17 January 2007

It's My Property, Right??

My place of business is a restaurant in Fishers, IN, one of the last bastions of property rights, or so I thought. For those unaware, Fishers is one of the more affluent, faster growing suburbs of Indianapolis, and one of the more socially controlled as well. Signage has to meet strict standards, so strict that retailers have decided to go to other surrounding 'burbs in order to be able to do things how they want.

My restaurant opened for lunch daily six months ago and about three months later, we decided to post a sign on the building announcing it to all instead of doing strictly word of mouth advertising. Not on the fence paralleling the I-69 offramp, not off at the nearby major intersection, on the building proper. The sign was visible across the interstate, and business was improving. My place of employment gets a notice from the Town stating that the sign is out of order as it was not approved. So down goes the sign.

Point of the story is this: How is a free market supposed to truly be free when the government wants to control it?

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