There are so many things to be pissed off about, that the choice of what we decide to let bother us can perhaps be revealing.
Andrew, you say that Robin’s post is incredibly revealing about his ideology. Would you care to tell us what it reveals?

I am also interested in your views of what this reveals..

For starters we tend to only really get angry at those we view as reasonable enough to regard as peers. Religions tend to spend more time denouncing their own heretics than members of other faiths, middle class suburbia is more outraged by murders committed by people like them, and economists are going to get more peeved at unacceptable behavior by economists. Each person thinks so many people are so gloriously wrong that we could never interact successfully with our peers if we didn’t behave in this fashion.

Secondly, we tend to get most angry when an issue seems extremely clear to us and yet others still don’t act as we think is appropriate. And finally if the issue only comes up infrequently then you aren’t likely to build up sufficent irritation.

These types of legislative protection rackets are a perfect storm for irritation in this regard. There can’t be any reasonable debate about the merits of these rules and unlike the big problems where there are already plenty of economic voices heard by the public and policy makers it seems pretty clear that speaking up would get something done. So to Robin the issue seems black and white (and perhaps is). Unlike other issues where most of the impediments are politicians or the public here Robin thinks his peers are at fault. Finally, these kind of laws are seen commonly enough to nurture great irritation.

Huge parts of my life, like my current profession, are based on what pisses me off.

OK, I’ll bite. Why are sentences with women in them harder to read?

True, the Mom-example was an intentional exaggeration, but I don’t know if it was that far off.

It seems to me that a furniture store owner might in fact be prevented from saying, “You know what would look great with the olive sofa you just bought? These yellow and gray throw pillows.” This furniture store owner isn’t getting paid for the advice itself, especially if the sofa-buyer who has already paid says, “nah”. But if the law isn’t aimed at this guy, I don’t know who it’s aimed at.