By Mark Steyn
The other day, The
New York Times offered
the story of Juliet Pries, who attempted to open an ice cream
parlor in San Francisco:
Ms. Pries said it took two years to open
the restaurant, due largely to the city’s morass of permits, procedures and
approvals required to start a small business. While waiting for permission to
operate, she still had to pay rent and other costs, going deeper into debt each
passing month without knowing for sure if she would ever be allowed to open.
“It’s just a huge risk,” she said,
noting that the financing came from family and friends, not a bank. “At several
points you wonder if you should just walk away and take the loss.”
Ms. Pries said she had to endure months of runaround and pay a lawyer to determine whether her location (a former grocery, vacant for years) was eligible to become a restaurant. There were permit fees of $20,000; a demand that she create a detailed map of all existing area businesses (the city didn’t have one); and an $11,000 charge just to turn on the water.
Why $11,000? Why not $111,000? Or $111 million? Or any
other arbitrary figure entirely divorced from reality?
George Savage wonders: “Why not Occupy City
Hall?” Indeed. It’s very
difficult to have economic dynamism in a society where the government takes two years to decide whether it will give you
permission to sell your fellow citizens a strawberry parfait. Too much of
American life is too far down this path already.
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