Last week, I posted on a bill that would remove a provision of our law that allows minors to drink in a bar with the approval of a parent, guardian, or spouse, and at a bartender’s discretion.  See, Bill Targets WI Law Allowing Minors to Drink – Wisconsin State Journal. 

I received a reader’s note, supporting a change in the law, so that those under 21 could not drink in a bar this way, even with parental permission and a bartender’s approval.  Thanks very much for writing — much appreciated.    

Here’s the letter:

Hey, just so you know….there was at least one incidence of a crime based on this regulation. It was a man who had taken a minor into a bar and given her alcohol, saying she was his daughter. Turns out she wasn’t. They had sex, she got pregnant. He was charged. I tried to look it up, but had no luck. But I remember the story very clearly.

Now, he could have just as well gotten her drunk—and pregnant—in the privacy of his own home. He did not need a tavern to do it, and this law will not prevent it. That is clear.

Still, the contention that no crime ever occurred because of the law… thought you’d want to know. More regulation is bad, but this is just a very bizarre law. So outside the norm to be a regulation in and of itself.

It is a truth now held to be self-evident: bad thing for impressionable teenagers to spend significant amounts of their time in bars, worse thing for their own parent to buy them drinks.

To legislate parents encouraging their minor children to publicly drink  is just strange. Parents have the ultimate say in their homes, for sure.

But engaging in this bizarre social construction in the workplace and place of business is without precedence… where else do we say that social norm (right or wrong) supersedes state and federal law? Can you think of another example?

How should the tavern or bar owner interpret this? I’m not sure where I fall on this, although I support the bill. But given the toll that alcohol abuse takes on the citizens of the state, I would not fall on side side of light-heartedness.

My 2 cents worth.

Adams replies:  Well, now I know of at least one crime that took place — and might surely have taken place anyway — because a minor drank in a bar.  I didn’t know of any, previously. (I don’t know the circumstances of this crime, but I’ll not contend on those grounds.) 

What’s the original condition of a society – free conduct subject to limited regulation, or prohibited conduct, subject to limited permission?  A free society favors conditions in which what the law does not prohibit, it permits.

I can’t avoid noticing that the reader assumes that in this case, what law doesn’t permit should be prohibited, that is, the natural state of affairs should be restriction.  Why, asks the reader, “So outside the norm to be a regulation in and of itself.” 

I would have considered this law an exemption from greater regulation (regulation, that is, where no minor could ever drink). 

We’ve reached a point where legal prohibitions seem the norm, and exemptions from regulation seem odd, almost unnatural. 

So the reader asks, “where else do we say that social norm (right or wrong) supersedes state and federal law?”  

Drinking in a bar only after reaching 21 years of age is not a natural law, command from God, or in any way inevitable condition.  States once allowed drinking at 18, the same age we now allow citizens to vote, or serve in combat defending America.  

As I’ve said, I have never availed myself — or anyone else — of this provision, a law that’s really an exemption from a more restrictive law (no drinking until 21, under any circumstances).  

As for light-heartedness about alcohol abuse, I’ll be plain: the solution to alcoholism will not be found in government regulation.  Not taking away some chances to drink, or taking away all alcohol.  I drink very little, and would hope that others drink only occasionally, too.  I’m not willing, though, to pretend that any number of laws have solved the problem of alcoholism, because it’s not been solved. 

Prohibition didn’t stop alcoholism, and the belief that if we just make the substances illegal they’ll go away is false, and absurd.  Prohibition will not shape character against drunkenness; parents teaching moderation will.  

What is both irritating and risible is listening to the relatives of alcoholic celebrities clamor for more government restrictions and prohibitions, as though more restrictions might possibly have dissuaded their deceased love ones from drinking.  New laws and restrictions should serve a greater purpose than as a salve for a grieving relative.

If one can drive at 16, vote at 18, and die defending his or her country at 18, where the state even claims the right in theory and past practice to initiate conscription if necessary, then I see no reason that someone under 21 can’t take a drink in a bar with parental permission and a bartender’s discretion.

One seldom hears the word professoriate, anymore.  It reminds me a different, more radical time.  (That time wasn’t as radical as people now recall; America twice elected Nixon.)  

Tucker’s chapter on the professoriate describes where rent control flourishes: in upper middle class communities, usually among wealthy tenants.  That seems perverse: advocates of rent control often tout the need to keep rents low for the poor.  They may advocate for the poor — articulately — but they are hardly poor themselves.   

Rent control measures often pass, as Tucker notes, (1) in wealthy college towns, (2) that are shifting from manufacturing to services and academia.  (Through the advocacy of the well-heeled, and when academia became ascendant, was when rent control was first imposed on Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example.)  

Tucker contends that in the history of rent control in America, one will find rent-control more commonly in wealthier communities, with disproportionate numbers of white collar professionals and academics.  Doubt it? See if you can prove Tucker wrong — I’ll bet you can’t. 

Why? Because the upper middle class can advocate persuasively.  They wind up advocating, at bottom, for themselves. 

