reprinted from October 10, 2003

  Yesterday, I described some of the difficulties of getting around government obstacles to become an entrepreneur... particularly for small start-up firms.

You can get an idea just how serious this problem is by knowing that the libertarian Institute for Justice created, as part of the University of Chicago Law School, the Clinic on Entrepreneurship, the nation's first law firm that actively seeks to stimulate the private sector in an American inner city by providing transactional assistance to entrepreneurs. The Clinic provides training for law students that allows them, with supervision, to provide such assistance. It's a model program that IJ intends to duplicate, and it has been enormously successful, needing a lottery to select from the large number of students who want to enroll, and numerous small businesses successfully launched.

A businessperson needs to know a mind-boggling web of laws, rules, and regulations to survive. He or she also needs to know how to circumvent bureaucratic inefficiency and to avoid bureaucratic tyranny. The journey is easier with the help of experienced and enthusiastic legal counsel. Though legal guidance has always been available to those who either have the means to afford it or who seek legal redress in the courtroom, counsel for low- to moderate-income entrepreneurs has been a rare commodity.

Here's what Barron's said about the Clinic:

"Like a barber college that gives free haircuts, the clinic lets students practice business law on people who need free business advice. Everyone has the right to earn an honest living. ‘For too long, people have believed that statism and central government were the answers to poverty,’ James Joseph, Assistant Director of the IJ Clinic, says. ‘In helping to create microbusinesses…we show that the will to survive and profit is nearly universal.’"

Forbes said:

"Who’s going to be opposed to helping small business? In Chicago the government might be. Politicians still use regulation and patronage to keep constituents dependent on handouts and government jobs. One alderman told law student Daniel Liljenquist that he didn’t want his constituents going into business for themselves because it might lead them to believe they could become self-sufficient.
Says James Joseph, the Clinic’s assistant director, ‘For the longest time inner-city residents have been told there’s one option: government entitlements. We’re trying to show them that they can create markets themselves.’"

The Clinic on Entrepreneurship is a magnificent example of a libertarian solution to problems caused by overreaching government... government trying to regulate every aspect of our lives... trying to protect us from ourselves. The fact that starting a small business should even require a specialized lawyer is the real problem, and the real solution is to get rid of all those laws and regulations.

The simple truth is that most such laws and regulations, and government agencies, were created at the urging of large companies and their industry associations, trying to keep new, small businesses from becoming competitors. The more difficult large existing firms can make it for newcomers, the less competition they'll have. Laws, codes, and regulations kill good ideas every day, and give a big, unfair advantage to large existing businesses.

Now before you get too angry at those large, self-protecting businesses, remind yourself that we're talking about government laws, codes, and regulations. The businesses pushed for them, but our "government leaders" are the ones who put them in place, and they're the only ones who can get rid of them. Whether they actually believed they were protecting us or were doing it in order to gain votes or political contributions is somewhat beside the point... the result is terribly destructive regardless of their intent.

Given the almost constant reporting of scandals in government, it's very hard to give them the benefit of the doubt. You may recall a number of high-level officials being caught with illegal immigrant household help, for whom they weren't filing taxes... ignoring laws the rest of us are expected to obey. You may recall local scandals involving extortion from businessmen by government officials. The more power government has, the more corruption there will be.

Every time we use the power of government force we destroy opportunity, and we're usually destroying it for those who need it the most. Every time you hear a political candidate tell you that they're going to protect the poor, take care of the needy, and make us all safer... recognize it for what it is... exactly the opposite.