Entrepreneurship

In defense of gourmet cupcake makers

You know my position on gourmet cupcakes: evil of the purest form.  Princess of Comfort Foods.  Harbinger of Civilizational (Tooth) Decay.  Which is why you may be surprised to hear me defend some cupcake makers.  Get this:

"When Andrew DeMarchis and Kevin Graff, two 13-year-olds from Chappaqua's Seven Bridges Middle School, set up shop at Gedney Park on a fall weekend last month, they were expecting a tidy profit.  Instead, the two wannabe entrepreneurs selling cupcakes, cookies, brownies and Rice Krispie treats baked by them for $1 apiece got a taste of cold, hard bureaucracy.  New Castle Councilman Michael Wolfensohn came upon the sale and called the cops on the kids for operating without a license."

        

Welcome to the regulatory state.  Where you need a license to live.  What a great lesson to teach our children: don't bother.  Don't bother taking a risk, starting a little business, and learning how to turn a profit.  Pack up your enterprise, turn off your ingenuity, and go play some video games.

Shame on Michael Wolfensohn.  But Wolfensohn was just following the rules.  The rules are the problem.  A bad set of rules looks like this: everything is illegal, with the exception of complex specified licensed activities.  Good rules: everything is legal, with the exception of a few simple specified illegal activities.

You might say that this is an isolated incident.  It's not.  Burdensome regulations have shut down local farmers markets.  And if you want some horror stories that are happening all over America, visit the Institute for Justice.  IJ has done pro-bono work on economic liberty cases.

  • Taalib-Din Abdul Uqdah v. District of Columbia.  The DC Board of Cosmetology (whatever that is for) tried to impose the 1938 Cosmetology Code on Uqdah's traditional African hair-braiding business.  Something tells me the 1938 bureaucrats who wrote the code didn't have African hair in mind.  It's a Medieval guild system.
  • Kalish v. Milliken.  "Anyone in Virginia can do yoga, and anyone can teach yoga.  But, incredibly, it is illegal to teach people to teach yoga.  Yoga-teacher training is just the latest target of vocational school licensing laws that require countless entrepreneurs to ask the government’s permission before opening their mouths."
  • Meadows v. Odom.  "Why would the Louisiana Horticulture Commission force a florist to either throw away seven perfectly fine floral displays or be fined $250?  Because would-be Baton Rouge florist Sandy Meadows, like so many other women, has been unable to pass a highly subjective State-mandated floral exam—an exam graded by existing florists in the state who have a vested interest in keeping her out of work."

The DC Board of Cosmetology?  The Louisiana Horticulture Commission?  These bureaucracies are parasites.  And the people who work there are parasites.  It's terrible that we have to even assert this, but people have a right to make an honest living.  

 

"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."

 

As for the 13-year old cupcake makers?  I disapprove of what you sell, but I will defend to the death your right to sell it.*

 

* Except for Sex and the City gourmet cupcakes.  If you sell those, you're on your own, boys.  I may even tip off the officer myself.

 

Update: One reader, Bob Ewing, actually works for IJ.  Check out his comments, and this excellent video on all the crazy licensing regulations out there. 

Tough Love at the Tough Mudder

Today eight of us completed the first Tough Mudder.  Tons of fun.  It was a 7-mile race on the side of ski slope, interspersed with various challenges, like wading waist-deep through mud, army crawls under wire, and climbing over some walls.  I can see how this type of fitness events will continue to spread. A few observations.

 

VFFs / Barefoot running

- Lots of VFFs (Vibram Five Fingers), including 7 of 8 on our team.

- I ditched my VFFs for 3 miles of the race. Had to slow down a bit to avoid rocks, but my concentration level went up.  I felt less likely to twist an ankle.  You see guys with these big plodding shoes -- they aren't forced to focus on where they're stepping, and then when they land wrong, boom, they turn their ankle.  The foot can't adapt dynamically because it's locked up in the shoe.

- Your shoes get soaking wet at various points in the race, and your feet dry more quickly barefoot (and you're less likely to get a blister).

- That said, there were parts of the race where a normal running shoe would have been superior, due to the difficult terrain.  The most difficult parts for VFFs were man-made large-size gravel roads.

Functional Fitness

- You can't be a specialist.  The steep uphills kill the road runners and the treadmill aficionados.  People who had no upper body strength or co-ordination couldn't get over the walls.  One of our team members is not a good swimmer, so the water obstacles were a major challenge to him (but he kicked ass).

- If anything, Tough Mudder could make the obstacles longer and harder.  The hardest parts were the uphill climbs at the beginning, which wiped you out for the rest.

- There was refreshing emphasis on teamwork and camaraderie.  I could eventually see these events timed as a team, and including challenges that require all teammates to be present to complete.

Food

- Way too much carb-age.  Everybody was scarfing down bagels and beer right after finishing.

- I just don't believe that optimal endurance performance necessitates carbo-loading or heavy and consistent carb intake during the race.  If that's what your body is accustomed to, then yes, you better do it.  But from an evolutionary perspective, that's a dangerous dependency, and in tough times, humans who could perform optimally (i.e., survive) would live to bring home the bacon.

- See De Vany on "Lard as a performance fuel" (gated). 

Entrepreneurship

- The NYT had a great write-up on how Tough Mudder got started, and how they attracted over 4,500(!) participants for their first race.  The business plan was a semi-finalist in a Harvard Business School competition -- penalized since the judges thought they wouldn't be able to attract 500 participants.  Well, they were only off by an order of magnitude.

- Congratulations to Will Dean, Guy Livingstone, and the whole team at Tough Mudder for building a business that will benefit others by making fitness more functional and more fun.  (Not to mention the $150k+ that they raised for the Wounded Warrior Project.)

Hats off, guys.

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