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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: roto who wrote (174211)	7/4/2021 1:35:35 PM
From: sense	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217754

The problem with Capone & others back then were the fking prohibitionists. The prohibitionists didn't dictate the way in which the trade was conducted, so can't agree that they were responsible for the way in which the trade was conducted... but they clearly were responsible for there being a trade that existed to be conducted in that way... Agree that prohibitions mostly don't work... as there will always be someone willing to take the risks to make the profits that an artificially imposed scarcity enable... and, more often than not, that will include an interest taken by the associates of those imposing the prohibition. The American conduct of the "war on drugs" sometimes looking like it is mostly about the taxpayers funding the DEA et al in helping to shut down competition to help out the CIA's off the books operations with reduced competition... The corruption of that era... hardly unique to that era... Don't know that specific history... but guess the patterns established back then probably still define the way politics works in Chicago today ? Take away the blue collar immigrant choice of beverages were bound to be addressed by the market forces, legal or not**. Do find the ongoing impacts of the legacy of prohibition worth studying... for a couple of reasons. My natural inclination is to think its not that much of an improvement to remove the monopoly market structures the mob had imposed...( with it being the competition for market access, and the defense of those monopolies from others, not the conflict with government, that was the source of most of "the problem with Capone & others")... but, to remove that, only to replace that monopoly with a "conflict-free" monopoly imposed by the government as a bigger, badder, more powerful gang... It does result in less gun play... which clearly is a social benefit... but, beyond that ? The issues then, and now, not about the product, at all... the same thing existing today in "conflict minerals"... and the failure, thus far, of certification of "conflict free minerals" to make much of a difference. The point of focus... on the profits/taxes... or on the control of the market... on the force applied in the imposition of monopoly or control of product flows... is never about "the blue collar choice of beverage"... and never about the consumer's best interest at all... which was the last thing anyone cared about then... and mostly still today... Today, its an excuse for government being bigger than it needs to be... and taking more in taxes... while exercising ridiculous levels of control over producers whose interest is in making products consumers want. As an occasional participant in the industry... I know a lot about what a pain in the ass the regulatory regime can be... with the vast majority of that intervention... being almost entirely pointless... But, the drivers of it are mostly... those others in the industry who still benefit from the government imposition of the monopoly. The repeal of Prohibition, though, and the replacement of the market monopolies imposed by the gangs with a government imposed monopoly... didn't come close to returning us to what was before. Look up statistics on alcohol consumption prior to Prohibition... and its pretty stunning. Only about half the people in the U.S. were consumers, before Prohibition... women did drink, but didn't drink much... a lot of teetotallers and the prohibitionists didn't drink at all, of course... but the production and sales numbers were the equivalent of a bottle of whiskey per day, per person... meaning about half the people were drinking two per day... Today, only Elon Musk might want to return to that prior state... as consumption on that level would alter the relative safety and utility of self driving vehicles that don't quite have all the bugs worked out yet...