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Comment by righthand | Hacker News Reader

A friend of mine from the UK told me that pubs might be the country’s greatest contributor to the downward spiral of the legal system and government there. It was anecdotal but he joked that the reason they have all this authoritarianism on the table is because no one can be arsed to do anything but commiserate at the pub.

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Sounds kind of glib.

Pubs are now incredibly expensive, a lot of this comes from the pubco scandal. At the other end you have people like Mr Aziz ensuring these hubs of the community get shut down.

People are more likely to organise if they have somewhere to meet.

What a strange thing for your friend to say.

Why is that? Pub culture is probably deeper there than the drinking culture in America. Just because there are healthy social aspects to it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t rotted over time.

America tried to ban alcohol via amendment and had to unban it. I think we Americans are standing in a bit of a glass house if we go criticizing other country's relationships with alcohol (to say nothing of conflating "pub culture" with some kind of mandatory alcohol consumption).

Sorry where is the criticism?

Sounds like a shill for whoever that billionaire monster is that’s swinging their proverbial dick around here just to have more stuff than his also empty billionaire friends.

How about the community aspect of it? Anything positive from people gathering, being social?

Sure. How about the alcoholism aspect? Anything negative from people peer pressuring others to socialize a certain way with poison?

It's OK, you don't have to go to the pub. Or if you do go, just have a lemonaid.

Oh don’t worry , I don’t plan to step foot in the UK considering how deep into authoritarianism it has slipped. I don’t see it unslipping in the next decade. Plenty of bars with nearly the same culture here.

Clearly there should be some truth to my friends anecdotal joke if you’re responding this way.

Are you somehow required to drink alcohol at a pub?

That’s been the social projection of a pub, yes. Though you aren’t required, we agree that pubs overall have done a lousy job advertising to the non-alcohol-inclined. Not only that but if most of the patrons are drinking, it makes sense that people who want to visit a pub do so for the access to the drinking patrons. If they wanted sober patrons they’d probably attend a church meeting.

I don't need advertising to not drink alcohol. There's always drinks that don't contain alcohol too, water for example.

Yes but a bar specifically caters to an alcohol heavy crowd. To attract more non-alcohol drinkers you need to advertise the pub as a non-alcohol friendly place to socialize. Since pubs are known to have alcohol drinkers it is the stigma of alcohol that keeps the non-drinkers away.

> Anything negative from people peer pressuring others to socialize a certain way with poison?

You mean like Apple or Microsoft ? /s

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