Academic

MATT WELCH: What Beer Deregulation Can Teach Us. I personally find it particularly meaningful th?

By Glenn Reynolds

MATT WELCH: What Beer Deregulation Can Teach Us.

I personally find it particularly meaningful that government and industry and (I presume) anti-drinking scolds colluded to criminalize a behavior that wasn’t just victimless, but downright awesome; and that the removal of that appalling bit of illiberal nannyism helped usher in a phenomenon I would have bet the house against two decades ago: a thriving and variegated American industry of delicious beermaking.

And given that, what’s wrong with making deregulation a “starting point”? Imagine for a crazy moment a world in which the default expectation would be for government not to flop its grotesque belly onto the forehead of various industries, not to meddle in the affairs of pre-pubescent drink vendors, not to redistribute $20 billion a year (give or take) of our money to mostly well-heeled agriculture companies just to make sure they don’t face competition from poor people. I’m not talking about no regulation here, but rather the idea that if such-and-such activity isn’t hurting anybody it shouldn’t be subject to governmental micro-managing, license-imposing, winner-picking, and even arrest.

Indeed. Read the whole thing. And there’s also this: “Did you hear about the guy who got arrested after a government sting operation revealed he was giving free rides to folks who were drinking to keep them from drunk driving? . . . Barney Frank likes to say that ‘government’ is just the name for ‘the things we choose to do together.’ That pleasant description somehow doesn’t ring true here.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on August 07, 2010 (boomark / email).