A Puzzle

We are heading for an election in which, fortunately, there are very few people to vote for and very few issues to vote on.  Nevertheless, the mail box and the p.o. box and the telephone are unusually full of voices and papers urging me to champion one person, one issue or another  Most of the championing is over a proposition which, as I understand it, will take the state out of running liquor stores and open the running of liquor stores to the wonders of the free market.  Well, fairly regulated free market.  The people who support this assure me that competition will do wonders for the sale of liquor and that the state surely ought not to be in the business of selling anything.

I am guessing that the wonders of competition means that prices will be lower, not that thousands more gallons of liquor will be sold.  At least they don't mention that the outcome would be much more drinking going on in the state, but if prices were lower, surely consumption would increase.

They haven't, at least so far, mentioned that the state shouldn't be in the business of selling liquor because the state is too incompetent to do so, but I suppose that is at the bottom of their reasoning; that and the idea that if there is any money to be made here, the state ought not to be making it when liquor store owners, instead, could be making it.  Thus reducing the unemployment rate.

Right now it's hard to say whether we would be better off if more people were working or if the state had more revenue.  Of course, if more people were working that would produce more revenue.  But if the state had more revenue, it could hire more workers.  Like teachers, particularly the ones they are busy laying off.

Well, it's a hard question, especially for someone who doesn't buy liquor in the first place.  But, it does seem to me that if the state is competent to run a prison system of vast size, it is surely up to the much simpler task of running liquor stores.