The town of Burns Harbor, Ind., is being justifiably criticized for the law it enacted earlier this summer requiring non-residents to get fingerprinted, undero a criminal background check and get a $100 permit before they're allowed to make or sell anything in town, whether on the street, door-to-door or in a brick-and-mortar business:
The town council is abusing its authority. Alas, theirs is a common attitude. The normal mindset among U.S. officials is that prior permission should be required to sell legal goods to a willing buyer. Kids selling lemonade on the street are shut down. A Missouri man has been fined $90,000 for selling rabbits (he made about $200). In Illinois, an artisan ice cream maker is being shut down for lack of a dairy permit. Manuel Winn was arrested, handcuffed, and booked for selling magazines door-to-door without a permit. A Maryland mother of three was arrested for selling $2 phone cards without a license. Lots of municipalities are going after food trucks. A group of Louisiana monks had to go to court to win the right to sell simple wooden caskets to consumers.
If you read enough of these stories, you'll see the targeted entrepreneurs say the same thing again and again: I just had a good idea and started a business. It never occurred to me that I needed permission. And, of course, other would be entrepreneurs don't ever get started because they're too intimidated to assess and grapple with the bureaucratic hurdles. Or else the regulations are written in a way that excludes from commerce folks who are operating at a very small scale.
Such lunacy is especically difficult to accept in the kind of tough economic environment we face today. But it's wrong any time. Since the American way is to encourage entrepreneurial enterprise for those facing setbacks, you could eve
