Should Greensboro’s City Council, Skip Alston’s Guilford County Commissioners or the federal government have the power to determine which local hotels, restaurants and meeting venues succeed or fail?

The proposal of any new law or regulation

which comes from [businessmen],

ought always to be listened to with great precaution

and ought never to be adopted

till after having been long and carefully examined,

not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention.

 

It comes from an order of men

whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public,

who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public,

and who accordingly have, upon many occasions

both deceived and oppressed it.

 

Adam Smith

Moral philosopher and Father of Modern Economics