Apparently very important in the Spanish speaking world as well.

A personal point of reference: DrMarketTrustee, a physician, declined MD (medical doctor) designation on his vehicle license plate once he'd determined that this "privilege" (to park anywhere) increased his personal risk of vandalism and theft. Neither my brother (JD) nor my father (LLB) prefer "Doctor" or demand that anyone address them thus, although both have been required to maintain licenses --by continuous certification and ethical sanctions, "good faith," shall we say-- for the lifetimes of their professional careers.

One cannot understate the "value" differential between metaphorical and mortal death, denoted by license and connoted by a body of laws and their enforcement. The expression of that differential is ruled by proximity to murder. PhDs are the least "accountable" doctors, yes, even within the trade of mental health services, psychology/psychiatry.

Thank god, if no one else, that someone in government still, somehow, discriminates licenses.

The instrumentality of "license" is an interesting topic, especially when comparing privileges of "freedom" to practice (or to trade) and  procedures of  "certification" in subject matter expertise by territory ... such as the UK, France, Germany, and USA. The topic of subject matter expertise itself is subject to continuous objective verification of practical application, although as a rule (ideologically speaking) academics (persons not usually subject to tort litigation) have argued that time (t: roughly, a 10 year arbitrary constraint and cummulative period of education) approximating a quantity of random responses apposing Q/t short-term recall to worldly events is a sufficient metric of applicable expertise (cf. Herbert Simon, just one "laureate" example).

Now let us ponder: Article 1, §9 of the US Constitution however expressly forbids the federal government and the states from conferring "titles of nobility", where here I will note that the word "nobility" is atavistic in extremis and bears no credential today save divine "rights" arrogated by some monarch; its meanings are more poetical with respect to apparent, that is to say accepted or justified belief of, expertise:

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

That is a good thing. That is why I refer to the lowest common denomitator in title, Mr or Ms or "pole-smoker."

Everyone makes mistakes. Reliability is a fallacy --OK, approximation-- of certainty. Certainty, as most apprehend and live it, is a function of human relations, who you know. One's hereditary seat in a chamber of Parliament, for example, or manipulation of political "opportunities" through trade alliances.

While I am pleased for you that you completed your certification in your chosen academic subject matter, I cannot help but caution you. Title of address is no certification of expertise. Expertise is guarantee of practical good. That is the moral of one's prescription for either remedy of bad acts or creation of good acts. Peer-reviewed acceptance, truth, of intellectual exercise is void, though entertaining. Unlike Mr Obama or Mr Sarkozy yet somewhat like Mr McConnell (ha!), every academic and pundit must administrate their claim to expertise.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

But the university I got my M.A, from is unique and small enough that there is a frisson of freemasonic recognition if I meet any fellow graduates. I suppose that is true of most hard-to-get-into universities.

You can't be me, I'm taken