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Comment by ivan_gammel | Hacker News Reader

It's more like "so you can't drink it" without the taxes part. Those taxes play important role in reducing alcohol consumption (though they are of course not the only tool), so making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy rather than opens a loophole in taxation.

E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/

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Every legal allowance I disagree with is a "loophole", every legal allowance I take advantage of is intended functionality.

I think if it's working as intended and as designed then it's hard to call it a loophole. Loophole would be when dying your spirit purple would change the taxation, because someone codified the color of alcohol instead of it's content.

But of course as you say it's largely semantics.

> I think if it's working as intended and as designed then it's hard to call it a loophole.

This assumes everyone acts in good faith.

A popular one these days is the "gun show 'loophole.'"

Rather than calling it "renegging on an explicitly-legislated compromise", it's a "loophole" that needs "closing."

You're assigning a single mind to a group of uncoordinated actors to create a hypocrisy that probably doesn't exist in any specific individual.

It looks like a loophole, it could be in the textbook describing them. You have a law that establishes a rule, then creates a small exception that in effect opts out of the rule entirely. The people who want this provision eliminated don't know it was intended. That's pretty in the weeds of congress' internal negotiations

>> Rather than calling it "renegging on an explicitly-legislated compromise", it's a "loophole" that needs "closing."

> You're assigning a single mind to a group of uncoordinated actors to create a hypocrisy that probably doesn't exist in any specific individual.

POSIWID

The "gunshow" loophole is really a "private sellers" exemption. If you don't regularly sell guns, then you don't need an FFL to merely sell a small number, and don't have to do background checks (indeed there's no process such that you _can_ do firearms checks).

Now, it might be reasonable to remove this exemption, but the only way it's a "gunshow" loophole is that gun shows are a place where gun fans wanting to buy are going to meet gun fans wanting to sell.

Making it trivial for someone to do firearms checks seems like an easy thing that everyone should support, but alas no one in power seems to actually want such a thing.

It is a textbook example of ex-post-facto re-contracting [1]. Durable agreements and enforcement are a pre-requisite for society.

If we negotiate and make a binding deal, I need to believe you will hold your end of the agreement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law

> making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy

I have never seen this as anything other than the death penalty for evading taxes. If the tax were designed to reduce consumption across the population, it needs to scale with income or net worth. Otherwise, it's just a tax on the poor.

I’m not sure how this is different from what I’m saying?

The thread is about bad things because of tax policy, your post is about a good thing because of health policy - but you don’t say it’s a good thing, or that it’s about heath not taxes.

The post pointing this out has different content to yours, which reads as if your meaning is “this reminds me of another bad thing caused by tax policies” - even if that’s not what you meant.

> you don’t say it’s a good thing

But I also never said OP’s anecdote was a bad thing. (Why shouldn’t countries be able to tax video cameras coming in…). What’s the difference?

You can’t win arguments on the internet. Best case: they ghost you. Cowards, I say!

Couldn't they just make it taste bad, for safety's sake?

In some countries that is allowed, but in others it has to actually be poisonous.

Well, I hope it is both then.

And in some, it's a tourist attraction. Don't drink "White Elephant" in Vietnam unless you want to wake up blind and pissing blood, at least according to a friend!

I don't know exactly what "White Elephant" refers to, but I've had plenty of homemade liquor in Vietnam and am mostly fine.

Methyl alcohol. Bad shit. Not unique to VN, a lot of desperate people drink it.

In some countries it's done so and poisoning is banned. E.g. Finland and Poland got an exemption from the EU to do this because so many people died from the poisonings.

Where can I read more about this? What poison were they using?

Methanol has been used, as has rubbing alcohol and methyl ethyl ketone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol for further reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium is used to make it unpalatable. Fun fact: the same chemical is also coated onto Nintendo Switch cartridges to discourage children from putting them in their mouths.

We used to use denatonium (Bitrex) in firefighting to test the efficacy of your face mask seal - you'd put on your mask, a filter, and a hood - Bitrex would be aerosolized into the hood and if you could taste it, there was not a good seal.

Nowadays we just measure pressure differentials.

It was specifically about methanol. Methanol wasn't explicitly used as a denaturation agent but ethanol methanol mixture sales were (forced to be) allowed. Can't find much in English but here's a brief story.

Methanol sales were banned in Finland prior to EU and Finland applied for the exemption already in the EU application in the early 1990s. It was finally granted in 2019. Probably around 500 people died and many got blinded meanwhile.

https://yle.fi/a/3-7841018

Addiction is one helluva motivator, and some people will put up with horrible tasting stuff as long as it's a cheap high.

Not that pure spirit is something you drink for the wonderful taste, in the first place.

I live in one of the countries that just made it taste bad (because enough people died of poisoning it was allowed as an exception by the EU). I've drank a shot of denaturated alcohol once - half out of curiosity, half because I was already out of liquor at home for that evening.

If you close your nose the taste is just bitter, but bearable. The additives are supposed to make you vomit, but for me I only had vomit reflex for ~5 seconds after swallowing. I could live with that if I was addicted and couldn't afford a regular alcohol. I'm sure many people do.

Not sure what the moral is. I guess that addiction is a really strong motivator, and tax evasion is not a good enough reason to justify killing people with poison.

Including not checking as one person I know found out after drinking hand sanitizer. (some hand sanitizer is just alcohol that is made to taste bad, some of it isn't even alcohol, she got the later)

That doesn't seem to stop people from drinking IPAs.

I'll save you from them.

Chinese cooking wines avoid alcohol taxes by adding salt. The salt is useful as a seasoning for food but makes the wine undrinkable!

Does remind me when I talked to a chef from a big restaurant about wine and cooking. He said, a lot of people who work in a kitchen have often an smaller or bigger alcohol problem. He said, as soon as wine is opened in the kitchen for cooking, he does add just a bit salt, so people in the team don't even try to drink some cooking wine.

That doesn't seem like a good idea as a lot of people would try to reduce salt intake due to blood pressure concerns, where the alcohol in this wouldn't be a concern for that as it would likely be cooked off

That’s going to be tough. Shaoxing wine and soy sauce both have lots of sodium in them because they’re intended for seasoning dishes without the need to add salt separately. Even dòuchǐ (fermented black soybeans), which offer a similar flavour profile to soy sauce in solid form, have a lot of salt.

Chicago does it: https://malort.com/

Cute, didn't know it was a thing in Chicago!

I suppose wormwood is an acquired taste, but it's one I happen to like. They still put it in many different bitters here in Sweden.

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