Owner Emptor

Jeff Elkins has contributed a fine article about Maurice Bessinger's unfair trade practices lawsuit against grocery stores that discontinued stocking his barbecue sauce. Bessinger's lawsuit resembles Curt Storey's, and I'd like to add a few comments about their commonalities and implications. (Kirk Lyons, who represents Storey, is also a participant in Bessinger's lawsuit.)

Bessinger's adversaries are a less than noble bunch. Constitutional coarseness and historical superficiality characterize these wannabe commissars. Notwithstanding their unpalatable traits, Bessinger's course of action couldn't be worse.

Modeled on the Federal Trade Commission Act, South Carolina's Unfair Trade Practices Act criminalizes "unfair or deceptive" commercial choices. A criterion for violation in some cases is whether the choice is "offensive to public policy or…immoral, unethical, or oppressive."

This is a nebulous, awful law that undercuts proprietary discretion. No advocate of laissez-faire principles can endorse such an anti-capitalistic policy.

In a free society, no supermarket should be compelled to stock any kind of product; it is elemental to ownership that an owner may withhold inclusion of goods he considers objectionable. If a black-owned supermarket doesn't want to stock Bessinger's sauce because its ancestors fought in the United States Colored Troops against Bessinger's ancestors, that's the owners' right; if an anti-imperialist supermarket doesn't want to stock a "Kweisi Cola" because it objects to someone whose name means "Conquering Son of Kings," that's the owners' right.

The litigious impulse shared by Storey and Bessinger reflects a troubling trend among pro-Confederates: the enlistment of statist institutions to vindicate their creed. This is especially odd for those who profess a highly decentralized political philosophy. A Confederate who invokes Leviathan is like a Fidelista who venerates Hayek.

There's surely a frisson in turning statist policies against statists – the "How do you like dem apples?" tactic, so to speak. Its proponents should realize, however, that this approach only impedes the advancement of a truly Confederate creed. One cannot esteem Alexander Stephens and then embody the Consolidationism he deplored.

The free market insures autonomous choice, not commercial prosperity. Supermarkets' withdrawal of Maurice Bessinger's sauce is capitalism at work, and he has no right to dictate otherwise. (Bessinger and his allies could of course organize boycotts.) To modify the adage: owner emptor.

September 1, 2001

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