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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

#141

Post by baddox »

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…

> a non-government-run government-protected monopoly

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.

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

#142

Post by the_watcher »

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…

I don't have a problem with secondary markets (such as the iPhone secondary market that pops up around all new model releases, based on the private manufacturer making the decision to limit supply), but when it's enabled by regulations and is a product of regulatory capture, there is essentially no justification for it in my book.

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

#143

Post by warfangle »

baddox wrote: post #139
jal278 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true -- but implicit in that statement is that regulation is never desirable. What about situations where government regulation is desirable or necessary (e.g. limitations on environmental pollution)?

> but implicit in that statement is that regulation is never desirable. 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 questio…

How would a Free (as opposed to 'free' with regulations attached) market limit industrial pollution (some contaminations of which aren't discovered until almost a century after the original contamination[0])?

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/

[1]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpoint_oil_spill

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

#144

Post by danudey »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #132
tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subtext behind an invocation of Wrigleyville is that drunk bar clientele from outside the area makes it difficult to live in. Wrigleyville is a running joke among people who live on the north side of Chicago.

And now I suddenly feel the need to stand up on behalf of people four years younger than myself and say: drunk college douchebags are people, too. They have equal rights and an equal stake in governance, too.

Sure, but the issue in this case isn't about rights or governance, it's about local issues caused by non-local individuals. Vancouver has a similar issue, where the drinking/clubbing/partying district, Granville Street in the heart of Vancouver's downtown, is a huge destination for partygoers from all over the region; not just Vancouver, but outlying cities and suburbs as well; a city of around 600k has to take on the responsibility of hosting the drunks, clubgoers, partiers, concertgoers, etc. of a region of 2.8m people, and many of those party people live and work outside of the city, pay taxes outside of the city, pay rent outside of the city, and only come downtown to party.

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.

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

#145

Post by danudey »

notahacker wrote: post #133
rayiner wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Arguably the state should care about who gets the licenses, but even if it didn't, the state can easily ensure that licenses go to the people or organizations that value them most by auctioning them on an annual basis (and offering incumbent licence-holders first option to renew the licence at the market determined lease rates) whilst collecting the licenses' appreciation in value

But as soon as you start caring about who gets the licenses, you have to create a set of criteria, and people will have a hard time choosing them.

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.

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

#146

Post by danudey »

sethrin wrote: post #94
chimeracoder wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Counterpoint: Panama City, Panama. 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, cong…

None of those points have anything to do with the number of taxis and everything to do with regulation of the taxis that exist; perhaps that's a limitation of their ability to regulate and enforce, but that should be the bottleneck preventing taxis from staying on the road. That is to say, the answer to 'we can't enforce all these taxis' isn't 'let's enforce no taxis'.

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

#147

Post by Crito »

tptacek wrote: post #117
Crito wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I somehow doubt that those people would stop going out and getting drunk during the evening if there were fewer/no taxis. They'd just be driving themselves. 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, th…

He's referring to the liquor licenses, I think.

I see... I guess one possible solution would be to make liquor licenses non-transferable, and then only issue them to businesses that are not located close to some threshold of other license holders.

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.

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

#148

Post by dragonwriter »

baddox wrote: post #139
jal278 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true -- but implicit in that statement is that regulation is never desirable. What about situations where government regulation is desirable or necessary (e.g. limitations on environmental pollution)?

> but implicit in that statement is that regulation is never desirable. 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 questio…

> 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?

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.

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

#149

Post by danudey »

stonemetal wrote: post #49
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 becaus…

In Vancouver, you have a license for a cab (not a driver), and you can put any qualifying driver in that cab. Fire a driver, get a new one, you can still have a cab on the road, but they're not transferable (and they're limited in quantity).

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.

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

#150

Post by Shivetya »

Liquor laws.... cigarette laws (who can sell/etc.... and even auto sales.

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

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