I wouldn’t disagree, except that the focus of the argument has gone back and forth through the course of the thread. I am the one who keeps trying to focus it on “liquor retailing” and *not *some larger notion of “the industry.”
But by the time a discussion gets down to Randites vs. their notion of what is “socialized” there’s not much left that can be said, regardless of the definitions.
Funny, the same people who abhor socialism for liquor stores or medicine never seem to complain about the solcialism or federal government creep when it comes to socialized roadways. The government pays for an extensive network of paved arterial roadways which are free to all comers, and this is essentially a “good thing”. Whereas, free market vs. socialized (or fascist) power grids seem to have been an unmitigated disaster for the free market side, as the Enron saga might point out.
there are degrees of government control of anything. Rstricting the sale of an addictive and socially destructive drug to various extents hardly compares to the government running the only department store or supervising and owning all the collective farms. Some people think mandating seat belts, motorcycle helmets, or child seats is a communistic intrusion.
As Bernard Shaw is alleged to have replied to the society lady, “we’ve established that, we’re only haggling over the price.” Any society short of anarchy will have some form of government control. The greater the risk of an activity, the more necessary the government control and the more invasive it will be.
Yeah, well, the people who love the socialized roadways so much still get mad at me when I want to use them for drinking my socialized liquor! Sometimes you just can’t win…
In Andy Capps day (1950s/1960s?) pubs opened for lunch and closed in the afternoon. At around 2pm you would be thrown out onto the street until 5pm when you would be allowed back in. This was the general situation and was modified in places by local conditions - mainly markets. Many market towns allowed all day drinking on market day(s) because much of the business was done in the pub. If you lived in Wales, pubs were shut all day on Sundays, a situation which publicans strongly supported.
In London in the 60s, it was possible to legally drink 24/7, provided you knew where to go. Covent Garden veg/fruit/flower market was adjacent (ie a ten minute stroll) to the West End with all it’s theatres and bars. Pubs within the market area were open from midnight to 6am as these were the trading hours of the market. Officially they were only supposed to serve market traders and their customers.
As a very young man, I was living rough for a while, and used to go to the Market to earn a small amount of cash loading and unloading lorries. When we finished we would go to a cafe where for a very small amount of money, we could buy a large mug of strong tea and a thick slice of bread and dripping.
Please reread the thread. You are the one who brings up the whole industry. And so far you haven’t said why you don’t consider government ownership of liquor sales socialized liquor sales, other than to bandy about the term “industry”. So we ask, can only whole industries be socialized, and not simply some aspects of an industry or a market segment?
I’m not a Randite, but she usually has pretty good definitions. Feel free to point to one that makes sense. So far you haven’t answered the only one cited, which is Wikipedia.
Perhaps you don’t call it socialism because the government SELLS the liquor rather than handing it out? You may have a point, you just haven’t made it, other than to object with no apparent reason.
Do you have a reason? State it! Don’t just make a claim.
I’m not sure anywhere is “typical of the nation”, as each state sets their own, and they vary widely.
I, too, have wondered at the rationale behind some of them.
Connecticut adopted the “can’t sell alcohol and gas” rule while I lived there, and they said it was to discourage drinking and driving. Virginia has no such rule.
As for the distance from the pumps, I’m guessing that some stores, like maybe those grocery stores that now have gas pumps, argued that they were effectively two separate businesses owned by the same company and why can’t that grocery sell wine just because it also has a gas outlet, so a rule was made that if the store way a certain number of feet from the gas, then it was separate.
As others have addressed, the reduced hours (or outright ban on sales) on Sunday tends to be an outdated religious-based law.
When I lived in Connecticut, beer and wine sales in stores (to take home and consume there) ended at 8pm, and no sales at all on Sunday. Bars were still open until 2.
Here in Virginia, sales end at midnight and resume at 6am. Again, bars are open until 2.
It seems to be that if anything the bars should close first: getting drunk at home isn’t really the problem, it’s getting drunk and then trying to go home that makes a problem. But maybe there’s an issue I’m just not seeing there.
