Alan Graham

It's either illegal or the occupational licensing requirements to do it have become so onerous and expensive that people that live in extreme poverty can't navigate that deal.

That's the problem.

Like I think that if you're going to sell a prepackaged food item like a bottle of water or a bag of chips or a Milky Way or something like that, you ought to be able to go buy a box of those from Sam's Club and go stand on a street corner and sell those things or walk up and down Congress Avenue and –

You know, Milky Ways, two bucks, you know, bottles of water.

You know how much a bottle of water is when you buy it by the case?

About 20 cents.

You know, and how much do you pay for a bottle of water during South by Southwest?

Well, five bucks.

You'll pay two dollars all day for a bottle of water.

You would buy a bottle of water.

faster from a guy that's trying to sell it that bought it for 20 cents than you would just to give him the 20 cents without earning it.

And they would rather earn the money.

So I wrote a little blog post many years ago called The Panhandler, the greatest yet most ineffective entrepreneur I've ever met.

They're great.

They're willing to stand out there on a street corner in absolutely abysmal, shitty conditions, being rejected over and over and over and over again, spit on, reviled.

All for our nickels and dimes and dollars, 40, 50, 100 bucks a day.

Crazy.

We should we should empower that.

But our nanny state will have them.

Oh, we can't have them on the street corners.