Back what up? I never made any claims about whether DIY is more dangerous or not. But the fact is that DIY or not, certain regulations must be followed when doing repairs - this is written into law in most countries. You're not allowed, for example, to hook up an oven to a 30A breaker using speaker wire. Because we can't trust that everyone will know not to do that, certifications have been designed to ensure correct knowledge and skill and those certifications are often mandated by law. You have two options - either get certified, so you can be trusted to carry out the work yourself, or get someone who is certified to at least look it over. Seems entirely reasonable.

> You have two options - either get certified, so you can be trusted to carry out the work yourself, or get someone who is certified to at least look it over. Seems entirely reasonable.

That it seems entirely reasonable is most of the problem.

Because people imagine that getting certified is a two week safety course, and that getting inspected is paying someone $10 to spend ten minutes looking over your five minute job.

But then the licensed professionals capture the regulators and the licensing requirement stops being about safety and starts being about gatekeeping, so getting licensed becomes impractical for anyone not full-time gainfully employed in that industry. And the gatekeeping and bureaucracy cause the inspection to require weeks to get an appointment and the payment of $150 over the replacement of a $10 light switch.

Then, you notice that the light in your living room flickers sometimes. You would be inclined to have your buddy the electrical engineer come have a look except that he's not a licensed electrician and you're not convinced that the lights flickering once in a while is a problem whose solution is worth $150. Two months later the light switch with the bad connection finally overheats and your house burns down. Or you're willing to pay the money but it takes 15 days to get an appointment and the amount of time you had before the problem became a fire was two weeks.

Making repairs to safety-critical things less accessible is dangerous.

Great point. My brother and I tried to get some type of electricians license in order to do our DIY work more "professionally".

I took household lighting classes at the local community college and our union electrician uncle helped use redo his house.

Impossible in my state to get a electrician license without doing 1+ years as an apprentice under a electrical company full-time. Once you get the "apprentice" license, you then spend another year or two under more supervision to become a journeyman.

At that point you are able to pull permits and work on your own. So 3-5 years working as a full time electrician. They expect you to learn everything on the job and eventually take a test.

More time to get an electrician license than to become a licensed police officer (250 hours of academy training).

Sweet. All of that to legally change a dishwasher in my house.

So all of the people on this forum spouting off about "certified electricians" are either part of the electrician racket themselves or have 0 actual clue what they are talking about.