Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible
slate.com
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In the UK, if you want to sell booze from your shop, you write to the council and apply for a license. They check you and your shop out, and if you seem okay, they grant it. If you want to drive a taxi around your town, you write to the council and apply for a license. They check you and your car out, and if you seem okay, they grant it. This seems really simple and, frankly, natural. It's how all sorts of licenses work in the private sector too - think about copyright licenses, tenancies, etc. How on earth do you get from there to licenses being a kind of property?
These licensing schemes have become nothing more than rent-seeking by those established with existing licenses.
The quesion is, why are these licenses honored after a transfer?
Letting licenses be transferrable is a way of limiting the public-agency workload in managing #1, because you then have less work managing a queue of pending-availability license requests at the public agency.
Even where license are transferrable, the recipient generally has to submit paperwork to the agency and be approved that the meet the appropriate requiremetns related to #2 before they can use the license.
They aren't two alternatives, they are two different functions. Verifying that the applicant meets the criteria once there is a license available (given the quantitative limits) is one function. The other function is managing distribution of the limited number of licenses. The amount of work required by the public agency for the latter function (#1 in my original list) is greater when if the only way for that to happen is people to surrender unused licenses and then new applicants to apply to the issuing agency and be waitlisted until a slot is available than if a license that the current holder can be transferred directly to a new applicant.
The difference between the two is simply and administrative choice of how the queue of available licenses is managed..
You have done nothing to explain why the amount of work is any different between the two cases. You have simply asserted that it is.
EDIT:
Perhaps of interest, I went to Prince Edward Island last year and met some fishermen. Apparently their licenses can be sold (they effectively take out a mortgage given the cost) and are used as a sort of retirement plan by the fishermen that own them. But they also (according to them so I'm not sure the precise legal considerations or if it's convention) require that you spend some years working for licensed fishermen before you can purchase one. So sort of a hybrid between the driver's license and the taxi medallion model.
Impose an artificial barrier to entry, and everyone already past the barrier can work a little less, and reap higher profits.
Ensuring safety and quality of service is merely a pretext, and mostly everyone knows that is just political flimflam. It is a corrupt practice that is tolerated because it seems to benefit businesses somewhat more than it hurts customers.
In some cases, they are NOT property. They are treated as such to move the cash around, but the person exercising the privilege sets up a sham business arrangement with the licensee. For instance, the licensee of the cab medallion "hires" a manager with his own metered vehicle, garage, and roster of drivers, has no involvement in the day-to-day operations, and just cashes the checks.
Around me, the process is (theoretically) similar to how you describe: you make an application to a local body of elected officials, there's a hearing, and they deny or approve it. Neighbors have an opportunity to object or seek concessions. And I don't think you can really sell a license.
[1] These purposes aren't, on their face, unreasonable. Taxis generate undesirable congestion, and establishments that serve liquor tend to create undesirable drunk people. If you don't believe me, take a walk through Wrigleyville in Chicago on a Friday night, where you can see an endless parade of taxis picking up an endless parade of drunk students.
I agree that sometimes this setup (licenses to restrict supply) make sense, but taxis are not a good example of where this provides a net benefit.
I'd rather have a bunch of taxis than a bunch of drunk college students driving. Furthermore, from a city planning perspective the most efficient use of both road space and real estate (parking) is to have cheap, on-demand taxis instead of personal car ownership. If public transportation is fairly extensive and always available (as it is in NYC), it makes sense to eschew personal ownership of cars and use taxis for the rare case when public transportation isn't enough.
Overall, this reduces congestion, and is one of the reason that taxis are oftentimes taxed less (or pay less in tolls) than personal, non-commercial vehicles.
In fact, I posit that a significant reason that services like Hailo and Uber exist in NYC specifically is that the supply of on-demand taxis is heavily restricted[0]. If the supply were left up to the free market[1], Uber and Hailo would be able to provide some added value (the convenience of the mobile app and the "premium" feel), but not the level that they are now.
[0] Since the 1970s, the number of medallions available has not increased commensurately with the increase in population
[1] but with the same laws regarding nondiscrimination of service with respect to destination, credit cards, etc.
You're not wrong in what you say regarding the necessity of public transportation and the benefit of taxis instead of personal vehicle ownership, but the free market will have no incentives to reduce congestion until such point as people would rather walk. Panama City has less incentives to clog the roads in that taxis are universally unmetered; where taxis are paid per-minute, congestion is profitable.
Despite the lack of metering and a recently-introduced subway, Panama City has terrible congestion. There's always a taxi when you want it, but a lack of regulation means that it will almost certainly be in a barely-roadworthy condition, and if you are traveling at peak hours you may as well walk. I'm told it used to be worse, that taxis would not even take you if your destination were more than a short distance away; I've only encountered this a few times. Also, while many drivers are honest, any sign that you are not a local is liable to result in your being asked to pay several times the going rate. This is the free market at work.
If you are going to invoke market forces, you need to make sure there are sufficient incentives to not wind up with a worse problem than not having a taxi when you want it. What springs to mind would be taxing taxis in proportion to your congestion problems. I am not sure that would be an improvement.
But isn't this supply meeting demand? If there were too many taxis, wouldn't the supply eventually cull itself when nobody can make enough money?
