As I think about the possibility of starting a tribal business, I get distracted by wondering what I have to do to be legal. I worry that the government is going to penalize me in some way or pass legislation to make it impossible to have a tribal business.

You seem to have the idea starting a tribal business is different from starting any other kind of business or that starting a business tribally puts one in a special legal position. As I pointed out in Beyond Civilization, the ice-cream business that Ben and Jerry started was a tribal business (for as long as it was just the two of them). As I pointed out in BC, the people who were involved in the East Mountain News didn’t think of it as a tribal business, though it was. The people involved in the New-Futurist theater company don’t think of it as a tribal business, though it is. All these businesses had to do (and have to do) exactly the same things as any other business to be legal, no more and no less.

If you want to run your business on Christian principles, the government couldn’t care less. If you want to run your business on Buddhist principles, the government couldn’t care less. And if you want to run your business on tribal principles, the government couldn’t care less. Christian, Buddhist, or tribal, you’ve got to comply with exactly the same local, state, and federal statutes as any other business, and as long as you do that, the government couldn’t care less.

The government is not going to pass special legislation to stop people from running their business along tribal lines any more than its going to pass special legislation to stop people from running their business along Christian lines. How would they enforce it? Could they step into Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream shop and say, “You can’t put all your resources into this business, do all the work yourselves, and then divide the profit”? The idea is ludicrous.

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