Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Nothing New Under the Sun:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_03_22-2009_03_28.shtml#1237921359
From [1]Liquor Stores Fear Grocery Wine Sales, about "the fight over
whether Tennessee grocery stores should be allowed to sell wine, which
for the third time in three years heads back to the legislature on
Tuesday" (thanks to [2]InstaPundit for the pointer):
Nine years ago, Bard Quillman retired after 30 years in the banking
business and invested his savings, and his future, in Red Dog Wine
& Spirits in Franklin. Immediately next door to his shop is a
Publix supermarket. Quillman dreads what could happen if the
grocery starts selling wine.
"Am I worried? Yeah, I'm scared," Quillman said. "This is a
real-world situation for us. It shouldn't be blown off as an issue
of 'convenience.'"
His shop is a high-end, specialty store, but he says cheaper wines
-- box wines, jug wines, the sort of no-frills wines that groceries
would likely stock -- make up the bulk of his sales, and allow him
to branch out into the more exotic, specialty brands. The price of
a bottle of wine at Red Dog Wine & Spirits can range from $3.50 to
$200.
Quillman figures he'd lose 30 percent of his business to Publix and
surrounding retail chains.... Right now, there are three places in
Franklin that sell wine. If the law changes, he says there could be
as many as 24.
"My employees all have health insurance, disability insurance, life
insurance," [Quillman] said. Right now, he has four full-time
employees, but if the law changes, "I'd have to terminate at least
one of them, plus one part-time employee." ...
"This will have a devastating effect on the mom-and-pops," [Midtown
Wine & Spirits manager Chris] Shearer said.... "We understand it's
a convenience issue, but at the same time, there are costs
associated with convenience[.]"
Now let's go back to 1845, from [3]Frederic Bastiat's famous parody of
protectionist arguments:
A PETITION From the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns,
sticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from
Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of
Everything Connected with Lighting. To the Honourable Members of
the Chamber of Deputies.
Gentlemen:
You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories and little
regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly
with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign
competition, that is, to reserve the domestic market for domestic
industry.
We come to offer you a wonderful opportunity for your -- what shall
we call it? Your theory? No, nothing is more deceptive than theory.
Your doctrine? Your system? Your principle? But you dislike
doctrines, you have a horror of systems, as for principles, you
deny that there are any in political economy; therefore we shall
call it your practice -- your practice without theory and without
principle.
We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who
apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for
the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market
with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our
sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French
industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced
to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the
sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being
stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy
nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a
respect that he does not show for us [apparently an allusion to
England's famous fogginess -EV].
We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of
all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters,
curtains, casements, bull's-eyes, deadlights, and blinds -- in
short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the
light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the
fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed
the country, a country that cannot, without betraying ingratitude,
abandon us today to so unequal a combat.
Be good enough, honourable deputies, to take our request seriously,
and do not reject it without at least hearing the reasons that we
have to advance in its support.
First, if you shut off as much as possible all access to natural
light, and thereby create a need for artificial light, what
industry in France will not ultimately be encouraged?
If France consumes more tallow, there will have to be more cattle
and sheep, and, consequently, we shall see an increase in cleared
fields, meat, wool, leather, and especially manure, the basis of
all agricultural wealth.
If France consumes more oil, we shall see an expansion in the
cultivation of the poppy, the olive, and rapeseed. These rich yet
soil-exhausting plants will come at just the right time to enable
us to put to profitable use the increased fertility that the
breeding of cattle will impart to the land.
Our moors will be covered with resinous trees. Numerous swarms of
bees will gather from our mountains the perfumed treasures that
today waste their fragrance, like the flowers from which they
emanate. Thus, there is not one branch of agriculture that would
not undergo a great expansion.
The same holds true of shipping. Thousands of vessels will engage
in whaling, and in a short time we shall have a fleet capable of
upholding the honour of France and of gratifying the patriotic
aspirations of the undersigned petitioners, chandlers, etc.
But what shall we say of the specialities of Parisian manufacture?
Henceforth you will behold gilding, bronze, and crystal in
candlesticks, in lamps, in chandeliers, in candelabra sparkling in
spacious emporia compared with which those of today are but stalls.
There is no needy resin-collector on the heights of his sand dunes,
no poor miner in the depths of his black pit, who will not receive
higher wages and enjoy increased prosperity.
It needs but a little reflection, gentlemen, to be convinced that
there is perhaps not one Frenchman, from the wealthy stockholder of
the Anzin Company to the humblest vendor of matches, whose
condition would not be improved by the success of our petition....
References
1. http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=82095&catid=2
2. http://instapundit.com/
3. http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html
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