Written: March 8, 2018 | Released: July 2, 2021 Guilds are common and enormously influential today. We're so used to the way that society is organized that it's easy not to notice what a "guild-based" society we have. While guilds provide major benefits, they also come with societal costs that I think are almost always under-appreciated. What I'm referring to here are professional groups that have achieved a monopoly or near-monopoly on providing a certain type of service. (Note: I'll be ...