Command Economy: Finding Fellow Travelers

Photo by Darwin Bell via Flickr

Here’s another nail in the coffin of free enterprise.

David Colker of the LA Times writes:

As of today, EHarmony comes out of the closet.

The adamantly heterosexual dating website, which has accepted only male-female couples since its inception in 2000, is launching a gay matchmaking service called Compatible Partners (www.compatiblepartners.net). (Note: An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect Web address for Compatible Partners.)

But EHarmony’s new relationship with the gay community is more like a shotgun wedding: The company agreed in November to start the dating service as part of a settlement with the New Jersey attorney general in the wake of a discrimination suit. more

No, I’m not going to write about same sex relationships being wrong. I pretty much say let them be, if they don’t hurt anybody.

My problem here is the government coercion. eHarmony is based on it’s founder’s experience as a psychologist. He didn’t have any homosexual couples in 40 years of practice. He was just trying to monetize what he knew.

Now the government forces him to do something else; something he doesn’t have expertise in.

It’s like the government forcing McDonald’s to sell Turnip Fries because in makes French Fries so well.

Nobody was stopping a competitor from setting up a similar site for gays. There are plenty of dating sites. It’s not all that novel an idea.

But eHarmony is a leader. So they got to made an example.

eHarmony was forced to spend money on research, marketing and set up costs. Not because they saw an opportunity for profit. But because the government commanded it.

The government didn’t need to get involved. The market could have easily filled the niche market.

I don’t like the government telling companies what services and products it can sell.

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