We're happy to report that the girls and their father are fighting back, circulating a permission to let the girls reopen their stand. The story is receiving national attention, and of course most decent and sensible people are on the side of the kids.
But few of these same people will bother to think about the fuller implications of the story. How many *adults* see their business plans and entrepreneurial dreams burdened or destroyed by red tape and bureaucratic control -- by occupational licensing laws, zoning laws, permit requirements and countless other authoritarian measures?
There's seldom a word written about these tragedies, which occur constantly nowadays -- an outrage in a country founded on the ideals of entrepreneurship and free enterprise...
So why do these laws exist? Liberator Online readers will not be surprised to learn that the push for such laws comes exclusively from established industry leaders, such as the American Society of Interior Designers.
These organizations, quite simply, want to keep out competition and thus enrich themselves. And they're succeeding. According to the free-market Foundation for Economic Education, these laws have already put thousands of would-be interior designers, mainly middle-aged and elderly women, out of work...
Today, an incredible one in five Americans must secure the government's permission to pursue their occupation -- a figure that has risen from about one in 20 in the 1950s...
Frequently the War on Marijuana is defended as necessary to keep drugs out of the hands of young people.
But judged by that standard, the War on Pot is a farce and an extraordinary failure...
A recent survey by the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University has some stunning news: 46 percent of government (public) school teachers support education tax credits -- and just 41 percent oppose them.
Yes, that's right: more government school teachers support education tax credits than oppose them...
Tax credits would open up a world of educational options and alternatives for kids now stuck in dead-end, failing government schools. In addition, tax credits would save states billions of dollars.
When government school teachers support the idea in such large numbers, there is great hope for genuine education reform...
"If you took all the fraud out of politics, there might not be a lot left." -- libertarian economist and syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell.
A tax cut is a pay raise.
A tax hike is a pay cut...
And property taxes amount to, in practice, a kind of "rent" you have to pay the government each year to be allowed to keep living on your own property!
In a libertarian society, government couldn't take your land by eminent domain. There would be no zoning boards. Deed restrictions, which you would be aware of when you bought the property, would be the only limitations on what you did with your property. Deed restrictions would protect your property rights, and also protect your neighbor's property rights, far more fairly and effectively than zoning laws...
If you like the idea of having the freedom to do any peaceful thing you wish on your own property, you just might be a libertarian...
Liberator Online - August 29, 2008
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