Every now and again I wake up and wonder how I became a citizen of weird-upside down land where a kid's lemonade stand is shut down for not having a business permit but transexual prostitutes...

...are proud of their "work."

Jonah Goldberg observes:

Across America, lemonade stands run by little kids are being shut down because the kids didn't get the necessary permits. In Georgia some little girls had their stand shut down after making $5 because they needed a $400 permit. The economic stakes here are beyond negligible. The state will never collect that $400 bucks, and the economy will survive the lost economic activity from the shuttered stand. But culturally, the lessons learned and not learned are really significant. Running a lemonade stand is simply a great thing for a kid to do. Creating a society where even pretend entrepreneurialism is crushed will have consequences. In Detroit, a city which should be throwing flower petals at the feet of entrepreneurs, it took a food-truck owner 60 trips to City Hall to get the permits he needed. That's horrifying but oddly not surprising.


Work, and respect for work, creates a culture. Disrespect for work creates a culture too. If you can stomach it, watch this.

The other night, my wife watched some special on Dateline about transgender people. One young man (I think) was working as a cross-dressing prostitute in order to save up the money to buy a sex change in Mexico. I'm paraphrasing, but the reporter asked "him," "Why do this? You don't have to be a prostitute, you could work at McDonald's."

Apparently the kid's response involved a look of disgust at the suggestion that "he" demean himself by working at a fast-food joint. After all, fellating random dudes has honor. Working for a regular paycheck is shabby.