Just try starting a small business in the US? 

You will face a mountain of laws that say you are not worthy to be in business.  That does not sound American to me.  How about you? Those who have skipped the skip or danced the dance will tell you that you have to compromise your ideals to get what you want from the government.  Is that true?

No matter how good your idea, it will be all but impossible to gain the capital necessary if you are a reasonably unknown entrepreneur.  But, if you know somebody who knows somebody who knows a Congressman, they tell me your business can get a boost big enough to get it started. Red tape can be masked for the privileged and those "in the know." 

Doesn't that make the fur on the back of you neck stand up straight?

Maybe you don't even need to have a product or service to be successful, but let's not talk about Northeastern PA folklore.  You know that is not how it should work and when I am elected as your Senator, I promise to  change this paradigm and if I cannot, please send me home on the first bus.  OK!  I won't give up so fast!  But, I will feel like it!  I will publish the names of all the people who want to make government corrupt.  Then I will work to remove them from government.

How do you like me so far?

Would it not be nice to have a system that empowers rather than punishes entrepreneurs --- small and home-based businesses by encouraging the federal and state legislators and the municipalities to make it easy for us all to do business in that state, or municipality just because we are all in the US.  My state is Pennsylvania and regrettably it is as bad as the rest.  I know I can't even get a permit for working on my own house without bringing in either a contractor or a priest who will say I am not lying. OK, I jest but most of us feel it is this bad.  The officials from what I have seen like the idea of bringing in a contractor because they are more likely to understand envelope ethics than a priest.  

It is widely accepted that even in a truly market-oriented economy, some level of regulation is necessary. Natural behaviors of economic agents will not always lead to perfect competition and market equilibrium.  It would be nice that every business that is created, in turn creates situations in which consumers enjoy the highest possible level of enfranchisement and prosperity. Sir Thomas More and Henry David Thoreau would agree for sure. But business does not bring Utopia, and government would pervert it if it were to ever arrive.  

Nothing is perfect but regulations are so less than perfect there is an outhouse odor as you even approach a house of regulation.  You know that to start a perfectly safe business in which a reasonable prudent person would say -- Yeah!, there will be a bureaucrat at some level to shut you and it down. Who gave these people such influence over our freedoms?

Yes, there are issues that we all need to be protected from but--not being able to earn a living--is not one of these things.  We do not have to be perfect and should not have to be perfect and none of the regulations on any set of books are perfect unto themselves. 

Some suggest we need regulation for negative externalities (e.g. pollution), information asymmetries (such as a moral hazard and adverse selection in the insurance sector). And, oh, there are natural monopolies. Admittedly, they exist, albeit for a limited period of time.  Isn't this all hooey? Any freedome stealing regulation needs to pass a few sniff tests designed by the people that are in full accordance with the Constitution. Simple things like putting butter on bread are soon to be outlawed by the regulators, who we permit to run our lives. Enough already! 

The Heritage Foundation, though mostly Republican does come up with some good ideas regarding business and freedom.  They suggest that when the hand of government rises beyond the ‘minimal level’, it begins to erode and corrode freedom.

We see freedom disappearing in may ways in Obamaland today. Yet it is inconceivable that our own municipalities and states would limit their ability by limiting our ability to create businesses that benefit us all. Yet, they do.  Municipalities and Cities and Counties and States that give the regular humans an opportunity to flourish, rather than protect the favored, always do well.  Northeastern Pennsylvania, where I live, and other prominent Pennsylvania cities would not be cited in the former but there is no reason that in the future we all cannot have our day. 

Economic freedom is always the first to go.  When government continues to interfere as it seems to like to do, at its many levels, and especially recently, this expansion of state power requires enforcement and therefore it requires funding. This funding of course is also extracted from the people. 

So, by clamping down on business opportunity with regulations, ironically the government requires and thus demands more tribute to pay for the regulations.  It is no wonder that many blame the lack of prosperity today on excessive regulation at all levels of government.  Please Mr. Government, let business conduct business, and let charities handle the poor. Your intervention, Mr. Government makes business ineffective and it reduces individual and business opportunity for prosperity.

Ask any small business person about the persecution of government forms.  Government rules at its lowest, inconsequential levels by providing forms which appear to be written by lawyers for lawyers but in fact they are written by bureaucrats to stifle individual opportunity. Why?   Maybe if they used proper English we would easily be able to tell they were incompetent?  

Even with the forms as written. perhaps government interns can be used for startup busienesses to get beyond the mire. These young minds ca perhaps help the states and municipalities to voluntarily reduce the paperwork for new businesses to start and to flourish.  Surely, where government regulations are concerned, for the prosperity of businesses and individuals, less is surely more. Additionally, businesses need a break today in so many ways, and the economy is sour because instead of breaks, the government is piling on.

Therefore, all governments are negligent if they choose not to examine all the stifling regulations that may have seemed good when enacted, but which impact jobs negatively. Let's, at all levels of government, vow  to remove all the muck from the books that we can.  If we want to have jobs, the situation can be made much better so that the person or company who can provide jobs actually believes it is a desirable notion and one favored by the municipality, the state, and the Federal Government. We all know It can be made lots better.

Somehow these three entities for years have thought they had a mission from God to place roadblocks in front of all business activity. Let's start by eradicating that mentality from all public servants. Government at all levels were looking for a means of conforming business activity.  Instead today, there is no business activity to be regulated as government has conformed business out of business.  Now that there is virtually no new business activity, maybe a few less roadblocks may cause the level of activity to increase. Because there is no business is no reason for cities and states to throw their arms up in despair. Instead it is their obligation to make conditions right that somebody with a good idea can launch a business overnight if not sooner.

Where are the bureaucrats when we need them? 

It just makes sense.