It certainly is. However, I'd say that a craftsman also has a fiduciary responsibility to make his or her work up to the standards of the craft.

Agreed Dave. It is a package deal.

There's an old Malcolm Gladwell article that shows how astonishingly superficial student evaluations are. Glimpsing a photo of the instructor for less than a second correlates very well with end-of-semester evaluations. It's very dismaying.

Or maybe there is some strange correlation between how a professor looks, and how well they teach. Or, more likely, a correlation between how a student feels about a professor's physical appearance and how well they learn from him.

Is that not a fiduciary responsibility?

It certainly is. However, I'd say that a craftsman also has a fiduciary responsibility to make his or her work up to the standards of the craft.

Always, what I do is a craft, sometimes it is an art (and yes, a time or 2 I have built things which could only be imagined on paper), but most times:

I think that a “professional attitude”, by which is generally meant a systematic and conscientious attention to one's work, is desireable but that doesn't make what you're doing a profession, it just makes you good at whatever you do.

and yet as you say,

A key difference among these various different forms of work is the sort of fiduciary responsibility involved.

And as I have explained to innumerable cubs, we have one job and one job only.... to make the guy who signs our check money. Is that not a fiduciary responsibility?

Again, the lines blur, and I have had to argue it more than once...

Note that I don't mean to denigrate any particular form of employment by classifying it.

A profession is a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation. There is also the implication of serving the public good in pursuing a profession. Traditionally, the professions are teaching, the law, medicine, the military, and the clergy and generally speaking they all derive from clerical functions. It used to be required that all members of most professions perform pro bono work. I think that requirement should be re-instated.

When you're involved in buying and selling things you're in trade.

Making things is a craft. The ancient crafts are carpentry, masonry, etc. The modern crafts include being an electrician, a computer programmer, or even a newspaper reporter.

Performing or making things that are primarily decorative is following the arts.

Unskilled work, e.g. shovelling gravel, carrying burdens, etc., is labor.

I think that a “professional attitude”, by which is generally meant a systematic and conscientious attention to one's work, is desireable but that doesn't make what you're doing a profession, it just makes you good at whatever you do.

A key difference among these various different forms of work is the sort of fiduciary responsibility involved.

No, it isn't. Sales is a trade. It is not a profession. That's a misuse of the term.

Ok Dave, I have to ask, how do you define the 2? I am a carpenter, and I have yet to meet a carpenter who thinks carpentry is anything other than a trade, but we all consider ourselves professionals...

Do you see the blurring of the lines?

sales is a profession in and of itself

No, it isn't. Sales is a trade. It is not a profession. That's a misuse of the term.