Today’s Wall Street Journal reports on a front page news item that:
“Wal-Mart was ordered by the Massachusetts pharmacy board to stock the so-called morning-after contraceptive pill in its stores in the state.”
There’s no story about this — yet.
Free enterprise means that you get to decide what sort of business you pursue, and equally what business you won’t pursue. In the PRM (People’s Republic of Massachusetts), however, the decision on what merchandise to offer in a store now rests in the hands of government officials. That’s a remarkable precedent. In the future, a Massachusetts shopper won’t have to go to the trouble of checking to see if some item he wants to purchase is available in a particular store. All he’ll have to do is tell the manager to have what he wants, or else he’ll complain to some regulatory agency that will force the manager’s hand.
The correct term for what PRM has done is fascist.