Sure, maybe you could push it out of one neighborhood and into another, and the residents of Wrigleyville might be all for that, but is that actually much of a net gain for society in general?
I'd rather have drunks clogging sidewalks and taxis clogging roads, than drunks clogging roads.
Calibrating those thresholds to not generate more traffic (as people barhop with cabs instead of walking between bars) and to not kill the nightlife completely would probably proof challenging though.
That results in an increased cost of policing the area (since all drinking and clubbing establishments are forced together), the increased cost of cleaning (everything from garbage and smashed bottles to a surprising amount of vomit), increased regulation, transportation congestion, medical care, etc.
It also results in a neighbourhood which goes from a mostly pedestrian mall-esque area full of shops and boutiques to a shitshow where you might get punched for no reason (as happened to a friend's boyfriend as they were walking home from the movie theatre; shattered his jaw, which had to be wired shut).
The problem isn't necessarily 'outsiders are bad', but rather that these people come downtown, drink, have a good time (or a bad time), but feel no responsibility for the area. They don't have to walk through it after a bad night to get to work and see the catastrophe they caused, so they may never realize the social and economic impact of bad behaviour. If it were their mailbox kicked open or their doorstep puked on or their neighbour hospitalized, it might encourage more restraint, or at least more consideration, but unfortunately that's not usually the case.
I think that's generally the problem with the 'drinking district' in a lot of cities; people from everywhere but there go there to party and have fun, and if they don't, they cause problems and then head on home, lost in the crowd, and probably don't even remember it the next day.
1) Nightlife and fun weren't utterly concentrated into single small districts, forcing people to commute to go out for an evening.
2) Cities and towns dealt civilly with college students instead of treating them as pinatas.
In neither the Vancouver example nor the Wrigleyville example is the problem "college students".
There are completely similar places were ("drunk bar clientele from outside the area makes it difficult to live in") without any taxis (e.g in Amsterdam or Barcelona). Or places where the drunks prefer to drive (don't ask). In a dense city people can just walk there from a different area, or use the metro.
Jane Jacobs rolls in her grave when you say stuff like that. The overwhelming majority of transportation engineers will tell you that taxis alleviate congestion by raising asset utilization. And they also reduce the need for vast parking facilities and block-circling in search of parking (which turns out to be a large fraction of traffic in some areas). It's a triple-win.
Transport planners i've come across would probably start wittering about modal shift. If introducing more taxis into a city leads to a modal shift from taxis to cars, it's a good thing. But if it leads to a modal shift from buses to taxis, it's a bad thing.
A Machiavellian transport engineer might even consider restricting taxis so as to maximise the available modal shift to buses (or rail etc), to make projects to introduce those easier to sell.
Though it's perhaps worth noting that the dominant form of transit in the overwhelming majority of American locales is in fact the private automobile.
The old politician from the old part of town will argue for historical precedent; the younger, hipper politician might argue that new applicants should be given higher priorities; etc. As soon as you start trying to decide, you start deadlocking and someone gets screwed.
As it is now, all you need is money, rather than money and a friend on the council.
How on earth do you prevent it? You need to provide stable access to licenses, so that if Joe drives a cab he doesn't end up jobless next year because he lost the taxi license lotto. Suddenly Joe has something he can sell, access to his license. Say we tie the license to the person driving the cab then Lucky cabs can't fire a bad driver because then they lose a license.
It sounds like a bad idea that's carried forward out of momentum not something that needs to be fixed. It should be replaced with the better approach.
Are you sure it will increase the overall number of vehicles on the roads?
There can only be more taxis if there is sufficient demand to pay for them and their drivers. If there are more taxis then there's a downward pressure on prices which, yes, creates the possibility of more demand. But reality doesn't follow that simple a model - it's probably chaotic - as more taxi availability will potentially reduce car and bus usage. If it doesn't reduce car usage then who's getting in the taxis? Taxis are better optimised resources in urban areas than car-ownership. Perhaps people who normally use a bus or walk can now afford a cab - can't have poor people using our transportation /s. Some people will switch to buses from cars because a bus is fine for many journeys and now it's affordable to do bus+cab journey or to do buses mostly and get a cab occasionally.
Suppose there are so many people who have a clean driving license, can pass an advanced motorist test and pass a hospitality test (eg good enough language skills) and pay for a car that passes the necessary road-fitness and emissions tests and thus those people can get a city taxi license. There are so many licensed cabs that the road traffic gets slowed down. Then people will take the bus or walk; there will be less demand and drivers will have to do other jobs. If there are still too many cabs then the barrier for entry can be increased - add your cities second language to the hospitality requirements, add a skid-pan test, increase the ecological requirements on the cars used.
Isn't that the free market at work?
This point is directly opposed to your statement that "Taxis are better optimised resources in urban areas than car-ownership".
I can't argue that either point is right or wrong, but I'd like to know if you had any information I can read supporting your point about taxis being better optimized for cities.
In any case, I just wanted to contribute this story as another data point along the way.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/31/157477611/does-new...
Taxis here don't drive around without fares generally. [Private] Cars often park on the street too. Cars are most often used for 2-4 journeys per day making the cost of resources per day quite large - taxis are used for ... well I don't know the statistics but a lot more than 4 journeys in a day and they do far more people miles.
