No Good Deed Goes Unregulated

An entrepreneur with a great idea to provide a service to people in need finds herself under the crushing boot of the state in Arizona. Lauren Boice started a business in which she locates cosmetologists to make housecalls to the homebound, those too old or sick to leave the home for haircuts and other services.

Rather than congratulate her for efforts the state of Arizona took the opportunity to bring the hammer down on this scofflaw.

Even though she neither practices cosmetology nor runs a cosmetology business, the board is compelling Lauren to obey a host of cosmetology regulations. Their edict: Open a physical salon even though Boice will never use it, or close her business for good.

“Forcing Lauren to open a salon as a condition of doing business is as absurd as compelling Ticketmaster to open a concert hall or requiring Movietickets.com to open a theater,” said Christina Sandefur, an attorney with the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.

The Goldwater Institute has taken up Lauren's cause and they are suing the state to get the regulators off her back.

This is example of how government is the enemy of innovation. While innovators think outside the box to conceive of new ideas, regulators try to stuff those ideas back into the box (because that's all they know) often mangling or destroying them in the process.