I hear you on 'always' and say - while strenuously protesting that I am not a luddite - that many jobs required apprenticeship. Some in the US still do and in places like Japan its a requirement. In France you can still make a living as a butcher and if the Great Pottery Throwdown is to be believed you can be a successful scrub nurse or elder care manager in the UK and still own a home and have the wherewithal to be a fantastic potter, in a home pottery studio. (that last bit is tongue in cheek).
Capitalists gonna capitalist.
But they are limited to differing degrees due to policy. Our current state isn't inevitable.
Statutorily for sure. Most don’t require apprenticeships as a part of the job/role fundamentally though. Electricians (classic apprenticeship setup there) for instance could be made through formal trade school + probationary period, and it would likely be even better than it is now. If it works, it works though.
Generally, It’s a means of locking in stasis in a particular field in general, or restricting competition to the ‘have’s’, just like the old Guild setup before that. Still very much a thing for MD’s in the US.
There is a reason why France in particular is notorious for not getting anything done.
German’s do it too of course, but in their own way which is focused more on results, so it tends to be less sclerotic and more productive.
It’s always a trade off - more protectionism, or more churn/chaos/competition. If they can provide good labor protections while maintaining economic growth enough to ‘lift the tide’ overall, hard to fault them. It’s easy to go so far that it strangles the economy and locks everyone into a pointlessly inefficient setup in favor of the protected classes though. (And they won’t necessarily be rich protected classes either).
Europe’s tide hasn’t been rising very rapidly for awhile, and many EU countries are clearly insolvent overall (Greece, Italy, etc), so we’ll see how long they can sustain it.
And housing wise - to be somewhat on topic - very unlikely those Nurses in the UK are doing so in London.
Capitalists gonna capitalist.
But they are limited to differing degrees due to policy. Our current state isn't inevitable.