Architectural licensure is a system of governmental discrimination to prohibit "unqualified" individuals from offering architectural services. The purpose of architectural licensure is to reduce risks to the health, safety, and welfare of the public. The goals of successful architectural licensure should be to minimize the public risks of unsafe buildings while also minimizing the deleterious effects of governmental discrimination on the rights of individuals to compete in the free market for architectural services.

The first of these goals is achieved by current laws that require buildings to be designed safely according to the measurable standards of building codes. Anyone should be allowed to design any building, as long as he can prove it is code-compliant. In order to facilitate the cooperative enforcement between code officials and architects, it is reasonable to require architects to demonstrate their understanding of building codes before allowing them to submit designs for approval. This could be easily done through an objective examination that tests specifically for an individual's working knowledge of the building codes.

The second of these goals is obstructed by current licensure requirements that marginalize the first goal in favor of a prejudicial system of discrimination that enables one group of people to "design" tomorrow's architects to conform to their values.

Current internship requirements create several obstructions to competition in the industry. Internship requirements guarantee existing firms an annual supply of cheap labor, since graduates seeking licensure cannot solicit competitive offers in other industries. Graduates are prohibited from establishing competitive firms of their own and are limited in their ability to freelance. By the time they get licensed, many will be comfortable in their jobs and more interested in investing in their homes, retirement, and families than investing in a risky new business of their own. Education and internship requirements assure existing firms that very few new firms will be created each year to compete with them.

The Intern Development Program assimilates interns into the status quo of architectural practice. Where IDP is mandatory, interns have few incentives to reject industry standards in favor of more inspired solutions to everyday problems, yet recent graduates may be the best informed about cutting-edge technologies and design theories. In mandating specific roles for interns within firms, IDP reduces the utility of interns and makes them less valuable in the employment marketplace. The singular goal of "getting licensed" makes it difficult for busy interns to focus on more productive career goals.

With artificially limited competition and cheap skilled labor, firms have little pressure to invest in the kind of research and development that has propelled other information-based industries in recent years. By homogenizing their most creative and technologically advanced employees, firms are squandering the people best equipped to undertake this research and development. The public suffers the consequences of this sloth through high prices and shortages of available architectural services. The best way to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of the public is to remove oppressive barriers to architectural licensure and let tomorrow's architects design
themselves.