Entrepreneurship/self-employment is the best way to realize the true fruits of one’s labor, and avoid the tendency of employers to be exploitive and/or paternalistic. Yet for reservists, there are huge risks (WaPo, free registration req’d):

Stanley Adams spent more than 30 years building up his business. But he had just days to decide what to do with his thriving livestock trailer companies when he was activated for duty in Iraq in April 2003.

“My wife didn’t have a clue. I had to cram-course her and my daughter in a day and a half,” said Adams, 52, who had applied to retire from the National Guard six months before he was called up.

While he was in Iraq, his wife had to shut down one of the Montgomery, Ala., companies, and the other one barely made it. Adams’s revenue dwindled from $1.5 million in 2002 to just $250,000 in 2003.

“I had over a million dollars’ worth of trailers here. Everything came to a halt, and all this money still had to be paid,” he said.

I’m not going out for expansion of USERRA protections to cover those who have chosen to go it alone. Although the tax credits of Tom Lantos (D-CA) H.R. 838 sound promising. But if those people have a reserve commitment, they need to make allowances for the risk of being called up. The Pentagon should make a directed effort, however, to eliminate extended deployments, so (among other things) entrepreneur/reservists can plan for their absence, should they be called up.