Pretty soon it will be illegal to *own* a business

There was a story recently in the news about a man who claimed he was thrown out of a bar for refusing to buy alcohol, although his wife and friends bought alcohol and food. The bartender says the man was evicted because he was falling asleep. The man ran to his local lawmaker and complained. The lawmaker now proposes to pass legislation forbidding a bar from kicking a patron out who does not buy alcohol.

There is no telling what really happened that evening, but it is not the job of the legislature to micromanage the operation of a private business. If an owner is in fact dumb enough to alienate apparently good customers like that (they had evidently been patronizing the place for some time), then his business will suffer. That is what happens in a free market. Enter the legislative interference, and now you have the costs of compliance and monitoring, which taxpayers bear, to the benefit of a few individuals. We do not need the government to protect individuals from annoying but harmless behaviour. This sort of complainant just wants government heft on his side of a private argument. And we all pay. Pretty soon, the government will decide it would be easier just to own the bars outright, and down the slippery slope it goes.