Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 199 posts

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

#161

Post by dalke »

endersshadow wrote: post #67
dalke wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh . Yes, yes, we know the US is special. So is everyone else. ;) 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% o…

I'm quite aware of the global temperance movement. However, you've missed my point completely. My sigh was because every time somebody brings up something in the US that needs to be changed or reformed, you can bet that some European will come in and say, "As a European, I'm shocked this is like this!" As if we all got in a room and decided that whatever the thing is was the right thing to do, and it all sounded like…

My reply, however, was to point out that those who argue that the "laws, customs, and cultural traditions in western Europe are much more rational/intelligent/better/whatever than those in America" are actually ignorant of the actual history of Western Europe.

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.

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

#162

Post by dalke »

bane wrote: post #50
wdewind wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Du…

By "European approach" I don't think you mean "European approach." The drinking cultures in, say, the UK, Sweden, and Italy are quite different. In Sweden it's relatively unusual to sit down with a glass of wine for lunch, and the UK is much more beer oriented than Italy.

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?

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

#163

Post by MBCook »

baddox wrote: post #141
Pxtl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the government doesn't get the profits (or 'risks'), the private entity does.

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

#164

Post by nitrogen »

warble wrote: post #160
cobrausn wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A longtime wish of mine is that every law ever written came up for review every decade or so, providing ample opportunity to adjust and remove laws to fit changing cultural norms. There is probably a downside to this that I'm not seeing, not being a lawyer and all that.

As an engineer, I build a test for every design I put forth. The test validates the design against the intent of the design. You could approach law this way. 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…

It would be interesting if a tagging or search system could dig up all old court decisions that would have a different outcome under a proposed new law. Those could form the initial test cases.

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

#165

Post by nitrogen »

nickff wrote: post #159
warfangle wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ne…

In a free market, property rights are more extensive than in a highly regulated market, so tort law serves many of the purposes that regulators and federal agencies currently do. 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…

In a free market, property rights are more extensive than in a highly regulated market, so tort law serves many of the purposes that regulators and federal agencies currently do.

So how does a small property owner fund decade-long litigation against a giant corporation?

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

#166

Post by nickff »

nitrogen wrote: post #165
nickff wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a free market, property rights are more extensive than in a highly regulated market, so tort law serves many of the purposes that regulators and federal agencies currently do. 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…

In a free market, property rights are more extensive than in a highly regulated market, so tort law serves many of the purposes that regulators and federal agencies currently do. So how does a small property owner fund decade-long litigation against a giant corporation?

I will assume that your question refers to damages caused to a "small property owner" by a multinational 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.

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

#167

Post by philwelch »

cobrausn wrote: post #130
IvyMike wrote: post #59

Philip K. Howard has a new book out: The Rule of Nobody. (Note: I haven't read it, I've just seen a few interviews and considered buying the book.) 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…

A longtime wish of mine is that every law ever written came up for review every decade or so, providing ample opportunity to adjust and remove laws to fit changing cultural norms. There is probably a downside to this that I'm not seeing, not being a lawyer and all that.

Passing a law in the first place takes political momentum, but renewing it is cheap. The Patriot Act keeps getting renewed even a decade after the moment of poor judgment that saw it passed.

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

#168

Post by philwelch »

danudey wrote: post #149
stonemetal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Drivers can work for Uber though.

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

#169

Post by warfangle »

nitrogen wrote: post #165
nickff wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a free market, property rights are more extensive than in a highly regulated market, so tort law serves many of the purposes that regulators and federal agencies currently do. 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…

In a free market, property rights are more extensive than in a highly regulated market, so tort law serves many of the purposes that regulators and federal agencies currently do. So how does a small property owner fund decade-long litigation against a giant corporation?

[can't directly reply to nickff..hm, thread too deep?]

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.

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

#170

Post by ejain »

rayiner wrote: post #47
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…

Regarding the "undesirable drunk people", aren't there other laws (e.g. zoning laws) that deal with that?
Post reply on HN