If one ever wants to see the true stripes of a bureaucrat, it often requires looking no further than an issue of civil freedom, even those remotely polemic in nature. As any good public servant will tell you, taking an individual’s basic liberty into account is at best a troubling inconvenience, at worst a dangerous obstacle which, given the threat it poses to the measure at hand, merits immediate disposal.
No less naturally, with that most contested — and disregarded — right to destroy oneself, Madison’s public apparatchiks (or at least Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and Ald. Michael Schumacher, District 18) have teamed up to prohibit the sale of liquor to around 150 “chronic offenders,” individuals who seem to cause all the goshdarned trouble around Capitol Square and State Street. In addition, anyone who has been to detox six times in the past 180 days will get a friendly note from those liberty loving boys in blue notifying them they no longer have the right to purchase booze in Madison’s liquor stores.
Of course, it is very difficult to see how the public’s meticulously conjured-up right to not be confronted with all that is disagreeable will not triumph in this case. Given that the alternative proposal would place restrictions on the size of liquor containers vendors could sell, how could selfsame vendors not be enthused? And further, given the fact that Green Bay instituted a similar proposal that resulted in dramatic decreases in crime, etc., it seems as though the numbers are, as per usual, behind the bureaucrats.
What is troubling is not the motivations behind the proposal — saving tax dollars through outreach to local business — but rather the form that outreach has taken. While acknowledging any sales restriction would be difficult to enforce, Mayor Dave nonetheless felt it prudent to slap a $500 fine onto any business caught violating it. “Educate first, enforce when necessary,” a mayoral aide stated in response to a list of questions.
Green Bay, home to the original measure (at least in Wisconsin), did issue a few citations over the years, but for the most part, liquor vendors complied voluntarily. Even the industry seems to be onboard, with vendors’ attorney Bill White stating vendors are “in favor of some sort of program that prohibits folks who are problem drinkers from gaining access to more alcohol.”
However, as mentioned above, the alternative was a ban on the size of liquor containers. It is hard to imagine an industry being voluntarily in favor of regulating itself, but in this case, the options were rather limited. Schumacher has promised to withdraw the original proposal limiting the size of alcohol containers if the industry supports self-regulation with regards to the chronic offenders.
And although the ACLU made some noise about the Green Bay proposal, it was never challenged in court. Thus, vendors have found themselves without friends and unwilling to oppose what they no doubt rightly regard as the inevitable.
The dangerous implications of the premise that the vendors of a product are in some way responsible for the manner in which it is used is one that Madison would do well to disregard. Not only will the proposal place a disproportionate amount of the burden on a group that has done nothing legally or ethically wrong but its passage is dependent on a perverse method of stick and smaller stick that has no place in policy formation. Using the threat of harsh regulation to ensure the passage of something more palatable belies the fact that a comprehensive policy would be to either eradicate municipal benefits to fiscally incentivize those targeted or make said benefits substantial enough to actually have an impact. Neither is currently the case. While liquor should be regulated, the fundamental underpinning of commerce is that the vendor is not accountable for the actions of its clients.
This is particularly true given the fact that the tax dollars going to mental health treatment and detox were set up by the city’s government in the first place. And while no one is arguing their necessity, the argument that those programs are being abused and cost too much money seems to be much more an argument against their current effectiveness than the supposed culpability of liquor vendors, who had nothing to do with their creation in the first place.
But in this case, the liquor industry seems to be wisely following one of the oldest rules of political compromise: If you are going to get screwed, it is better — if only marginally so — not to take it lying down.
Sam Clegg ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in economics.
