What these folks are missing is that it’s not just corporate influence on gov’t. It’s gov’t abuse of its power. The corruption goes both ways.
It’s not just corrupt business folks trying to get gov’t to give them a bigger market share, it’s corrupt gov’t folks giving businesses a hard time if they don’t ante up into the game.
Politicians love to be able to grant favors to friends and ignore, if not outright harm, enemies. If gov’t didn’t do that, there wouldn’t be as much of a need for lobbyists.
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I live in a dry county. At every opportunity I tell people that prohibition was one of the most stupid things our country ever did, and our county is so stupid it is still doing it.
And the counties are so small around here that I can just drive to the border of the next county and get whatever I want, and all the tax dollars go into that county. Kinda funny, actually.
When government treats the citizenry as children, it gets exactly that....
Social engineering through legislation. It’s a short step between telling someone they can’t by booze to telling someone what lightbulb they can use.
—a phenomenon economist Bruce Yandle dubbed “Bootleggers and Baptists,”—
Yep. Where I live there is a Babdis church behind every bush. And there really is still the “we’ll all be awash in collapse if we allow booze to be sold here” attitude.
But every election year it’s on the ballot. And every year we get closer to appeal. Last year we became a “moist” county. That means you can get alcohol, in the form of beer or wine, with your meal at a restaurant. But that’s it.
By next year or the year after it will probably finally be appealed.
No, not really. When prohibition was passed, if someone wanted to be law-abidding, they could simply stop drinking. No one was forcing them to drink alcoholic beverages. They didn't have to drink them to survive. If they broke the law, it was because they chose to do so.
I'm not addressing prohibition itself - just this silly comment.