Damaging anachronism
Professional chambers can play an extremely crucial role in promoting the interests of traders and entrepreneurs and acting as their voice. In many countries they do just that.
However, there is little logic in making membership of these chambers compulsory for all businesses and forcing them to pay fees irrespectively of whether the chamber is a good representative or not.
If a chamber is really active and effective – basically if it is doing it’s job properly – then every business will be eager to sign up and join it.
If, however, a chamber limits its role to acting as a vehicle for certain entrepreneurs to fulfill their personal ambitions or as a hub for serving patron-client relationships, then it is destined to gradually disappear.
At a time when people, and especially people in the business community, are cautious about how they spend every single euro of their hard-earned money, forcing them to become members of a particular chamber is nothing more than an anachronism that needs to be terminated before it does more harm than good.
