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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

#191

Post by lhc- »

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…

The thing is, most laws already do this. They are proposed to affect some specific situation which has already occurred (like laws in response to online bullying, etc). The problem isn't that laws are just passed randomly without a specific case in mind: the problem is that they are often broad enough to have unintended consequences on other tangential cases. I don't think the problem is that no tests exist; I think the problem is more like bad test coverage. Laws can have wide reaching implications and it's very difficult to find every applicable situation before they come up.

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

#192

Post by baddox »

warfangle wrote: post #188
baddox wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how a government, particularly a modern republic that is at least ostensibly formed through consent of the governed, elections, etc., can solve these problems? I'm looking for a specific mechanism by which the people, who you claim are incapable of making correct decisions in a market, can make correct decisions when it comes to electing a government.

I don't claim The People are incapable of making correct decisions in a market. I only claim that they are irrational actors, and the hypothesis of Free Market sans regulations should probably be tested in some manner before being confirmed theory by its pious adherents. 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…

> I only claim that they are irrational actors

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.

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

#193

Post by baddox »

dragonwriter wrote: post #187
baddox wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internalizing costs is certainly a part of what I meant by "effectively aggregate our desires."

Right, so you are using equivocation -- using the same term with two different meanings -- when you use "effectively aggregate our desires". In one use, it means "internalize externalities". In other, it means, well, its not really clear what it means specifically in terms of forming a government -- but its clear it doesn't mean internalize externalities since that's what the government is intended to do, not what is…

That's not even close to equivocation. It's not equivocation to use the term "animals" to refer to a set of things like cats, dogs, monkeys, etc.

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

#194

Post by gress »

dragonwriter wrote: post #101
gress wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? It sounds like the agency has to check that the applicant meets the criteria for the license in either case. Where is the cost saving?

> It sounds like the agency has to check that the applicant meets the criteria for the license in either case. 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…

This makes no sense to me. It seems like the major effort would be involved in examining the applicant is necessary in both cases, since that requires collecting individual information and exercising judgement.

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.

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

#195

Post by avn2109 »

twic wrote: post #186
avn2109 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "Taxis generate undesirable congestion..." 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.

You're assuming that private cars are the current dominant form of transport. That's not always the case. 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 r…

Good point---that's a subtlety that I had missed.

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.

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

#196

Post by dalke »

bane wrote: post #190
dalke wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

By "European Approach", I'm talking about the more acceptable normalization of alcohol as a food item. Americans treat alcohol like either radioactive poison or a moral suspension drug. I've noticed in my various times in various parts of Europe that alcohol consumption general starts earlier and the usage of it is generally better moderated in consumption than in the U.S. (there's an entirely different pattern for a…

Understood. My comment is that "European Approach" is a poor shorthand for what you mean. In the UK, for example, alcohol seems much more like a 'moral suspension drug', as the innumerable accounts of drunken Christmas parties from the UK, or stories like http://metro.co.uk/2010/11/01/aebooze-asbosae-for-drunken-yo... ("We remain concerned about the number of alcohol-related incidents and the drink-fuelled violence and disorder that blight many of our towns and cities") seem to attest.

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.

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

#197

Post by [deleted] »

nickff wrote: post #166
nitrogen wrote: post #165

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. 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 su…

[deleted]

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

#198

Post by warfangle »

nickff wrote: post #166
nitrogen wrote: post #165

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. 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 su…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure

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.

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

#199

Post by warble »

lhc- wrote: post #191
warble wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing is, most laws already do this. They are proposed to affect some specific situation which has already occurred (like laws in response to online bullying, etc). The problem isn't that laws are just passed randomly without a specific case in mind: the problem is that they are often broad enough to have unintended consequences on other tangential cases. I don't think the problem is that no tests exist; I think…

Sure, they have a situation in mind, but they are not actually tested. At least I've never heard of an instance. (I'm probably wrong)
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