I reject the advice that everyone should start a business. It’s not for everyone. Not everyone is interested in working incredibly long hours for little or no pay for however long it might take, just to face the possibility that they’ll never succeed.
But entrepreneurship is a key part of the fabric of this nation. Major corporations don’t start out that way. They’re built into that, with many starting with just a few people and a dream.
It’s how capitalism works.
So I got more than a bit upset when I came across this story, which isn’t the first of its kind I’ve run across through the years.
Bored and looking for something to do this summer, Danny Doherty hatched a plan to raise money for his brother's hockey team by selling homemade ice cream.
But a few days after setting up a stand and serving up vanilla, shaved chocolate and fluffernutter to about 20 people, Danny's family received a letter from the Norwood Board of Health ordering it shut down. Town officials had received a complaint and said that the 12-year-old's scheme violated the Massachusetts Food Code, a state regulation.
“I was surprised and upset,” he said of the letter that came Aug. 5. “I don't understand because there are so many lemonade stands and they don't get shut down.”
Danny's mom, Nancy Doherty, who had encouraged her son to start the stand as long as he donated half of the proceeds to charity, also was taken aback.
“Somebody complained. That was the most disappointing part for us was that somebody thought it necessary to complain about a child's stand,” she said. “It seemed a little, you know, crazy if you ask me.”
Now, the kid adjusted fire and raised an insane amount of money, which is great, but I’m focused on what the government did here.
Usually, this sort of thing usually targets the good old lemonade stands, but it’s all part of the same thing, and I consider it an act of war.
It’s a war on entrepreneurship and work ethic.
Kids are legally prohibited from holding regular jobs, for the most part. Some kids are driven to do things, to build things, and the lemonade stand is an old standby for many people, particularly on streets with relatively decent foot traffic.
No one who buys a glass of lemonade or some ice cream from a kid’s stand is expecting the same standards they would at a restaurant. They know there are some risks associated with it, but they’re minimal and they’re helping a kid out. They don’t actually care.
But the government needs to swoop in and wreck what these kids are trying to do not because of health concerns, in my opinion, but because they don’t want people building up this idea that they can exist without the state.
This was another shot in the war for the soul of the nation, this one from those who would see us all dependent on the state for all our needs.
If people figure out they can build something of their own, be their own bosses, and build a business that can outlast them, they might not want to work for the big corporations that buy politicians by the bucket load.
Owning a business isn’t for everyone, but it is for a lot of people. Those people should be encouraged while we accept those that have no interest in doing any such thing.
And a lot of those people figure out that this is for them when they’re young, via things like this.
It’s billed as a public health issue, but it’s not. It’s about teaching kids to stay in their lane, go to college, and get a job where they can be a widget in someone else’s machine and be downright miserable because they’re not wired that way.
Meanwhile, this is Boston, where a kid can’t sell ice cream to raise money for his brother’s hockey team, but if he wants to whack his genitals off, woe unto anyone who says he can’t.
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