you suggesting that ethical standards are not implied rules as to conduct? In what way is a minimum technical standard requiring, say, that permanent and durable markers be set not a rule of conduct?
My guess is that surveyors prefer to think of ethical rules as vague aspirational statements and so don't recognize concrete rules of conduct such as "a surveyor shall display his or her license at his or her place of business" as being merely part of the implementation of a statement of vague aspiration such as "the public shall be given every reason for confidence in representations made by a surveyor".
"Technical" simply means concrete and definite, and therefore subject to verification of compliance. Ethical rules for which compliance cannot be verified are simply pretty window dressing.
I am saying that meeting a technical standard does not make one an ethical surveyor.
It's for the children
So we agree; except for the part about "anything goes", that was your impression not mine.
We just disagree about how to get there.
You believe that power does not corrupt and appointed regulatory boards with little to no representation of the regulated activity are most capable of protecting the public. I believe power does corrupt and individual professionals are most capable of protecting the public.
Obviously it has to be a mix of these two. We just disagree on what that mix should be.
Yes, but it may help an unethical (or merely inadaquate) surveyor represent themselves as an ethical one. Therein lies the rub.
> I am saying that meeting a technical standard does not make one an ethical surveyor.
Except that without the technical standards, the ethical standards which are really just vague statements of aspirations are meaningless. Simply urging surveyors to "do a good job" means nothing. It's not as if it isn't possible to describe what "a good job" consist of in a way that fits all cases.
It's for the children
> So we agree; except for the part about "anything goes", that was your impression not mine.
>
> We just disagree about how to get there.
>
> You believe that power does not corrupt and appointed regulatory boards with little to no representation of the regulated activity are most capable of protecting the public. I believe power does corrupt and individual professionals are most capable of protecting the public.
>
> Obviously it has to be a mix of these two. We just disagree on what that mix should be.
I think that I'd say that the modern trend in the regulation of the surveying profession will probably be driven by consumers and a blindered idea of the merits of keeping costs of services to a minimum. This will necessarily produce a desire to license more surveyors than is needed on the theory that it will be an effective way of allowing market forces free to drive costs down. There is no particular reason to think that it would not in the short run lay the groundwork for the shriveling of surveying fees below levels that are neceesary to actually sustain the profession.
In that scenario, wanting only extremely well qualified individuals to be licensed is an unrealistic expectation as long as licensing boards answer to politicians. So, what is left to improve quality of both practitioners and services provided if not minimum standards to serve the dual purposes of (a) identifying surveyors who are not practicing at some minimally acceptable level and (b) leading to a consensus view of what the scope of services ought to include. I see both of those as more practical and both as justifiable on cost grounds, i.e. that they make the cost of the entire system less, not just some individual transaction that really just shifts costs elsewhere in the system.
>It's not as if it isn't possible to describe what "a good job" consist of in a way that fits all cases.
I disagree with this statement. You are telling me that somebody can write rules for the delivery of any and all possible professional services a land surveyor could be asked to deliver?
I think there is a place for technical standards and a place for ethical standards.
Every bourbon is a whiskey. Not every whiskey is a bourbon.
> >It's not as if it isn't possible to describe what "a good job" consist of in a way that fits all cases.
>
> I disagree with this statement. You are telling me that somebody can write rules for the delivery of any and all possible professional services a land surveyor could be asked to deliver?
No, I'm saying that it is possible to describe what constitutes quality in a land boundary survey since that is the licensed activity in Texas.
