A Massachusetts town has shut down a 12 year old boy's home made ice cream business, one where the lad was giving half the proceeds to charity I will point out, citing food handling concerns. What utter nonsense. Here's the story.
This is, as is so often the case, government regulatory powers run amok. Stories such as this make my blood boil. It doesn't even matter, as a moral point, whether it's a 12 year old or an adult. If someone wants to make homemade ice cream and sell it simply to make a few bucks for themselves then dammit, they have the right to do so. It isn't anyone else's, much less the government's, business. If you're afraid you'll get sick then don't buy the stupid ice cream. Who the hell are you, government or anyone else (and government is 'anyone else' being a bully), to tell someone they can't do such a thing?
I remember buying bread from a home based baker in the Upper Peninsula who was forced to put an emphatic sticker on his wares, warning that his bread was baked in a kitchen not regulated by the Michigan Department of Agriculture. Oh the humanity. This guy baked bread of his own free will and I bought a loaf (and some cookies) on mine. So piss off, Ag boys. It's nothing to you.
These are prime examples of why I am growing increasingly libertarian as I get older. One of their standards is that if you can do something for free, you can do it for pay. This can't be applied to all things at all times I'll admit, but it's a good general principle. The Hessel baker could give his bread and cookies away quite morally and have no issue with the government. He can therefore sell them for profit without a government stamp of any kind. Just like the preteen in Massachusetts with his ice cream. He can give it away (which he did end up doing, although with requests for good will donations) but he can't sell it? Inane. No, worse: bizarre.
Government is too big and too much a part of our lives. Time to tell it to, to, just go away.
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