Better Lifestyle Bureau?

On a day when government takes a large stake in the financial markets, we should be aware that all sorts of organizations are trying to expand their reach and tell us what to do and think. As well as the Feds, the seemingly innocuous Better Business Bureau may be about to revise what Better Business means. Rick Berman explains:

Instead of giving businesses a pass or fail rating, it would implement a new system in which businesses are graded A-F. There will be more than a dozen factors that determine your grade, one of them being “reputation of the industry.” So instead of investigating the dry cleaner that was reported to have stolen clothes and charged more to people with poor English skills, the BBB will randomly go after industries that the board determines to be potentially dangerous or non-PC.

For industries that sell products that could be deemed unhealthy or unsafe by an overzealous watchdog, there will be a new sheriff in town to watch out for.

If the thought of another nanny organization telling you what you should and shouldn’t eat turns your stomach, hold on tight, because it gets worse. A cabal of business interests will pick lots of losers and just a handful of winners. For its program to be credible, it can only give out a limited number of A’s. So the majority of businesses will earn in the B-F category.

Few people, of course, will know about this change. They’ll assume a business with a D rating is incompetent or worse, when all it does is provide a valuable service that some people find distasteful. And another nail will enter the coffin of the free enterprise system.