So say the nimrods in the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights. What’s next? Applying Title IX to the count of bar patrons? If a bar doesn’t have a “substantially proportionate” ratio of men to women, will it have to prove that it either has a “history and continuing practice” of attracting the “underrepresented gender” or is “fully and effectively” meeting the alcoholic interests of the underrepresented gender?
Reductio ad absurdum aside, the bar is privately owned; was anyone forced to patronize that particular watering hole? If the owners want to charge separate prices, who’s really harmed? If enough people didn’t like it, the owners would likely change the policy rather than go out of business.
Price discrimination is a time-honored economic concept that expands opportunities for trade. (Forcing everyone to pay the highest price cuts people out of the market.) If this silliness succeeds, what’s to stop the nanny-staters from arguing that it’s a violation of “civil rights” to give coupon-clippers access to lower grocery prices than non-clippers? Who else is trampling “civil rights”? Restaurants giving senior citizens’ discounts, movie theaters discounting ticket prices for students and senior citizens, &c.?
Who’s helped by the government’s intervention in a private business’ pricing decisions? The men? No ? they’ll still pay full price, and those bringing dates will now face higher prices. The women? No ? either they or their dates will have to pay higher prices (this answer gets to the reason behind “Ladies’ Night”). The bar owners? Obviously not; if they’d be helped by charging everyone full price, they’d already be doing it.
Only government intervention into private affairs could so completely muck them up as to make, on balance, everyone worse off.
