The Art of the Unnecessary Law

You know, sometimes I give short shrift to meddlesome lawmakers and busy-body bureaucrats, merely harping on them for their unnecessary interventions instead of recognizing them for their creativity. Sometimes statists need love, too. For instance, the Virginia legislature should be congratulated for spending state time and money making themselves relevant where the market place had made them irrelevant. Last February, the assembly passed a smoking ban, thereby depriving business owners of the right to make decisions about how to run the businesses they own, and depriving patrons of a choice between smoking and non-smoking establishments. Good thing, too, because the market place, responding to customer predilections as it’s wont to do, had just about licked the “problem” the legislature sought to solve:

So, the smoke had already been nearly eliminated-the ostensible reason for the law- but the legislature saved us from the potentially horrifying consequences of leaving in place the freedom to run an establishment with a smoking section. To be fair, I have heard that second-hand freedom can be very dangerous for state legislatures. In Arizona, the government continues its fight against the tiny fish used for pedicures, which have as yet helped many businesses and hurt no one. This innovative state meddling has banned fish pedicures in a handful of states (New Hampshire, Arizona, Texas, Florida), despite there being no threat posed by the trendy treatment, started in Asia and imported to the U.S. by a Virginia salon owner. In Florida, the practice was banned before it was even offered in state, so forward-looking are Floridian bureaucrats. A conservative group in Arizona is hitting back, bringing a suit on behalf of a small-business owner hurt by the ban: