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Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

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Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#41

Post by readstoomuch »

e40 wrote: post #19
robflynn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I lived in Columbia, SC, we couldn't buy anything on Sunday mornings before noon. There were a few exceptions, mostly stuff like food and medicine. I tried to buy a broom and some cleaning supplies at 11am and every store that I went to told me to come back in an hour. I felt like I was being punished for not being a church goer. It was an odd experience.

I felt like I was being punished for not being a church goer That's exactly it, but it's a little odd the stores were open to tell you to come back in an hour.

In the UK, a common loophole for extending "Sunday trading" laws is that, while they can't exchange money for goods, they can let you in the store and collect the things you want to buy so you'll be ready for "opening" and can go straight to checkout.

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#42

Post by gress »

dragonwriter wrote: post #38
gress wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only answers why they are valuable, not why they are property . It is the issuing authority that intentional makes licenses into property by honoring them after they have been transferred. The quesion is, why are these licenses honored after a transfer?

There's two aspects to the kinds of licensing at issue: (1) Quantitative limits, and (2) Substantive requirements (which vary by specific license) that limit who can use the license. 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 tran…

Aren't your last two points contradictory?

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#43

Post by k-mcgrady »

Pxtl wrote: post #31
lucisferre wrote: post #24

You should try Canada's laws for a while. Some of the highest taxes on alcohol in the world, almost no province allows drinking outside homes or licensed establishments (so be prepared for a $300+ fine for having wine at a picnic). All of this managed through archaic licensing systems run by bureaucratic power-tripping morons.

Ontario takes it one step further, even. We have a government run monopoly on liquor and wine sales (the LCBO) and a non-government-run government-protected monopoly on beer sales (the Beer Store). 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 Onta…

This was one of the strangest things for me when I lived in Toronto. For some reason I always thought Canada was quite liberal with alcohol. LCBO stores were few and far between too. It was about a 30-40 min walk to my nearest one. Back in Ireland I can hit about 10 stores selling beer and liquor in that time! And there are a lot fewer drunks on the street.

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#44

Post by [deleted] »

Pxtl wrote: post #31
lucisferre wrote: post #24

You should try Canada's laws for a while. Some of the highest taxes on alcohol in the world, almost no province allows drinking outside homes or licensed establishments (so be prepared for a $300+ fine for having wine at a picnic). All of this managed through archaic licensing systems run by bureaucratic power-tripping morons.

Ontario takes it one step further, even. We have a government run monopoly on liquor and wine sales (the LCBO) and a non-government-run government-protected monopoly on beer sales (the Beer Store). 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 Onta…

[deleted]

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#45

Post by dragonwriter »

gress wrote: post #42
dragonwriter wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two aspects to the kinds of licensing at issue: (1) Quantitative limits, and (2) Substantive requirements (which vary by specific license) that limit who can use the license. 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 tran…

Aren't your last two points contradictory?

No, there's a difference between substantive review of applications with availability and queue management (and responding to inquiries) about applications pending availability.

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#46

Post by litek »

jpatokal wrote: post #22
lvh wrote: post #7

As a (western) European, these laws strike me as completely unnecessary and obviously damaging. The union's ad (page 2) makes no sense at all. Kids here aren't dying by the bunch, and I'm pretty sure I can buy all kinds of booze (from mixed fizzy drinks to beer and wine to hard liquor to everclear) in any arbitrary convenience store...

There are plenty of western European states with very similar laws. For example, all the Scandinavian states have varying levels of government monopolies for the distribution of harder liquor, which in Sweden translates to "anything more than 3.5% ABV". 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 bot…

Denmark is the notable exception. You can buy hard liquor at the local 7-eleven at any hour.

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#47

Post by rayiner »

twic wrote: post #10

Okay, what the heck is with this business of secondary markets for licenses in the US? You can sell a liquor license? You can sell a taxi license (aka medallion)? Why? How does treating licenses as property make any legal sense, or serve any public good? 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 g…

You make a license trade-able when you care about limiting the supply, but you don't care who gets it. The purpose of a taxi medallion is to limit the total number of taxis, and the purpose of a liquor license is to limit the number of establishments that sell liquor.[1] But the government doesn't care who has the license. Making it trade-able ensures that the license goes to the person or organization that values it most highly (Coase Theorem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem).

[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.

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#48

Post by chiph »

The SC mini-bottle law has an interesting history. It was originally promoted by the Baptists to prevent alcoholism by limiting how much you could get in your glass (open-pour became illegal) The waiter or bartender had to crack the seal on the mini-bottle in front of you and pour the entire contents into your glass. No more, no less.

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.

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#49

Post by stonemetal »

twic wrote: post #10

Okay, what the heck is with this business of secondary markets for licenses in the US? You can sell a liquor license? You can sell a taxi license (aka medallion)? Why? How does treating licenses as property make any legal sense, or serve any public good? 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 g…

> How on earth do you get from there to licenses being a kind of property?

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.

Re: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

#50

Post by bane »

wdewind wrote: post #26
endersshadow wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. 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.…

None of which detracts from his point: we (Americans) are nuts about mind altering drugs, and most of the debate on both sides is laughably sophomoric. Europeans have a lot to feel superior about when it comes to these regulations. That there is a complex political history here doesn't alter that.

There's lots of good in the European approach to alcohol. It's not unusual to sit down with a glass of wine with lunch in Italy, but in the U.S. you might get flagged as an alcoholic. Children grow up learning how to manage alcohol better when they're adults and you don't see much binge drinking and rates of drunk driving are far lower.

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.

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