So, just looking at street space, if instead of parking my car on a road all day a taxi occupies that space occasionally whilst also doing far more people miles ... the taxi gets more efficient use of space and the resources locked up in the vehicle get more people-miles per unit time.
Of course private cars park in lots too, as do taxis here. Private cars don't often do one way trips in a way that is possible to get a proximal one-way journey in the other direction.
Thanks for the link - I've only read the summary but it doesn't say what the $500million of lost time is compared against? If instead of doing those journeys by taxi everyone walks will they really save enough time to create $500million of benefit? Or, will it just be $500million benefit to the richer folks (their delivery will cost 5¢ less or whatever) vs. $5 work time lost to a poorer person who relies on public transport [blind, hand-wavy, analysis!!].
Drivers pay a fixed/minimum amount to the vehicle owner and the cab companies, and then they drive around to get as many fares as they can so that they can make sure to make enough to cover their costs, after which they start making a profit.
With more cabs on the road, there are more fares to go around, which means that drivers have to split the same number of fares over a larger pool of drivers, which means the entire industry gets poorer; everyone makes more money except the drivers, who need to start being more aggressive, cutting corners, cheating, ignoring regulations, etc. just to make a living. No one wants that.
It varies by the locale, but I'm not even sure if there are any qualifying tests for obtaining a taxi license (other than basic criteria, like having a commercial drivers' license in good standing, etc.) in most parts of the US. (London is an interesting exception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom)
If anything, arguably it's worse for Joe if Lucky Cabs owns his medallion and also has the opportunity to sell at a profit, and Lucky Cabs are similarly badly off if their drivers own the medallions but don't particularly care for keeping customers happy (perhaps because they're counting down the years til they can sell the medallion on for an order of magnitude more than they originally paid for it).
If you want to encourage flexibility in licenses which are short term leased rather than "owned" you can even give holders the option of pro rata rebates (at the price paid) for trading them in early to encourage people that aren't using their licence to return them.
Basically, the city is in total control of the terms on which medallions can be leased and can collect the full market value of the medallions itself; to not do so is economically indefensible, unless you think giving cash windfalls to its original taxi drivers and speculators is high on the list of civic priorities
That said, Vancouver's taxi system is a little wonky, though possibly not atypical; there are usually three parties involved: the driver, the person who owns the vehicle, and the person who owns the license (i.e. the cab company), and drivers who don't own their own vehicle typically have to split their profits three ways. More commonly, you pay X dollars per night (split among the two others) and then hope that you make enough fares to make a profit.
Which you usually do, of course. Part of the reason is because the city limits the number of licenses that can be issued; the other part is by crushing competition like Uber under old, outdated laws and regulations (in BC, Uber's black car service falls under the criteria of 'limo', and limos have a minimum charge of ~$65). Which kind of makes sense; if Uber started killing the cab companies, it would be the drivers who would suffer first, and not the companies themselves.
Seems like they're missing out on an easy source of income by letting third parties benefit from the restricted supply.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#...
(for those not familiar with cerebral anatomy, the hippocampus is the part of the brain responsible for racism, swearing at cyclists, and tax evasion)
The premise is that the fact that laws are constantly added but almost never removed is crippling us. Also, unfair laws are almost always unfair in someone's favor, and the groups benefiting will defend those unfair laws tooth-and-nail, and the morass of laws becomes even more stagnant.
I think Howard is usually seen as conservative, because he's seen as anti-regulation. I tend to think he's anti-stupid-regulation, which is a subtle but important difference. But even if you disagree with Howard in broad strokes, you have to admit that the alcohol laws in this country are pretty good supporting evidence for his premise.
The first problem is that now you have to dedicate a whole lot of work to maintenance. Even if this was done in good faith, you'd have millions spent just reading and rubber stamping laws. Legislatures get little done as it is to add more work.
Then, we have the problem of getting the legislature to take this seriously. What stops gigantic omnibus renewals that, for all intents and purposes, lead to the same thing that we have now?
There's also the risks to partisan fighting over controversial laws. Imagine what happens to an impasse over immigration law, or gun control. The winner, politically, would always be the side that would be more capable of tolerating no law at all. This is far more politically charged than just keeping whatever was the consensus in the past.
So that proposal is only a good idea if you believe that having a harder to govern country is something you want. Rarely a popular opinion among people that make laws.
Politicians aren't scientists, and don't operate from root causes and facts; they operate from manipulating social factions and perceptions. If they don't see something as important to their key social factions, it's not worth their attention. Honour this Albert de Salvo guy? Sure, why not? Do it and let's move on to the stuff I want to deal with.
The main problem is creating a process where outdated laws can be removed efficiently - which obviously needs to be done in congress. I think there could be a monetary reward involved - not for the congressmen obviously, but for non-members of the congress who initiate a process that leads to a successful removal.
In other words, every law has an intent. Make it so before any law can be passed, you must design a test to validate the law against the intent to be run at some point in the future. Then if the test fails outright, or begins to fail over time (some laws work at first, but fail later) then you pull the law out of the books.
I know this is very naive, and over-simplified. But I like the idea.
It does allow for fresh debate on things but can also cause a lot of friction and uncertainty.
The problem is that while a private interest group can focus all their efforts on one issue, the public has many diverse interests and has to be on guard against all the possible private interest groups at all times.
