Flutterby™! : protectionism

In several of his books, Terry Pratchett has explained the government sanction of the existence of the guild of thieves in that universe by pointing out that there are no better organizations for restraining the practice of a trade in order to keep demand high than guilds.

It seems to me that even were the thieves to have government sanction, they'd still only aspire to be Realtor^tms. Case in point: Redfin advertises itself as "Find, Buy and Sell Homes Online". They had a weblog describing various properties that they'd visited with more than over-inflated square footage numbers and all caps listings with abbreviations that couldn't possibly mean what you thought they meant. Things like comparing a house to a pair of $1200 jeans. And now they "...will no longer publish eyewitness property reviews because of a local MLS rule that deems them an advertisement of another brokers' listing."

(I should also note that back before the Internet, Meuon and I tried to start an alternative to the local MLS without understanding the politics of Realtor^tms. Wow, was that an eye-opener, when "The Sopranos" is over and they need another profession with lots of backstabbing and twists and turns to chronicle, I think a real estate TV show could be really hot...)