This came up in the "NJ Bans Smoking" debate....

Most members felt that private business owners should be the ones who decide if smoking is allowed or not in their bar or restaurant, and that free market forces should be allowed to control the situation.

In other words, if there is a need for smoke-free bars and restaurants and they were economically feasible, people would open them, and eventually there would be enough of each to meet the public's demand for each.

The question of government interference in our personal lives has come up in other discussions, too, involving "victimless crimes" such as marijuana use and prostitution.

Anyway, with respect to private businesses, I have a pet peeve of my own, which is probably quite unusual and controversial for someone with my political views.

Current anti-discrimination laws prohibit the hiring or firing of employees based on age, sex, race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or prior military service. There are, I believe, other grounds which I've omitted.

I believe that the owner of a private business should have the right to hire or fire anyone they choose to for whatever reason they choose to.

Here's a real example from my own personal experience, which illustrates my point:

For about 20 years I in worked in management of a few different NYC corporate car services ("Black Car" companies, for those of you from the area).

One of my responsibilities was the hiring, scheduling, and training of employees for the Dispatching part of the operation.

I was once looking for a dispatcher, and I ran an ad in the industry trade paper, and had several qualified applicants.

The most qualified was a woman with more experience than any of the others, who seemed to have a better mindset in her thinking about drivers (very important), and, best of all, who was willing to work for a bit less that I was willing to pay.

The ony problem from my POV was that she was quite visibly at least seven months pregnant.

Now, the anti-discrimination laws prohibit asking job applicants about their marriage and family status and child-care arrangements (which is stupid, IMO, since those factors can affect a person's ability to show up on time to work every day), so I didn't ask if she planned to come back to work after having her baby, or who would take care of the baby if and when she did, and she didn't volunteer any information.

Although she was quite qualified, and most companies handled their dispatching in the same manner with basically the same procedures, every company ha their own quirky little way of doing dozens of different things slightly differently and, more importantly, to be truly effective at the job, a dispatcher must be familiar with all of the different requirements of the clients, and even more importantly than that, the various levels of ability and personalities of the drivers.

In other words, there was a training period involved before I, as the manager, would feel comfortable in leaving a dispatcher to work alone and without supervision, which is very often necessary in a 7-day, 24-hour operation.

All of this is not to mention the fact that a high percentage of the drivers were Muslims, which experience had taught me often had problems with women in positions of authority over them, which was a handicap before we even got started.

So I wound up not hiring her.

Had she made a complaint to the appropriate authorities and said that she had been discriminated against on the basis of the fact that she was a pregnant female, I imagine that I would have had a problem, because, in fact, I had made my decision on that basis.