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Tim Tyler's avatar

Right, so: many of those who will benefit significantly from hiring career agents will have already hired them - in which case, government-funded career advice is unlikely to help much. There will be plenty more who think they can manage themselves better than an advisory firm could do. Others will receive career advice from friends and family - who also care about their welfare. In practice, career advice also comes from employers - who probably won't tell their own employees to switch careers, but can help those who want to climb internal career ladders. I think it all eats into the scale of the benefits.

However, if the benefits are possibly significant, a pilot program with economic experiments that bear on the issue seems appropriate. Privatizing career advice services does seem like a reasonable idea to me - one that's at least worth trying. Privatizing numerous other aspects of government has worked quite well. We already have privatized tax collection - which seems related.

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RobinHanson's avatar

Tax farmers have a lot of discretion re who to make how much in taxes. These tax career agents, in contrast, have no powers over how much tax is collected from who.

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