Not exactly. What's implicit in that statement is that a structure with the physical ability to create and enforce regulations will probably create some effective regulations, and some ineffective regulations. Just like how a market will probably lead to some efficient outcomes, and some inefficient outcomes (i.e. market failures).
So the question becomes which structure (government or markets) can do better overall, or if there's some way to combine the two such that you get "the best of both worlds" which is better than an all-or-nothing approach. My belief is that markets can do better overall than a pure command economy or a mixed economy, primarily because governments (at least modern republics) are, at the end of the day, somewhat subject to market forces in the form of elections, lobbying, personal incentives of government officials, etc., This makes the whole "let's use government to solve some common market failures" idea seem fairly silly to me. If we as a society can't aggregate our desires effectively enough to avoid a market failure (e.g. to fund a public good, like a highway system [0]), why should we expect to be able to aggregate our desires effectively enough to give legal authority to an organization to use violence to avoid a market failure?
[0] Using the broader definition of "public good" that includes club goods, and assuming the highway system isn't so congested that it can be considered rivalrous.
In a Free market, how does an individual litigate against a multinational oil company that spills 17-30 million gallons of oil into a major metropolitan area[1]? (Very slowly: litigation has been ongoing with nearly no developments in the last 9 years except to drop Chevron)
In a Free market, who sues the coal plants when entire uninhabited ecosystems are poisoned with lead, mercury, and sulfuric acid?
In a Free market, who do you sue when global temperatures rise by 5C and flood major metropolitan areas?
What market forces are at work when an entity will be defunct by the time the repercussions of its actions come to light?
[0]. http://www.wnyc.org/story/most-radioactive-site-new-york/
When a multinational company causes damage to a harbor, beach, ecosystem or city, damaged parties can file suit for compensation. A harbor authority may have provided a guarantee to assume responsibility for environmental problems, in order to be granted the relevant rights of way, or it may be on the other side of the law, filing suit against a company which has damaged its income stream. Landowners or municipalities can file suit for damage caused to a beach, and fishermen, environmental tour companies, or governments can file suit for damage to ecosystems.
In the United States, the EPA has absolved many companies of any responsibility, or at least greatly diminished the corporations' costs, by depriving damaged parties of a cause of action, as the EPA has the sole responsibility for many forms of pollution, and their regulation.
Free markets are not very different from mixed systems in dealing with issues like climate change, but they do make it plain to each individual that they are directly responsible for the outcomes which come to pass. This responsibility is more effective in regulating action than one might think.
In a market system, entities at fault may be defunct by the time the repercussions of their actions are apparent; on the other hand, politicians are rarely held to account on any single issue, and they are often more ephemeral than large corporations; the bureaucrats responsible for regulation are never held to account for any results at all.
So how does a small property owner fund decade-long litigation against a giant corporation?
There are a few alternatives:
1) When large corporations do anything, it is usually on a grand scale, so it is likely that the "small property owner" can find a number of neighbours similarly affected, and join in a class-action lawsuit, to defray the costs.
2) If the "small property owner" is very sure of victory in the courts, they can take out a loan, to finance their legal costs, which they may be able to recover from the respondent at a later date.
3) The "small property owner" may find a lawyer willing to do the work pro-bono, or on a contingency basis.
4) Some "small property owner[s]" may represent themselves in court; this is not as uncommon as some think, and many people present their case well without a credential-ed lawyer.
The most likely outcome is a settlement in any case, as no corporation wishes to gain a reputation that it is unwilling to clean up its own mess, and a drawn-out court battle would not be very productive.
When private costs (potential liability of losing a lawsuit in re pollution) are lower than the cost of negative externalities (disease, cancer, obliterated ecosystems), you have a classic market failure. You can make lawsuits easier to win or you can impose artificial limits on the private entities impacted. I'd prefer the one that leads to less lawyers.
In the dream libertarian world of Free Market, every agent has perfect knowledge for every decision they make, courts never make mistakes, transgressors are always held liable, and pot is legal.
I'm assuming they'd probably have to sell themselves into sexual bondage to pay for the lawyer costs, but nickff does outline some interesting options!
1) a number of neighbors who are affected ... and every single one of them has time to go through a two decade lawsuit that they'll likely lose.
2) Okay, they can take out some legal financing. If they're sure to win. Because property owners in this magical world always win when a third party dumps polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into their well. I'd like to see a world where someone can get legal financing for what will end up being a $500m (in costs) lawsuit with a payout of maybe $50m (for the litigant, minus lawyer fees.. well, shit). The deeper pocket always wins. Except in Libertarian Land, where the government (which enforces the decision of the courts) doesn't have a monopoly on violence. So I guess it's actually who owns the most Abrams tanks that wins.
3) The small property owner may find a lawyer willing to do 10 years of discovery, 5 years of trials, and 20 years of appeals pro bono. #goodluckwiththat
4) There are some notable pro se litigants! Edward Lawson was the defender in 1983 Kolender v. Lawson and won (cannot be arrested merely for refusing to present identification. Pretty sure that one doesn't hold water anymore though). Robert Kearns fought Ford and Chrysler pro se over windshield wipers. On the other hand, while "it happens more than you'd think," it wins "a lot less than you'd think." I guess in Everything's Fair universe, where not having domain knowledge of 150 years of legal precedent is not a factor, it might win a little bit more often.
