Collegiate Times

It means spending six or seven days every week making sure that orders are placed, food and beverages come in on time, money is accounted for and complying with a long list of government regulations. It means only two weeks of vacation once every three years.

Furthermore, owning a business does not even guarantee riches. There are plenty of people who will graduate from Tech and immediately take jobs with large corporations that pay more than a small business owner's profits.

Contrast this to the restaurant employees who need only show up, punch in, work their shift, punch out and leave. I'm not saying that employees don't work hard, because I know from personal experience that they do. Yet without the untold hours of mental as well as physical angst on the part of the business owner those jobs would not exist at all.

Some have also argued that the government already regulates business (restaurants in particular), so where's the harm in one more?

More regulation means higher cost of doing business, whether it is time spent doing all the necessary paperwork, or the direct loss of income because of compliance (e.g. restricting what business owners can allow in their own establishments). This not only harms the owner, but potentially limits the number and salary of his employees. Given that small businesses are the lifeblood of any local economy, we should be calling for less regulation, not more.

I'll even go so far as to say there should be no government regulation of commerce whatsoever. Yes, business owners do not always do what is best for the so-called collective good, but at least we have a choice where to spend our money. In a purely free market, a business that engages in poor practices will not remain in business for long. This is in stark contrast to the government that has sheer force to bend people to its will. Given the choice between the businessman with a product to sell and the bureaucrat with hired thugs, I'll take the former.

I know I've digressed from the particular issue of smoking, but that is really just a subset of the larger debate over whether we should be free to make our own decisions, take risks, and possibly reap the benefits or allow others to tell us how to live our lives in the name of the collective good. The former viewpoint is called liberty, the latter is called fascism.

And smoking is healthier than fascism.

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