Highly disagree. The commissary on most military bases are awesome. Spent most of my life going there with my parents. Not sure where you heard they were bad. Never got that impression from any military serving people, like ever.
Now imagine how the commissary would turn out if instead of being placed in a spot where any commercial business would love to exploit (center of military base where every family has employment, a process for permanently kicking out people who engage in major crime, and private competition controlled unless you go through a security checkpoint) -- instead you put them in many of the places I witnessed food deserts in major US cities that had underemployment, elevated crime, outsiders afraid to enter during the day and ~never enter at night, bars on every window, and every other establishment has you slide your cash in a rotating tray adjacent to a bulletproof window.
I feel like the commissary these days is really far behind private grocers. Yeah, 15 or 25 years ago they were awesome, but now it just resembles a poorly stocked (and much smaller) Walmart. Regional grocers have gotten really good in my lifetime. Used to go to the commissary regularly to save money and have a good selection, but those days are just long past. Same deal with base liquor stores, they are merely "OK", but again your regional private option is just so much nicer in the 2020s.
You suggested that this is good because it is similar to a thing, and many people pointed out that thing you compared it to is bad. That is not goalpost shifting, that is you demonstrating that this is in fact bad.
That's because liquor stores originated from an earlier incarnation of the culture wars. That was a long time ago, and I don't think anyone seriously believes in that justification now, but the inertia remains.
> I think that's a pretty good reason for them to exist even today.
Only if you think the government should be telling people what to buy and what not to buy. I personally find that highly objectionable, particularly given the outsized power of primary voters in most places.
> They’re hardly mainstream if everyone hates them.
I think maybe you and I have different definitions for the word "mainstream". To me it has nothing to do with popularity and everything to do with what is normal and everyday.
The prices are usually higher than private stores, the merchandising is worse, the selection is usually bad, and they're generally just a miserable shopping experience. Compare them to a nice wine and liquor store in states where those are allowed and the difference is quite apparent. They also never have staff that know anything about the products which is just a shitty DMV like experience.
Other than merchandising (why is that important?) nothing you describe is an issue with the Idaho liquor stores.
Prices are pretty in line with market rates. The selection is really pretty good. The shopping experience is the same as any other store (what makes a shopping experience "miserable?")
> Compare them to a nice wine
In Idaho, wine is allowed to be sold in grocery stores and specialty shops. The liquor stores are for hard beverages.
> They also never have staff that know anything about the products
Staff seems just fine with the products. But again, don't see why that's important in general.
> just a shitty DMV like experience.
I don't really know what you mean by this. You go in, find the booze you like, pay for it at the register, or ask a clerk a question if you have one (Do you have a lot of questions purchasing alcohol? Every time?) If you want a more expensive experience you can go to a wine shop in Idaho and let someone blow smoke up your ass about the notes.
Look, Idaho might just be particularly good at running a booze shop, but I doubt it. It may be that because Idaho only has liquor stores for hard alcoholic beverages it's made for a better experience all around. It certainly doesn't suffer from selection, knowledge, or experience problems. I think the only issue you might take is that it's just sorted shelves of alcohol with little flashy theming.
I'm assuming you've either never been into a good private liquor store or something rather uncommon is going on in Idaho. The state stores in Pennsylvania and Virginia are so overpriced and miserable that people regularly drive to MD and New Jersey, There's a Total Wine across the bridge from Philadelphia in NJ, where people will regularly travel farther than they'd have to go to the state store to shop there instead.
I was in the Navy and I loved the on-base grocery store. A big part of it was that I was overseas and it felt like home, but also the prices were great, it was clean, and had a decent selection.
But why? Liquor is the cause for a very high portion of police, insurance (property and health), and other costs that can’t be translated into dollars.
Why shouldn’t society recoup some of those costs from the users? And why should society subsidize those costs?
It’s interesting that it was politically acceptable to charge tobacco users more for health insurance, but not politically acceptable to charge alcohol users more for health insurance.
Is people drinking alcohol a loss for society? Because the thing is, society needs to continue to produce children in order to continue existing. It's called a social lubricant for a reason, and while it is exceeding obvious that alcohol abuse is a problem, that's exactly why the state runs the liquor stores. To limit products available and limit hours to ideally prevent the worst of abuses. So the unanswerable question is, how many children is alcohol ultimately responsible for? If it were successfully banned (using magic) would civilization survive past the end of the incoming generation? Given alcohol's ubiquity on all corners of the globe, I don't think that's decided or even decidable.