>no corporation wishes to gain a reputation that it is unwilling to clean up its own mess
Hahahahaha. Nah, that never happens. Nope. Buddy (and I know I'm not you're buddy), don't drive through coal country. Or eastern TN. Have a nice swim in the Gowanus Canal, and have a sip of sludge from Newtown Creek. Lie down for a little while in this little autobody shop in Queens - you'll only get 300rems a year. Corporations get the reputation that they won't clean up their mess all the time. And you know what happens?
They fucking rebrand.
Strong property rights Free Market randroids live in a perpetual bubble of warped 'insight', where litigation always ends in justice and juries are never tampered with and everything is always discovered in discovery because nobody ever holds things back.
You ask a very difficult question, and I know not the answer.
It's fairly obvious the regulatory bodies that exist today are corrupted.
Perhaps some sort of regulatory body that, per industry, is charged with prosecuting these types of lawsuits. A matrimony of lawyers and scientists-of-the-field instead of lawyers and business-people-of-the-field, perhaps: A bevy of prosecutorial lawyers governed by a board of scientists of the given field.
An EPA governed by environmental scientists instead of .. oh, wait! The last few directors of the EPA _have_ been environmental scientists. Perhaps if the agency had teeth and claws instead of throw pillows and accusatory fingers. But the cries of woe from Big Chemical if that ever came to pass! It would be so unfair!
An FCC governed by communications and data scientists instead of telecommunications lobbyists.
An FDA governed by doctors, toxicologists and clinical nutritionists.
But you asked specifically about electing a government. Again, I never claimed that The People are incapable of making correct decisions in a market, only that The People are, at the individual level, irrational actors without perfect knowledge of said market.
Gauss's law predicts that we will never, with a democracy or a republic, have a perfect government. We will, on the other hand, never have a truly deplorable government. We will just have an average government. We won't pick the best people for the job -- or, usually the worst. We'll pick the middle of the road, the mediocre, the Just Average, the fellow we'd like to have a beer with.
You ask about correctness -- how do you determine correctness? How do you determine that every choice was made without error? I suppose you could relegate the governing body to software written in Scheme - at least then you could prove that the software is correct!
But correct is, probably, not quite the word you were looking for.
But, as I understand it, you're suggesting that they can produce a government which is on average less irrational than themselves without a government. I don't understand what mechanism exists that should make us expect that this is possible.
> Perhaps some sort of regulatory body that, per industry, is charged with prosecuting these types of lawsuits.
At the end of the day, society has to figure out how to appoint these people. This doesn't break out of the problem of people being irrational.
> An FCC governed by communications and data scientists instead of telecommunications lobbyists. An FDA governed by doctors, toxicologists and clinical nutritionists.
A reasonable-sounding idea, but how can you implement it in real life, given that people are irrational?
> Gauss's law predicts that we will never, with a democracy or a republic, have a perfect government. We will, on the other hand, never have a truly deplorable government. We will just have an average government.
I can agree with that, but that's not what's important. What's important (to me) is whether having a government is better than not having a government. Not whether the perfect government is better than not having a government (which, is pretty much the case by definition of "perfect"). Not whether a truly deplorable government is worse than not having a government (which again is the case by definition). But whether the government which we can reasonably expect to have in real life (which is similar to saying "the average government) is better than the government-less society which we can reasonable expect to have in real life.
That's hardly a fair question, because if the contamination so aren't even discovered for a century, there's very little any society ("free" or governed) can do.
What if the problem isn't inability to effectively aggregate desires, its inability to redistribute externalized cost to reflect those aggregated desires absent an entity with the particular set of features to which we give the name "government"? It seems to me that you've constructed a false (and rather unusual) notion of the source of market failure designed specifically to rebut the argument that government can be a solution to market failure.
Sadly, we seem to be going the opposite direction on this at the moment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untouchables_(law_enforcement)
edit: why the downvote?
To make that clear: the only company that is allowed to run a beer store in Ontario is The Beer Store. The Beer Store is owned by an association of InBev (Belgian company) and Molson/Coors (headquarters in Denver).
So Ontario has a government-protected beer retail monopoly that isn't even run by Canadians.
We just had an election. The Beer Store issue was completely ignored by all major parties.
"Oh, for a half-hour of Europe after this sanctimonious icebox!", Wyndham Lewis famously said on visiting. Having said that, he was a bit of an old fascist - and I love Toronto dearly, however hung up about booze it is...
One might conclude that beer would be easier to purchase. No go. If you want to buy a bottle of beer or a six-pack, you have to go to a bar or restaurant where they can sell you up to 192 ounces of beer. Anything over that, and you have to go to a beer distributor instead where you can only buy beer by the case or by the keg (still no wine or liquor). Some grocery stores have gotten smart, and have setup little cafes that are separated from the main stores. Adding a table or two, and some gas station microwave sandwiches is apparently enough to do squeak by and sell beer as a restaurant.
Naturally, no one particularly likes our system. But everyone has a vested interest. Gas stations want to sell beer (a regional chain, Sheetz, has been lobbying for changes for a few years now), but can't. Restaurants and bars don't want to lose their current monopoly on low-volume sales. Distributors fear a future where six-packs are more convenient, lest customers buy six-packs rather than a case with more beer than they want at a given time. And state store employees have been going deathly insane for years over the possibility of liquor store privatization, a separate reform that's often brought up alongside the others.
