Small Business 101

When it comes to conflict resolution, you just can’t beat the State!

In Salem, Mass., a sausage stand owner last weekend finked on two grade-school kids, ages 9 and 11, who were running an unlicensed lemonade stand near his business. The sausage guy called the cops about his young competitors last Saturday, saying he wanted the lemonade stand moved further away. But since the children couldn’t raise the necessary $2,200 vendor’s license, the police shut down their business altogether.

However — hooray! — Salem’s Mayor Stanley Usovicz came to the rescue! Yesterday, he decreed that the kids could operate as subcontractors under the sausage man’s vending license! The agreement expires when school starts. “What we’ve experienced here,” said the mayor, “was a corporate merger and it’s good for all.”

What the two grade-schoolers really experienced was a hard lesson about government regulation of the market. Read the Washington Post story here.