As we're only considering children being born, the health effects of alcohol while pregnant are known, (aka fetal alcohol syndrome) but since they're known, they can be dismissed if we assume pregnant mothers aren't drinking. The other thing we can discount is the long term health effects of alcohol consumption. Yes there are health ramifications, but as long as people are able to create healthy babies, what happens later on in life is less relevant to the question of making babies, which civilization needs in order to continue.
>how many children is alcohol ultimately responsible for?
If this is alluding to unplanned pregnancies, that is almost unheard of nowadays due to access to IUDs/morning after pill/abortion.
Whether or not alcohol, or specifically hard alcohol, plays a material role in establishing relationships that otherwise would not happen is difficult to discern, but I don't see why an alcohol tax (or even just higher liquor taxes) would dissuade people. It only takes a few drinks to become "buzzed", so any tax would only be material to heavy drinkers.
I don't see how a government run liquor store limits abuse, and most seem to offer the same products as any other store (does it really make a difference above a certain proof?). And many states limit hours that alcohol is sold without having government run stores.
I was referring to alcohol as a social lubricant leading to relationships leading to children. If we look to Asia, and at South Korea and Japan's issues with existentially low birth rates, the question flips. From "would an alcohol tax possibly dissuade people from hooking up" to "what can the government do to help more babies be born", and under that framing, subsidizing alcohol to everyone of baby making age starts to look almost reasonable.
As far state run liquor stores dissuading alcoholism, Scandinavian countries state-run their liquor stores for that expressed reason. Their hours are intentionally bad, the products expensive and small. No 1.75 L handles of 80 proof vodka to be found. It's mostly effective, but it's also not New England where if you just drive for an hour or two, you can hit multiple states and jurisdictions with different blue laws, limiting the effectiveness of state run stores.
What state run stores, ostensibly force, is better adherence with the law. The corner shop where you've gone to for twenty years and are friends with the owner, is totally just gonna give you beer Sunday morning when it's illegal to do so, but record it in the system on Monday. A bit harder to do in a state run store with more oversight. Also, it's harder to import prohibited kinds of alcohol with said. oversight vs a privately run store. As with any law though, it's not 100% effective, but that's not a reason to not have a law.
Sorry, I don't agree with that. The context of profit is money which shareholders are entitled to after accounting for the costs of their business. None of those things apply to government.
Also, New Hampshire does not have sales tax on certain goods and services. Hotel rooms and car rentals, for example, do have sales tax. And apparently, alcohol sold at the state alcohol stores.
>Sorry, I don't agree with that. The context of profit is money which shareholders are entitled to after accounting for the costs of their business. None of those things apply to government.
I have to disagree. In a very real sense, the residents of a political entity are the stakeholders within that political boundary and, at least in a democratic (small 'd') society, those stakeholders are, in fact, the owner/shareholders of that political entity.
That's neither very profound nor much of an intellectual stretch. Although, apparently you disagree. Why is that?
> I have to disagree. In a very real sense, the residents of a political entity are the stakeholders within that political boundary and, at least in a democratic (small 'd') society, those stakeholders are, in fact, the owner/shareholders of that political entity.
That still doesn’t mean it makes sense to categorize government income as “profit” (for the purposes of this discussion trying to discern whether or not NH taxes alcohol).
Governments and businesses have (or are supposed to have) different priorities, and are (theoretically) structured so that in exchange for the government being given a monopoly on violence for those who don’t pay, the government (ideally) is working towards providing services that benefit all of society, for the long term.
The New Hampshire government’s website linked above even states:
> $146m Annual Contribution To The General Fund
What difference does it make if the tax is not separated out like alcohol taxes in most other states? The bottom line is New Hampshire could be selling alcohol for less, but it chooses not to in order to use the extra money to fund government services. That is a tax.
>What difference does it make if the tax is not separated out like alcohol taxes in most other states? The bottom line is New Hampshire could be selling alcohol for less, but it chooses not to in order to use the extra money to fund government services. That is a tax.
I have fond memories of the Navy commissary my parents did most of our food shopping at when I was growing up. Huge variety of reasonably priced goods.