Together, these groups are amongst the most influential in the state and they're not afraid to use that influence to fight reform efforts. Simply put, it's a mess. Until I read your comments about the Beer Store's rather interesting ownership, I honestly couldn't imagine how much more fucked up things could be. Ridiculous.
For what it is worth, it is possible to become a Beer Store and LCBO franchise as a private business in (rural) Ontario.
Private import is regulated, but it's way more relaxed within the EU countries. Systembolaget will (must) import anything you want which they don't carry, and the process is generally very convenient.
While Swedes love bashing "Bolaget", I think a lot of people are quite satisfied - the opening hours are a little cumbersome (closing at 6-8 PM on weekdays, 3 PM Saturdays, closed on Sundays) but IMO that's counterbalanced by the great assortment.
We used to have a monopoly on the production of liquor as well. It was called Vin & Sprit (Wine & Spirits) and was the company who created Absolut Vodka. Absolut sold very well and they couldn't leave a profit (or something like that). They put all profits into advertising instead, making Absolut a very well known brand. The sitting administration recently sold the company to Pernod Ricard.
This is one of those ridiculous lies that Swedes like to tell themselves. There are single stores in France and Germany with a larger assortment than the entire beställningssortiment. Anything even slightly obscure requires ordering from abroad, with all the crap that entails.
Isn't that a bit of a tricky semantic construction? If the government gets to decide who is able to offer a good in a particular industry, then the government is essentially controlling that industry, with one thin layer of indirection.
Some European countries have a fairly sensible approach.
This quirk in the law caused an unintended side-effect. Mixed drinks became very popular because now your Manhattan had quite a bit of alcohol in it -- a full mini bottle each of whiskey and vermouth.
because people couldn't possibly concieve the idea of drinking more than one mini bottle... /s
I really can't understand this kind of thought process.
Yes, yes, we know. All of the laws, customs, and cultural traditions in western Europe are much more rational/intelligent/better/whatever than those in America.
The real story, as usual, turns out to be fairly complex. Americans have a very odd and unique history with alcohol. Most notably was the temperance movement [1], which really started all of this hullabaloo. This caused an amendment to our Constitution...something tough to do and even tougher to undo. And yet, eleven years later, it was repealed (thankfully).
But, and here's the big but: To temper the temperance movement (which, by the way, had proven considerable political power), there were these crazy laws that were enacted to limit alcohol buying. The predecessor to the ATF was born [2]. And things like the 3-tier system were created, along with all sorts of bans on homebrewing and whatnot.
Essentially all of the regulations on alcohol have their roots in either the temperance movement or the anti-drunk driving movement (i.e.-MADD), which is a neo-temperance movement. Most of them were political concessions. Anymore, folks have profited tremendously off of artificial supply limitations, and they seek to keep those limitations in place by lobbying (quite effectively) against repeal or reform.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_movement_in_the_Uni...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Alcohol,_Tobacco,_Fi...
Then again, even the Irish are getting irritated with the Brits coming over to Dublin to get pissed and get in fist fights in the street and causing other bits of ruckus.
Stuff like this was the impetus for the federalized drinking age in the US.
The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 (23 U.S.C. § 158) was passed on July 17, 1984 by the United States Congress. It punished every state that allowed persons below 21 years to purchase and publicly possess alcoholic beverages by reducing its annual federal highway apportionment by ten percent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_A...
(I'm posting because I think the mechanism might be news to some readers, not to argue about whether it is federalized or not)
In any case, does your logic extend to other forms of alcohol? Only a few decades ago it was common in the US to have a three martini lunch, and watching the TV shows of the 1960s shows an incredible amount of leisure-time drinking. See http://www.harpiesbizarre.com/cocktailhour.htm for examples from Bewitched. Has the amount of binge drinking and DD rates in the US gone up now that those are no longer as culturally acceptable?
Sure, Swedes might not sit down and drink wine for lunch, but the grape/grain alcohol divide kind of is the cause of that. But I'm old enough to remember being able to purchase beer in Germany as soon as I was tall enough to look over the bar and get the bartender's attention.
You are right that alcohol consumption, particularly hard alcohol seemed to have been more common in the 1960s. Overall traffic death rates were very high before the Ralph Nader auto safety revolution, often for stupid reasons. I'm sure somebody has done a good analysis of the complex reasons why, but my hypothesis is that commonplace drinking has gone down as car safety has gone up, being attributed to traffic deaths by organizations like MADD, etc. It's become less socially acceptable to drink during working hours.
You mention Germany, but as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_laws_in_Germany points out, "The German laws regulating alcohol use and sale are some of the least restrictive ones in the world." I don't think it's appropriate to use an extreme as if it is representative of the average.
Alcohol is a great commodity to tax because stills require lots of sugar, grain and barrels and thus are/were very easy to spot. Even today, the ATF will drop by for a visit if you're purchasing large quantities of sugar, and you'll have a hard time buying lots of sugar without identifying yourself.
Many states followed a similar model, so there is a historically ancient precedent of such regulation. Temperance and post-prohibition regulation added more layers.
