The paper ceiling is a silly gatekeeping done by those who have made it.

I would be in favor of licensing knowing it would probably exclude me unless of course it does not require a university degree. I was not born into a family of means and being autodidactic allowed me to excel beyond my upbringing.

The best path would be to have journeyman type of pathway.

No.

You'd still need to interview people because there's no license that will tell you who the good/great candidates are

And now you've moved the job of administering and evaluating coding tests to an organization that only does that.

Who would want to work at such a place? Why would I trust the opinions of people who work at such a place?

It is good enough for plumbing, bricklaying, food service etc. Why not coding.

I'm going to make the extremely controversial statement that writing software is a lot more difficult than all of those things.

I acknowledge that some feel their contributions are at that level, but that doesn't mean it's the norm.