Free booze
I mean free the booze.
Washington state voters vote to end the state monopoly on liquor. State revenues expected to rise.
With bonus crybaby antics from the head of the liquor employees’ union.
13 Responses to “Free booze”
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November 10th, 2011 at 10:23 am
You piqued my interest with the phrase, “liquor employees union.” Whoa! You mean there is a union for a job that requires the exact same skills as operating the counter at any 7-11 convenience store in the rest of the country? Jobs that are typically filled by 16 year olds with incomplete high school educations? Jobs that require only that one be able to make exact change with the aid of a cash register, and the ability to tell a customer’s age from a driver’s license? This job needs a UNION? WHYYYYYYYYYYY?
November 10th, 2011 at 10:42 am
Because, those jobs belong to the union workers, they are only paid for by the taxpayer.
November 10th, 2011 at 10:55 am
Ah, kids nowadays. When State Stores were really State Stores, there were a whole lotsa-buncha extra-7/11 skill sets involved, because “Liquor” and “Control” always appear together in the department title. They were there to Control. Liquor. And the originators of those departments expected prohibition to be back, any time, now, like in ‘Key Largo.’ For details of what happened to establish that attitude, you’d look into the story of the big Ohio ‘legger in “Boardwalk Empire.” There was a lot of inventory paperwork to file, in the golden age of ABC. Fail at that, and you were in a lot of trouble. You’d want some protection.
In one state (My State), a full semi-trailer of whiskey evaporated one night from a secure foreign trade facility (The Docks). It’s been almost 40 years, and the chances of the evidence showing up are getting slim. It would have taken 1930’s speedboat pilots a whole season to move that much product. Jobs were lost.
Now, whether the presence of a union among that bureaucratic specialty was more or less likely to result in back-door transfers is another story altogether. And most of us around here, I reckon, would say that if job isn’t worth doing, it’s not worth doing well. But make no mistake, the first generation of people in the State Store business were as dead serious about it as any revenue agent.
Next problem: a lot of states that privatize the retail function still maintain an iron grip on distribution and warehousing, effectively making sure that any new product you get a chance to try has rendered up the requisite payola to buy its place on the shelves. We’re a long, long way from a free market in alcohol. I don’t think we’ll ever see it. Don’t be deceived by the trappings of liberty (7/11 clerks) wrapped around a core of state control.
November 10th, 2011 at 11:52 am
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA….
One tiny step in the right direction 🙂
November 10th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Oregon Liquor Control Commission, you’re next….
November 10th, 2011 at 12:02 pm
Whew! One down, 17 or so to go. Wait a minute. Just hit me. If all the Booze gets Privatized, and there is no more State Control, does this mean we have to pay for new Bureau of ALCOHOL, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Logos, Uniforms, Badges, etc? “BTFE” sounds weird.
November 10th, 2011 at 3:41 pm
The best part is seeing FB comments about people complaining about the “lost jobs” from the state liquor monopoly going away.
Makes me want to ask them if the State should just create a requirement that, eg. bread be sold only in special stores, rather than in grocery stores – after all, think of the jobs that would create staffing a whole new set of stores!
Crap, might as well just ask them why we don’t have the State pay people to dig and fill holes all day…
(Partially, I don’t ask because then they’d probably say “that’s a GREAT IDEA!”)
November 10th, 2011 at 3:42 pm
Bubblehead: Nope. The Feds aren’t going to stop regulating liquor just because every State monopoly goes away.
Have to get Congress to change that.
November 10th, 2011 at 6:14 pm
Now we just have to get Virginia into the 21st century and off the gov’t liquor teat.
November 10th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
I hope so. I grew up in Nevada, where you can buy liquor at any grocery store, and a as a result liquor is pretty cheap. In about three or four weeks, I’m moving to Oregon, where you have to buy it from a damn state store, which typically have a poorer selection and are more expensive.
Fucking annoying.
At least Oregon allows grocery stores to sell beer and wine, which was a gift from the big microbrewery and wine making industry in Oregon, who lobbied for that exception. Maybe they need to start up a liquor industry as well…
November 10th, 2011 at 9:05 pm
Need to do the same in Pennsylvania…soonest! PA has state owned liquor stores and then there’s the beer distributorships where you can buy by the case only, no six-packs.
Grocery and convenience store sales…HA! HA! HA! Surely, you jest!
Meanwhile, just over the border in New York State, I can buy a six-pack at the effen gas station! Cheap!
November 10th, 2011 at 9:21 pm
Comatus, thank you for the edumacationing on the history of state run liquor stores. I can see how that would happen. However, I still don’t see why that history is any reason for continued unionization of the employees. At any 7-11 in any rational state, the 16 year olds run the register, stock the beer and wine coolers, and also stock and sell the cigarettes – I mean, deathsticks. And while I am sure there are back door sales in beer and cigs by the 7-11 employees, there can be no doubt that the seriousness of the performance by a union employee is nothing more than an old joke in this day and age.
November 10th, 2011 at 9:30 pm
I vote in WA State so I read the initiative. I wanted to get the state out of the liquor business so I really wanted to know how. I ended up voting against it though. It was pages and pages and pages, with doubled penalties for selling liquor to minors, and every imaginable state control other than actually running the stores. Big deal.
It doesn’t take more than a few sentences to do the right thing, but it takes page after page to do something stupid and wrong. “We hereby declare the alcohol business free from state intervention– restriction, involvement, regulation or taxation beyond any other business” or something like that. Anyway; as of this morning while I was driving to work they said the measure had been defeated.
Assuming it passed, we haven’t got the state out of the liquor business at all. Far from it. When you can set up your own private operation at home and sell to anyone without a special tax, just like at the flee market, it’ll be a free market in alcohol. Until then I’m not interested in the silly details of this verses that form of tyranny.