The temperance movement was not restricted to the US. The Swedish temperance movement started in the early 1800s, and gained a lot of strength with the starting of IOGT in the 1880s. This latter growth was strongly influenced by the Good Templar movement in the US and Canada. The peak was likely the Swedish prohibition referendum in 1922, where 51% of the voters voted against prohibition. (There have only been six referendums; others include "join the EU?" and "adopt the Euro?")
Instead, Sweden moved to a quota system - the Bratt system - first for hard alcohol and then for all the lowest alcohol drinks. While the quota system disappeared in the mid-1950s, the government still has a monopoly, excepting through bars and restaurants.
While on the other hand, Iceland had prohibition from 1915 until (in some form or other) 1989. That ending is still celebrated as "Beer Day", because until then the Icelandic temperance movement had successfully argued that strong beer, being cheaper than hard liquor or wine, would cause more depravity so should not be sold. People ended up mixing legal, weak beer with hard liquor to make an ersatz strong beer. Prohibition of that mix finally tilted the scales to end prohibition.
Norway had prohibition from 1916 to 1927, again, from the same temperance movement that was strong in the US.
In reality, this discussion should be around regulatory capture. But that's too hard, so instead, we get into a Europe vs US pissing match. It's stupid. It's foolish. So, instead of discussing how to better fight regulatory capture, we just try to show off how special we are. I say again: sigh.
Just like when one looks at the much maligned US gun laws: Washington State has a similar murder rate to that of British Columbia, thus the gun laws probably don't have much impact on murder rates.
More specifically, lvh's comment about "As a (western) European" is an incorrect generalization. There are western European countries where it's impossible to buy alcohol from convenience store. I believe that your response should not have been to bring up any special history of the US - thus inviting a pissing war - but instead highlight the parochialism in lvh's observation.
Not that this makes any more sense in Europe though. In Finland, it's a national pastime to make booze runs across to Estonia, where alcohol is far cheaper. Since both countries are in the EU, there's very little Finland can do about it (free trade and all that), and there's even judicial precedent that importing a minivan stacked full of vodka falls under "personal use" if you happen to have a wedding or birthday party coming up.
I'm a bit of a federalist (at least for now). I live in a state whose liquor laws I generally like, and if other states want different liquor laws that is their prerogative.
I'm surprised that the author, being a current Pennsylvanian, didn't mention the Johnstown Flood Tax. Despite that particular flood having occurred all the way back in 1936, we're still paying the tax on liquor.
BC should really take a note from Saskatchewan or Alberta. Paying for health coverage in this country is an atrocity, especially with the high liquor/tabacco taxes.
No no, really, I have exactly the same taste as some random guy in the state capital.
I felt like I was being punished for not being a church goer. It was an odd experience.
Which of course had unintended consequences. We drank. Fraternities turned into de-facto bars. We would pool our money on a Thursday and make the 35 minute drive to the liquor store. We'd typically spend $1500-$2000 on booze and truck it back to campus. The idea was the buy the booze we'd need for the weekend. We'd typically be completely out by sometime on Friday.
At that point some drunk college kid would decide to drive 22 miles to buy more booze. My university had multiple drunk driving fatalities every year because of this.
It's better now (restaurants can serve booze finally), but I'll never understand why that law existed in the first place.
That's exactly it, but it's a little odd the stores were open to tell you to come back in an hour.
As far as I know, the law has been repealed. Before I moved away I saw them implement Sunday beer and wine sales (still no sunday liquor sales) and do not remember having difficulty buying the previously restricted items on Sunday.
It was weird entering a Wal-Mart (or other large store) and seeing a large section of items roped off.
[1]: https://www.atf.gov/firearms/faq/firearms-technology.html#co...
Regulation of commerce always risks unintended (though often forseeable) consequences.
The cities have the ability to add extra licensure requirements, so quotas can and do exist at the city level. Further, there are strange rules about entry to taverns - for example age of entry need not be legal drinking age which differ by city. There are also city or even smaller administrative district rule over what can be sold, pricing rules (e.g. near the college campus there is a rule about the minimum price of a drink special that doesn't apply to a lot of other parts of town) and so on.
When I was 21/22 I rarely had a problem getting passed the bouncers in places with the higher age limits because "you don't look like you're going to do anything stupid"
What I don't quite understand is they can turn away anyone for any [non-protected] reason already. What could be the thought process behind posting this? Especially when the establishment is unlikely to enforce it, as you noted.
As an establishment, feel free to turn away a large, intoxicated group. Similarly, it is your right and responsibility to avoid over-serving. And furthermore, you may choose to establish whatever ambiance you choose through your decor, music, lighting, and even pricing. Between these things, you can maintain the atmosphere and attract the customer base you desire.
Heavily regulated industries abound, those are three very big ones whose taxes fund a lot of services but more importantly whose political donations fund even more protection.
In Georgia there was a big stink about restaurants storing customer alcohol, seems the locals took offense and were confiscating private alcohol because of lack of tax stamps.
If people ever thought there were not enough taxes they never bothered to add them all up. Even taxes, fees, and whatnot, that do not hit you directly get you in the end
Are you saying you weren't allowed to? If so, why not? You can walk into any random liquor store that I'm aware of and buy gallons of beer or hard liquor if you want to
I buy it. In fact, I'm pretty certain of it.