Then again, in my role as a store clerk I am thankful for the rule, as it saves me from a lot of awkward conversations. See, it’s illegal to sell alcohol to someone who’s drunk. But when you tell somebody that, they always think that’s negotiable. “I’m not drunk!” “I’m just a little tipsy.” and my favorite, “Aww come on, Please?”
“Sorry, can’t sell alcohol after midnight.” doesn’t sound negotiable, and so the drunk folks on their way home from the bar just buy their cigarettes and leave. Then all I have to do is make sure they aren’t getting in on the driver’s side and nobody needs to get arrested. (I have had a customer react so badly to being told he couldn’t buy beer because he appeared to have been drinking that … he left in handcuffs.)
Discussing these issues reminds me of the time our State Legislator came to speak to my high school. He is still me favorite politician ever, mostly because he was bluntly honest with us. (It helped that he was the older brother of a classmate, I’m sure.) When asked why our state had raised the drinking age from 18 (first to 19, then 20, and finally to 21), he said that there was pressure to appear to be doing something about drinking and driving, and that all the studies show that people 18 to 21 “by and large don’t vote”.
So the laws may not exactly make sense, unless you consider who’s getting screwed by them and how much that will hurt someone’s chances of reelection. 
I have been told several times that Nevada has 24/7 sales with no down time. I can’t speak to the rest, though.
Then, also, there was nationwide prohibition of all retail sales 1920-1933, other than by medical prescription. So a ban on Sunday morning sale doesn’t seem all that harsh, nuisance though it undoubtedly is. Full disclosure, I’ve always lived in California so I have zero experience with the crazy patchwork of liquor laws found in some other parts of the country.
It’s as well to keep in mind that the United States wasn’t the only country with harsh or peculiar liquor laws at some point in the 20th Century. The temperance movement made quite some headway in parts of Northern Europe; until fairly recently, for example, Iceland completely banned beer while, strangely, allowing the harder stuff.
Maybe just a bit more than aspirational. As disgusted as I would have been by having to live under the Prohibition law, had I been alive in the 1920s–and without knowing what the next 25 years would bring, I’d rather have lived in the States than most places on the Continent. (I’ve always thought pre-war France would have seemed like an excellent choice, though now we all know what a disaster that turned out to be in wartime.)
In Wisconsin wine/liquor can be sold from 6AM-9PM, Beer until midnight.
What’s dopey about that is, there are fermented malt beverages, like 4LOKO, which are legally beer in this state, that have more alcohol in them than some wines, but they can be sold until midnight and wine can’t.
Also what’s ridiculous, is local municipalities are allowed to set times themselves. Milwaukee county has a county wide time of 9pm. That means if it’s 10pm and a Milwaukee resident wants some beer he either has to sit in a bar and drink it (and drive home!:eek:) or drive to a place that follows state law and sells until midnight, like Mequon, Pewaukee, or Racine (a 20 minute drive regardless). If he already had some drinks he’s driving with alcohol in his blood stream.
These earlier times are usually passed under the lie of “fighting drunk driving”. As you have just read this is crap. If the guy could go to his local convenience mart and buy it he may not drive at all. These laws are pushed by the tavern league to get people into bars to do their drinking. Once again, doing nothing in the war against drunk driving.
There should be a preemption law standardizing the sale time for the entire state!
I like to think I’d have made the best of it. There were people who prospered under prohibition. Some fermented their own juice, some dealt with OC. We have copies of old news articles about raids on my gf’s great grandmother’s (great-great?) neighborhood store. It was a little mom and pop store with a counter where you could get coffee/sodas/sandwiches/ and apparently liquor, all during prohibition.
Local law enforcement was a good customer and didn’t hassle them. When Feds came they would get warned and would hide the booze in a cornfield near the store.
Oh, and of course today there is the War On Some Drugs, which is really no different than Prohibition. A once legal substance is illegal, which is why Colorado didn’t legalize cannabis, they re-legalized it.
Communism - the state takes away the farmer’s cows and gives him a ration of milk.
Socialism - The farmer keeps his cows, but the state takes his milk, gives him a ration.
