Commentary: I can’t even be trusted to buy bananas

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Over the weekend, I went to my favorite corporate-owned chain coffee shop.

While there, I participated in a dastardly crime.

No, I didn’t hold the place up with a gun. But I did buy a banana.

How is that a crime, you ask? Well, I paid 90 cents for it; they were selling bananas for 90 cents per banana, and I bought one. In Wisconsin, you must understand, it is illegal to sell bananas per banana; they may only be sold per pound.

Wis. Admin. Code ATCP 91.03(1)(a) says all fresh fruits and vegetables shall be sold at retail only by weight, subject to a few exceptions.

Subsection (1)(b) provides exceptions for: “artichokes, avocadoes, cantaloupes, cauliflower, celery, corn on the cob, coconuts, cucumbers, eggplant, garlic, grapefruit, head lettuce, kiwanos, kiwi fruit, lemons, limes, loquats, mangoes, melons (whole), nectarines, oranges, papayas, peppers, persimmons, pineapples, pomegranates, prickly pear, pumpkins, quince, squash, star fruit, tangerines and ugli fruit.”

But bananas, as you can see, are not on the list. There are other apparently arbitrary distinctions: lettuce can be bought by the head, but not cabbage; nectarines can be sold per piece, but not apricots.

Before anyone goes and calls the cops on their local cafe, let me explain something. I spoke with a very helpful young woman at the DATCP, who told me that legislation is pending to permit the sale of bananas, and some other fruits and vegetables, by the piece as well as by the pound. She expects the legislation to be in place by the first of the year, and in the interim, the law is not being enforced with respect to the affected fruits.

Of course that still leaves two questions: Why am I writing about bananas when there are so many more important issues facing Wisconsin? And why was this prohibition enacted in the first place?

The answer to both questions is the same. Because the ban on selling bananas per piece has at its root the same disdain for individual rights as other interferences with liberty of contract that have caused serious economic problems.

How can the politicians decide that employees and employers should not be free to negotiate their own wages, without a minimum wage? Or that employees should be forced to join a union they oppose?

How can the politicians decide that people should not be allowed to patronize or work in a tavern or restaurant that permits them to smoke cigarettes?

How can the politicians decide that people should not be free to negotiate for themselves what medical conditions they want their health insurance to cover?

How can the politicians decide that people can’t be trusted to read the mortgages and credit card agreements they sign, and be held to the contractual provisions they contain?

The answer to these questions is simple. They can’t … if they view the people who produce the wealth and pay their salaries as intelligent human beings with basic civil rights and autonomy.

But it’s easy for them to do all these things, if they view those people as a lower form of primate that cannot even be trusted to buy bananas for themselves.

Hopefully, with the people freed to negotiate for bananas, they may soon start thinking so highly of their own intelligence that they demand liberty of contract when it comes to employment, too.