The American regulatory landscape is a death-by-a-thousand cuts that ends up serving to entrench established businesses. Most of them seem reasonable when looke

The American regulatory landscape is a death-by-a-thousand cuts that ends up serving to entrench established businesses. Most of them seem reasonable when looked at in isolation, but they add up to an insurmountable burden for most would-be small businesses. It's absurd to expect a local cafe to spend $70k to become accessible for a tiny fraction of the population. That investment, and the maintenance fees it generates, will likely never balance out. On the other side of the coin, if the disabled community will never spend enough money to justify the cost of installing accessibility features in a cafe, do we as a community just accept that? It seems like something that ought to be handled with tax incentives to those opting to provide accessibility. People smarter than me have thought about this, and it's no accident that they landed on the option that makes it possible for Starbucks to have less competition.