But otherwise, good article. I'm continually frustrated when I try to buy beer on Sunday and they don't allow Sunday sales in my town. Of course, the two stores directly outside the city limits do pretty well from the law but I don't know that it accomplishes much else. Except maybe promoting drunk driving.
Make no mistake -- alcohol boards and organizations like MADD are simply neo-prohibiitonist movements co-opted by religious zealots.
The idea that you can go blind off this stuff has more to do with propaganda and poisoning folks:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...
150 proof is a highly flammable liquid. The vapor is flammable. If you have a vapor leak it can ignite. The flame is invisible. In other words, it's not something to take lightly.
In the micro distilling industry, I personally know of a half dozen fires over the past couple years. It's easy for something to go wrong very, very quickly.
Here is an article on the most recent fire: http://newsok.com/blast-rocks-moore-distillery/article/49079...
Catastrophic fires are also an issue with deep-frying turkeys, and in fact with deep-frying anything.
And we do already have a well-formed body of law dealing with responsibility for fires, damage to neighbour's homes &c.
'Someone might maybe do something wrong' isn't really a good reason for there to be a federal ban on most behaviours. I'd be much less incensed were it at the city or even neighbourhood level.
While distilling is heavily regulated at the Federal, state, and local levels, the Feds did not ban it due to concerns over fire safety. Rather, a chief reason is "to protect the revenue," which, in the case of Federal excise taxes, is substantial. ($13.50 per proof gallon; a proof gallon is 1 gallon at 50% ABV.)
The Feds don't really concern themselves with fire safety. Rather, just as you desire, that's regulated at the state and local level. The TTB outlook is that you have to satisfy the local and state levels as far as fire safety is concerned.
The cost of 1 gallon (3.79 L) of 200 proof ethanol was $8. You could dilute this with 1 part water and end up with the equivalent of vodka for $4 per gallon. It goes to show how much alcohol taxes are.
That being said, the 200 proof alcohol was pretty vile. It smelled like the cheapest vodka you could buy. I remember a few gallons going missing over the years, so somebody didn't mind the taste.
I'd have a problem if someone was doing that in my building (and they'd be violating the terms of the lease if they were).
> Catastrophic fires are also an issue with deep-frying turkeys, and in fact with deep-frying anything.
Which is why chip-pans were the biggest cause of home fires when I was growing up, and nowadays no-one has them.
> 'Someone might maybe do something wrong' isn't really a good reason for there to be a federal ban
Sure, I don't think it should be illegal. But it's bad advice.
> I'd have a problem if someone was doing that in my building (and they'd be violating the terms of the lease if they were).
Well, sure, but if you live in a multi-tenant building, you won't have to mow a lawn, either. These days, though, a battery-powered mower is just as good as some gasoline mowers. Not having to deal with gas and oil is a large bonus.
In reality, I think the likelihood of a "freezer bust" and consequent punishment is pretty low. Moonshine busts are generally carried out on the state level, and the typical charges are possession and transportation of untaxed spirits.
In a clean, well-controlled fermentation vessel, as one might find in an open commercial operation, this is not a problem. But when the process is outlawed, and the producers have to hide, often in places that cannot be biologically sterilized, this problem could occur more often.
But then again, it isn't really about public safety, but about people who want to control other people. Otherwise, the law would mandate adequate fire protection for steam distillers and establish upper limits on non-ethanol fermentation products in frost-distilled products. Either could address the safety concern without outright banning the practice.
If that reason had anything to do with the law, it would be a fire code thing.
No, the real reason is a coalition between moral purity (left over from the temperance movement) and revenue protection. Ever heard of "Baptists and bootleggers"? Same thing, except the bootleggers are the government.
I mentioned fire in relation to a "problem" with home distilling, not as a legal issue, although fire codes related to distilling are quite extensive and restrictive.
I also mentioned the revenue issue in several other comments.
The so-called "moral" issue is generally only relevant to consumption, not distilling, and only at the state level or below, where some states have "dry" counties and other restrictions on access.
But the only reason you need a federal permit for making the fuel is so you don't go making any demon rum on the sly and avoiding the tax.
Making beer, wine, etc is legal in most jurisdictions (with some out-there upper limit like 200 gallons per person per year max). Nothing wrong with drinking [most of] that stuff; with a little practice you can make it better than the cheap store-bought forms (or maybe even get actually good at it).
Distilling is simply removing some of the content of the aforementioned beverage. Usually it involves extracting the [harmless] ethanol from the fermented must/wort via evaporation & condensation, which can be done as simply as a "disappearing still" (arrangements of common kitchen pots, ice, and stove). Legally, "distilling" also includes other forms of concentrating the alcohol by removing something, such as by freezing the liquid and draining the still-fluid components from the ice. Either way, it's pretty stupid that people can make vast amounts of inebriants at home for personal use, but are severely punished for concentrating it (again, for personal use).
Yes, some people do get stupid and make harmful solutions. A main factor therein is the fact that it's illegal to make distilled spirits without expensive licenses, which in turns make it hard for people to make it properly & safely (both in manufacturing and product). Sure you could argue that they shouldn't be doing illegal things, but that ignores the easy LEGAL availability (liquor stores flourish), and the fact that it's so easy to make at home it's almost hard not to.
And perhaps the authorities encourage this view to protect tax revenues (which are substantial.)