One of the hardest questions for a new agorist to answer is, “What kind of agorist business can I start?” Coming from a society that has very little entrepreneurial spirit left, which isn’t surprising when children are told their highest aspiration in life is to get a college education so they can work for somebody else, it’s not surprising that this question is so commonly asked. Hell, I still ask it (although I’ve finally got some solid ideas). In my experience the first step in answering that question is identifying a market with relatively high demand, a low entry fee, and an abundance of regulatory burden.
Beer is a good example. Drinking is a common pastime for people, getting into home brewing is affordable for people of even modest means, and there’s a massive amount of regulatory burden:
In a video posted in September by the group Learn Liberty, two college professors break down the cost of a brew to reveal who and what is responsible for that price tag.
According to Peter Jaworski of Georgetown University and Christopher Koopman of George Mason University School of Law, the answer is simple: taxes.
Koopman says that up to 44% of the cost of a beer can be attributed to federal, state, and local taxes. Furthermore, Koopman says that beer is “one the most highly regulated industries across the country,” which causes additional problems for craft breweries.
Any market where 44 percent of the cost comes from taxes is a good place to start when you’re not interested in collecting taxes. The real barrier to entry in the beer market is learning how to brew a halfway decent beer. Fortunately we’re living in a renaissance period for home brew. Information on getting start is not only widely available but the people who already know how to do it are usually happy to teach newcomers (especially if they’re selling brewing equipment or otherwise profiting from teaching).
Some may be concerned that the home brew market is saturated at this point. If everybody who brewed beer sold their creation under the table for profit that might be the case. In my experience most of the people who brew beer, like most people in general, are overly concerned with being a good law-abiding citizen and therefore do not sell their beer or sell so little that it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Because of this beer is still, in my opinion, a good market for a budding agorist to dip their toes into.