I don’t have time to go state to state to figure out how much you’re oversimplfying and wikipedia is wrong, sorry :p
I’d like to thank the sane voters of Mississippi for showing up today. Wow Prop 26 was almost Arizona like in craziness.
-Tim
I don’t mind living in a country with government-controlled liquor stores!
Government controlled liquor stores are bad for craft brewers, vintners, and distillers. The only thing worse than a government controlled liquor industry are defacto distributor monopolies.
Might be, but I’ll tell you this: my government-controlled liquor stores have way more selection than any foreign liquor store I’ve been to, and I dare say the best selection of American brewers in all of Europe.
Just checked what was currently available in the store closest to me from American brewers particularly, and here’s a list:
Abita
Anchor
Brooklyn
North Coast
Flying Dog
Sam Adams
Sierra Nevada
The Stone
Great Divide
I know there are other stores which are more focused on beer in the system. But for my local store I’m pretty pleased.
Now it’s possible that private stores could together conceivably fill the entire spectrum of small breweries, but Sweden is a country with a small population, so I don’t think the returns for a store focusing on craft brewers would really work out, so I think for the vast majority of Swedes the selection would decrease enormously if the government monopoly was gotten rid off.
We know your government is great at everything, Anders. Quit bragging. JEEZ.
Anders, there are some private liquor stores in the U.S. I’d like to take you to next time you’re over here. ;)
I used to live next to one that carried more beers from around the world, including every microbrewery you could ever find by Google, than I’ve ever seen. In addition to the normal wide range of hard liquors he also carried, he was a real fan of vodkas and whiskeys and loved to find some new, rare brand of those and bring them in for customer tastings.
Yeah, all I have to say is: http://www.bevmo.com/ who I really miss. :( They have aisles and aisles of not just microbrews, but wines and particularly liquors.
To be clear, in the US goverrment run liquor stores pretty much limit themselves to hard alcohol. Beer and wine and generally sold in grocery and convenience stores.
Another angle to the change in WA state is that the legality of grocery stores carrying the harder stuff may impact the shelf space available for beer and wine. And its the craft products that will suffer from that. Depends on the store, but at least some places will presumably drop other products to make room.
Rhode Island, I believe, only started allowing sales of alcohol on sunday in the last couple years. When I went to school there, we had to go to Mass. to buy beer for the Super Bowl.
And I learned a couple weeks ago it has basically has 3 distributors that carve out the market and force everybody else out.
Again, all you have to do is look at states like California that sell hard liquor in stores, and you will find that it doesn’t impact shelf space at all. There are still tons of microbrews on the shelves, because stores sell what people want to buy.
I had the same thought, in support of 1183, but one of my friends challenged me for quantitative evidence that there would be greater diversity of available spirits were BevMo to set up shop in Washington, and I was a bit surprised to find that when comparing to the Washington State Liquor Control Board’s web site more distinct brands appear to available through the state currently than are available through BevMo’s web site. Comparing Gin, for example, I found that BevMo has 43 distinct brands available for shipping, but the Washington state stores have 60 unique brands available.
Also, about Anders’ beer list – I don’t think that supports your argument. To me, that seems a pretty pathetically short list of American breweries, when I compare to what is available at my local bottle shop. I don’t have the post count to include a link, but if you google for “Malt & Vine Web Store” and click “Browse All” in the beer section, you’ll see what I mean.
Well, BevMo stores can order items that are not on their web page, but the major overisight in your argument is that if I can’t find the gin I want at BevMo, I can go shop at another store.
Sure, sure. But given the 10,000 square foot requirement written in to 1183, after BevMo, you can go to Costco or the grocery store, neither of which I’d expect to have a particularly diverse selection, or … ?
Without that requirement, I’d expect specialty shops to be popping up all over, but that requirement is a significant barrier to entry for specialized retailers.