Child Entrepreneurs
Most children remember the first time they had money to call their own; they keep a tight fist around a few dollar bills, excitedly earned through their first experience with labor and wages. The monetary amount to any passing adult is measly, but after a day in the hot sun stirring lemonade and watching precious coins and bills drop into their dedicated collection cup, the amount is invaluable to the child. It is often a child’s first lesson in responsibility, hard work, and the simple satisfaction of creating something others are willing to pay for. For generations, the neighborhood lemonade stand has been a small but meaningful introduction to entrepreneurship, a tradition that has endured through changing economies, new technologies, and countless cultural shifts. That is precisely what made it so surprising when, in many places, even this simple childhood experience became subject to government regulation
Lemonade Legislation
When the Utah legislature passed Senate Bill 81, more commonly known as the Lemonade Stand Laws back in 2017, Libertas was one of its strongest supporters, advocating for the right of children to engage in simple entrepreneurial activities without unnecessary licensing or fees across Utah. More recently, Senate Bill 47 was passed, expanding the Lemonade Stand Laws to include 18-year-olds who are still enrolled in high school. The bill’s expansion was celebrated across the state, including by Libertas Institute as an excellent step toward free and open entrepreneurship in Utah. Utah’s reforms deserve celebration, yet they restored something that never should have required legislative protection in the first place: a child’s first foray into the world of money-making.
Permission Becoming the Default
This raises a more important question than whether or not lawmakers ultimately fixed the problem. Why was the government involved at all? How did something as ordinary as a neighborhood lemonade stand become an activity requiring legislative approval? The answer is about a much larger shift in how Americans think about the proper role of government.
In recent decades, the government has continued to trend towards ever greater involvement in citizens’ lives. Its reach has become magnified in every aspect- reaching further into business, education, licensing, technology, the home, and family matters. Traditionally, Americans have held the default assumption that people could peacefully exchange goods and services without first asking permission. The government existed to protect life, liberty, and property, not to approve every small act of commerce. Over time, however, that presumption has increasingly flipped. In many areas of life, entrepreneurship begins not with an idea or a customer, but with licenses and fees.
The Right to Lemonade
This is one of the central ideas behind the classical liberal tradition. Buying, selling, and trading are voluntary acts between consenting people, not privileges granted by the state. The government has an important role in protecting those exchanges from fraud, theft, or coercion, but it need not and should not supervise every transaction before it occurs. While this was once a cornerstone in American policy, it has slowly drifted to the wayside. Today, many occupations and business activities begin with applications, permits, and licensing requirements that would have seemed unusual to earlier generations. These issues have become so pervasive that children’s lemonade stands are now under discussion for licensing requirements.
A lemonade stand isn’t just a childhood memory; it’s a reminder of a society built on permissionless enterprise. People should be free to create, innovate, and serve their communities unless there is a compelling reason to restrict them. If it seems absurd that a child might need government approval to sell lemonade, it’s worth asking why that instinct changes as the business grows. At what point does peaceful entrepreneurship stop being something we’re free to do and become something that requires official permission?
