Tag Archives: Reopening

What do small businesses risk if they challenge government closure orders, the government shutting them down? From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

My gym – like thousands of small businesses around the country – has been out of business for more than a month now. Not because customers aren’t coming – but because customers are not allowed to come. 

What follows is an Open Letter to the owner of this business, urging her to resume doing business – on the theory that in a free country, people have that right and that government has no right to say otherwise. 

Dear Patsy –

I and many others are more than willing to take the chance we might get sick in exchange for being able to live again.

This includes being able to work out at Crunch. 

We believe in what used to be a given in America – free association. That you – as a business owner – have the right to open your business and that we, as free Americans, have a right to choose for ourselves whether to do business with you.

We fully support the right of those who are “at risk” of contracting the Corona virus or the ordinary flu or the common cold or whatever they’re “concerned” about to take whatever steps they consider appropriate to reduce their risk. 

But we dispute their right to use force to compel others to adopt these measures for the same reason that we would object to the use of force to “flatten the curve” of ordinary flu, which as you may already know routinely infects millions of people each year and – according to the CDC – causes or contributes to more than 30,000 deaths every year (generally, of older people – from pneumonia and so on). 

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