Nannyism Is the New Black

This is getting rigaldangdiculous:

The New York Post offers a dispiriting review of the various items and entities the New York City Council banned (or attempted to ban) this year alone:

• Trans-fats.
• Aluminum baseball bats.
• The purchase of tobacco by 18- to 20-year-olds.
• Foie gras.
• Pedicabs in parks.
• New fast-food restaurants (but only in poor neighborhoods).
• Lobbyists from the floor of council chambers.
• Lobbying city agencies after working at the same agency.
• Vehicles in Central and Prospect parks.
• Cell phones in upscale restaurants.
• The sale of pork products made in a processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., because of a unionization dispute.
• Mail-order pharmaceutical plans.
• Candy-flavored cigarettes.
• Gas-station operators adjusting prices more than once daily.
• Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
• Wal-Mart.

I was peeved about the trans fat ban, not so much because I feel like I need trans fats, but because I don't think it should be against the law for one New Yorker to sell them to another within the city limits.  But our lawmakers' unwelcome zest for behavior control only explains some of the items (fats, cell phones, etc.).

The other obstructions to free trade and personal liberties we can credit to legislators pandering to unions, to animal rights activists, and to the ginned up, chimerical notion that big business is bad for consumers and wage-earners and that government's role is to protect us by obstructing those businesses' due access to free market real estate, labor, and consumer demand (and, in turn, obstructing consumers' and wage-earners' access to those wages, products, services, etc.).

Nannies, grow up.

Previously: Nannyism In New York