Hit Them Where it Hurts

Some interesting news has finally developed as a result of the state government shutdown. This news perfectly demonstrates the folly of allowing the state to interfere with the free market. It seems that many bars in Minnesota are running out of beer because they were unable to renew their alcohol purchasing licenses before the shutdown:

Hundreds of bars, restaurants and stores across Minnesota are running out of beer and alcohol and others may soon run out of cigarettes — a subtle and largely unforeseen consequence of a state government shutdown.

In the days leading up to the shutdown, thousands of outlets scrambled to renew their state-issued liquor purchasing cards. Many of them did not make it.

Now, with no end in sight to the shutdown, they face a summer of fast-dwindling alcohol supplies and a bottom line that looks increasingly bleak.

This is how you hurt somebody, take away their fun and entertainment. I highly doubt that the state didn’t realize a possibility such as this could occur. In their eyes taking away peoples’ liquor would be the perfect argument for the need of the state, and many people will believe it. In actuality this is the perfect argument against allowing the state to regulate every industry on the fucking planet.

I’ve talked about the dangers of having government hold a monopoly control on anything in the past and this situation demonstrates that. I believe this is only one real option here; liquor stores need to go out and just buy the alcohol they need to continue doing business.

This is known as civil disobedience and we as Americans should practice this artform far more often. Just think about it, if every bar in Minnesota just said, “Fuck it!” and purchased alcohol without a license (either from current distributors or liquor stores as private individuals if the distributors won’t play ball) what could the state do? If the state decided to enforce their liquor license laws during the shutdown the court system would be overloaded with bar owners who could make a very valid case about how not buying that liquor would destroy their business and thus their livelihood. It would be difficult, I believe, to get juries to find these bar owners guilty as most people understand there are times you have to do what you have to do in order to survive.

Another side-effect of enforcing the license requirement in such a scenario is the fact it would likely cost far more to collect the fines than the state would make on the fines. There are numerous ways you can take a simple $30.00 fine and cost the state thousands to collect it. It would make little monetary sense for the state to prosecute the bars that purchased alcohol without a valid license.

If ever bar simply ignored the liquor purchasing license requirement the only real option the state would have is to “forgive” the “transgression.” Whether or not the state chose “forgiveness” or prosecution the people of Minnesota would have a good demonstration of how meaningless these licensing laws are.

When the state makes your life hard or impossible then it’s time to make the state irrelevant. Requiring bars to purchase a license in order to purchase liquor server no purpose other than filling the state’s coffers with pilfered money. Minnesota, nay the United States, ill needs government bureaucrats looting productive private businesses. We the people should be willing to say, “Enough is enough!” Fuck those bean counting pencil-necked bureaucrats, they do nothing for us and much to harm us.