Breaking the Law, and Supporting Small Business

BACK IN THE LATE EIGHTIES and early nineties, I umpired little league baseball for about five years, and it was a blast. The kids were great, the coaches much worse, and the parents, intolerable at times. Now all those kids are middle aged, and I h ope they survived the rest of their upbringing. we made twenty dollars a night, cash, calling two games. What a hoot. I doubt if any of us ever got in touch with uncle Sam; I know I didn't. Unreported income. A felony, I think. The crisp twenty went walked home with me nightly, when it made it that far, and all was well.So shoot me. Now, I want to be a personal trainer, and with forty years of personal physical fitness training under my belt, I feel I'm qualified, and whatever other people think is their business, and only theirs. So please excuse me if I work with a few folks before I bother to get formally certified by the Personal Training Accreditation Agency of America, or whatever the hell it is. I'm reminded of a good friend of mine who was a fantastic hair stylist - until he had to "go away" for a year due to unfortunate circumstances involving illicit chemical substances. Yeah, dude did powder, went up the rivah. Really sad, to turn self medicaters into criminals, but that's another story. when he got out, he had no official state certified hair styling license, he had automatically lost it by becoming a convicted felon, and in order to regain it would have to go through a lot of....hell. So one day I said to him: "hell, man, just grab a pair of scissors, and show up at your friend's houses, offering your services; trim , cut, or style, whatever. He informed me that this would be illegal, not only operating without a state license, but also cutting hair in private homes rather than in a public business location, a definite no no. I said, hell, when did the law ever stop you before? I still think its a good idea; none of us would ever tell, and he could make good money, and help people like me who hate driving long distances and waiting for expensive haircuts by certified professionals. don't get me wrong: I'm a left wing pro business regulation by government sort. Reign in the big banks. Break up corporate monopolies, raise minimum wage, raise worker's wages, share revenue with workers, and so forth. but when an eleven year old child is required to obtain a business license before opening a twenty five cent lemonade stand, big government has gone too far. Long live America's small businesses.