That's certainly your call.
Prospective divers still don't know who will properly cover the material they they need to learn, even with certification agencies. Ditching the agencies wouldn't be a great loss.
With no industry behind SCUBA, only the truly motivated would bother finding and instructor and learning to dive, and they would find out "who is a good instructor" by asking their friends, the same way they find roofers, mechanics and masons.
flots.
Ditching the agencies would kill the diving Industry... With no regulations or s&p to follow other then what the governments dictate, insurance would skyrocket... Quite frankly the accident rate would go thru the roof and the new fears that would create would bury whats left of this industry... Who's marketing scuba diving? Is it you, the LDS or the Internet websites like leisure pro...? I think not. If it wasn't for certification agencies, the diver population would be close to a small Amazonian tribe... Millions of dollars have been spent marketing scuba, who is going to foot that bill in your future with out the agencies? No industry behind scuba??? You most truly have an acute perspective on this matter, it's a billion dollar industry...