That’s why Robert Fernandes, a father of two, founded Lemonade Freedom Day. On Saturday, August 20, Fernandes wants children and their parents across the country to set up lemonade stands in their neighborhoods—without applying for permits, undergoing inspections, or paying any fees.
If a child wants to learn a little something about running a business, he or she should be able to do it without being pestered, harassed, bothered, disturbed, perturbed, nettled, exasperated, stifled, fined, or regulated.
The rest of us can also learn a lesson. Unthinking, uncaring bureaucracy kills entrepreneurship, businesses, and jobs. If you can’t even set up a lemonade stand for an afternoon without paying tribute to your local bureaucratic overlords (and thereby help keep them in their highly paid jobs), then what hope is there for the start-up or small business owner hoping to expand?
Genuine deregulation is our best hope to kick-start the economy. As we like to say at CEI, you don’t have to teach the grass to grow; you just need to take the rocks off of it. In that spirit, it’s time to get the cops and bureaucrats off the backs of entrepreneurs who are still in elementary school.