Capitalism - farmer has two cows, sells one and buys a bull.
Or, the communist candidate for parliament in Italy explaining communism to a farmer constituent.
“If a farmer has two cows, the state takes one and gives it to a farmer that has no cows.”
“I understand.”
“If a farmer has two goats, the state takes one and gives it to a farmer who has no goats.”
“I understand.”
“And if a farmer has two chickens, the state takes one and gives it to a farmer who has no chickens.”
“That, I don’t understand.”
“Why don’t you understand that?”
“I have two chickens…”
The liquor laws in Indiana are pretty ridiculous. Bars close at 3am, later than most states. They used to close at 12am on Sundays, but that law was changed a few years back. But we are the only state left that bans ALL Sunday carryout sales. There are a few exceptions like wineries, microbreweries, and most recently distilleries…but on the grand scale you still can’t buy beer/liquor on Sunday in Indiana. Just today I was in Target and passed the liquor aisle, and it was cordoned off.
Other craziness: no cold beer sales in convenience stores/grocery stores or gas stations. Only liquor stores can sell cold beer. There is a big legislative fight ongoing about this. The aforementioned “no cold soda/juice sales allowed” in package liquor stores. Oh, and someone under 21 isn’t allowed to serve you alcohol, or even ring it up at a grocery store checkout…you know, because they might just take it and run off and drink it. :rolleyes:
And it really isn’t about the Blue Laws anymore. It’s the convenience/grocery stores vs. the package liquor stores. The religious groups still put up a fight but don’t wield near the influence on the matter that the package liquor lobbyists do. The package liquor stores complain that allowing grocery/gas/convenience store sales of beer on Sundays will put them out of business. They cite the additional costs of having to open on Sunday as the main reason (the other stores are already open on Sunday so they don’t incur any additional costs). The other fight about selling cold beer is one the gas station chains/convenience stores are lodging against the package liquor stores. They argue they are at a disadvantage bc of this law. Thorntons, a regional gas station chain, hasn’t built a new station in Indiana since 2006 bc of this “no cold beer” law.
So basically it’s a big pissing match between the lobbies of convenience/grocery stores and the package liquor stores.
And just last week, Indiana voted to finally allow beer and wine sales at the annual State Fair. For decades it has been banned at the event…but readily available at other events on the Fairgrounds property such as: home show, boat and RV show, etc.
I know a ton of people in Ft. Wayne that drive the 30 minutes of so on Sundays to cross over into Ohio to get beer for football games and the like.
No matter to me, I quit drinking a few years back, but I still think the laws are outdated and stupid.
Every Sunday morning, I drop my mother off at church and go to breakfast at the diner. On the way to pick her up, I go right by a liquor store. I pick up a bottle right at the noon opening time, even though I’m not going to drink it until evening, because that’s the only trip into town I regularly make on Sunday. If they open even 3 minutes late, I’ll be late to pick her up. I’ve had to skip it maybe once every 3-6 weeks because of that. If I have to skip it, and pick it up just before I start drinking it, I have to make a separate, special trip, using an extra half gallon of gas and half an hour extra of my time. If they opened at the regular 9 or 10 am weekday time, I could pick it up on my way to the diner, and there would never be an issue with being late or making a separate trip.
It’s a stupid law, intended to get me into the church I’m skipping, anyway, in favor of breakfast at the diner. What difference does it make? I’m eating bacon and eggs instead of worshiping Jeebus, anyway, so what’s it matter if some people will be drinking, instead, if the stores are allowed to open 2 or 3 hours earlier? The ones drinking instead of church just picked up extra on Saturday, anyway, so the law isn’t even keeping them sober on Sunday mornings, let alone getting them into a pew.
I also buy booze before lunch on weekdays sometimes, too, because I’m already making the trip into town. What? You think that I should make a special trip into town after 6 pm every time, just so I won’t be tempted to start drinking early?
I hope that adequately answers your question, from the perspective of someone who frequently buys booze before noon, for damn good reasons that have nothing at all to do with drinking before noon.