An unfortunately perennial story that always gets traction here on the Right goes something like this: precocious youngsters, hoping to engage in some earnest enterprise, start selling lemonade or the like from a roadside stand. The kids are doing well and making good money (for kids), until an overzealous local health board official sends in the cops to bust up the lemonade stand. Like Treasury Department revenuers smashing up a yokel’s still, these local officials destroy children’s dreams—and sometimes slap them with a fine.
It’s a story that guarantees outrage, and highlights the clueless, stringent rule-following of bureaucracies. Yes, yes—technically you’re not supposed to sell lemonade and hot dogs without some kind of license, and the health department is supposed make sure your establishment is clean. But these are kids, selling stuff on the side of the road. Why bother? Let them have fun and make a little money.
The latest such story involves two young ladies selling eggs in their town in Texas. The Lone Star State has been reeling since the major winter storm hit a month or so back, and food supplies have been disrupted. Having some backyard eggs for sale surely helped out some locals.
Unbeknownst to the girls—but beknownst to some overweening Karen, no doubt—a local ordinance prohibits the selling of eggs, though it permits the raising of chickens on one’s property. That’s asinine. Why can’t people sell eggs in a small town in Texas?
