Credentialing is useful, especially in cases where other forms of information are difficult to obtain.
Medicine is a good example. As a patient you don't really have the expertise (and maybe not the time) to determine if your physician is of good quality. You rely, partially, on the credential received by getting a medical degree and passing the boards. While not perfect, it gives you some information.
The same goes for computer science. If I were looking for an expert witness for some computer science related legal case I'd take their credentials into account -- in part because a jury will.
But hiring a programmer is different. Like I said in my original post a computer science degree isn't a programming credential. There's some overlap, but the degree of overlap is variable and generally unrelated to program quality -- Stanford tends to have a lot more pragmatic "programming" courses than MIT, at least historically.
Additionally with hiring a programmer you, the person doing the hiring is also usually an expert in the field. You can more easily ascertain their degree of knowledge and aptitude in areas you care about. Plus you have more time to do so (you'll usually get a full day if not more to question them).
Now with that said, do I consider CS degrees when hiring? Honestly it depends. If I was hiring someone to do some signal processing work I'm more inclined to look for someone with graduate degree background in the field, as a starting point. It's a domain that tracks closely to foundational work. OTOH, for a web dev I'm just as likely to hire someone who dropped out of high school as a PhD -- since frankly the PhD probably has spent less time doing web development than anyone else. But in all cases, if you come to me with some asset that shows great skill in what I'm looking for -- maybe a portfolio, or a paper you wrote, or a program, or a recommendation from someone I respect -- that will always get you in the door, period.
Unfortunately that isn't an efficient solution when you have hundreds of applications to process. Perhaps this is why degrees are often required for entry-level software positions as someone with a degree is seen to be better employees (compared to the high school drop outs).
A lot of what pg says is accurate, but this line left me scratching my head, "No one likes the transmission of power between generations—not the left or the right."
This is one of the core tenants of the right, which is to maintain the status quo with respect to power. The easiest way to do this is to end entitlements, get rid of taxes, most importantly the estate tax.
As an ex-academic with this view, how much stock do you put in credentials?