We, of course, are not a wealthy community.  Everyone who runs this town — every yammering defender of our supposed greatness — knows this. It’s indisputable. We do not have the rich, thick soil from which rent control typically grows.     

We’re better off without rent control, but we’d be even better off without a mostly stagnant economy in a deep recession.      Whitewater, home to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has a professoriate, too, but not a locally influential one. 

Some academics live in the city, but many live in other places, and commit their after-work time to other communities.  (I find nothing wrong in this; it’s just an observation.)  

Our situation is far more acute than a typical town and gown conflict.  Most problems in Whitewater are more acute than typical ones. 

We are a particular community: often insular, narrow, closed, excuse-making, cheerleading.  Whitewater would shrivel to nothing without her campus, yet neither locals nor academics act on the implications of this. 

For locals, there’s a resistance to the campus that’s astonishing; a bit anti-intellectual, a bit paranoid, a lot self-destructive.  There are some others who have great pride in our hometown campus, but one finds others, not so much different in class and background, who despise it.  

For academics, it’s a mixed picture.  To continue the theme of radical expressions, I am reminded of Marx’s distinction between a class in itself, and a class for itself.  Whitewater’s university academics may be a class in themselves, but they’re sure not a class for themselves.  Some play no community role (a fair choice anyone should be able to make), but others are satisfied playing roles as town dignitaries, grandees, whatever.  

It’s too funny really; those academics who mingle (as people of importance) with the town clique do so while others in town are willing to kick students in the teeth at every opportunity.  Marx was wrong about classes in themselves (as he was wrong about everything else): people sell out their own for all sorts of reasons, not the least of them for a little bit of recognition and self-importance.  

Our academics may not be pushing rent control (and some would surely oppose it), but they’re not pushing much of anything else.  We’ve no unified professoriate ready to storm the ramparts, or storm anything else.  

Tucker’s remarks are useful for another reason: special pleaders use government to advance their own ends, even when they claim it’s for am altruistic purpose. 

We just have a different set of special pleaders in Whitewater. 

Here’s a fourth installment of cat blogging.

The Cat Fanciers’ Association of America recognizes about forty breeds of domestic cats, but all cats, single or mixed-breed, are admirable.

Cats have an independent spirit that’s a fine reminder of the individualism which Americans — at their best — so abundantly possess.

Today, I’ve posted a video about the EGYPTIAN MAU, a recognized CFA breed. Enjoy!

I’ve received an email from a nearby group, the Rock River Patriots, small-government conservatives from Jefferson.

I’m not a member of the group, but wanted to take a moment to post their website’s address, http://rockriverpatriots.com/.

They’re also holding a tea party on September 12th, in Jefferson, from 2pm-5pm. They’ll be at the Jefferson County Courthouse, located at 320 S. Main Street in Jefferson. They ask that those attending “[b]ring your signs, your flags, and your patriotism. Let’s continue to send a message to all the elected representatives in Wisconsin and in Washington D.C.”

Best wishes to the group for a successful tea party — tea parties are an example of genuine, grass roots participatory democracy.

Tea parties typically eschew affiliation with a political party, instead emphasizing a political cause: small government, without endless deficits and increasing federal debt. The idea that tea parties, or most opposition to the Congress’s health care plans, is ‘manufactured’ is nonsense. This opposition comes from ordinary Americans who worry over the damage big government and big deficits will do to their future.

One sees this in the request of the Rock River Patriots that those attending “bring your signs.” Attendees at these events typically make their own posters, at home, and bring them to a public assembly. They don’t rely on fancy posters, printed and distributed, as at some union events.

Not along ago, the Left praised dissent as the highest form of patriotism. They were correct in this praise; too bad their voices are softer, and scarcely heard, now.

Wisconsin law currently allows those under 21 to drink in a bar with the permission of a parent, guardian, or spouse, at the discretion of a bartender.

No one I know has ever availed himself of this law. I know of no evidence – none – that shows this provision of our law contributes to any injury or discernible harm.

That hasn’t stopped witnesses, including relatives of drunks, to contend that the law is needed to prevent alcohol abuse. (Not one of these witnesses can show that his or her relative wouldn’t have been a rumpot regardless of the current law.)

If one doesn’t want one’s underage children to drink, then don’t order for them. I know that I haven’t If other parents want to do, then they should be able to do so.

Too funny, also, to read the Two Rivers police chief’s contention that this matter should be taken out of a parent’s hands. Out of parents who know their children, and into his?

These are New Prohibitionists looking for something else to criminalize. (If everyone stopped drinking, some towns would go broke for lack of revenue from fines.)

See, Bill Targets WI Law Allowing Minors to Drink.

I posted the beginning of a series summarizing Tucker’s Zoning, Rent Control, and Affordable Housing in July.  I re-posted the first entry, and a new second entry.    Here’s a summary of Chapter 3, “Mechanics of Rent Control.” 

We don’t have rent control in Whitewater (thankfully), and there’s no local constituency for it.  I’ve often wondered if someone might propose housing price control in Whitewater.  It’s the sort of astonishingly stupid idea that must have been discussed, at least once, in town.  One might expect car price control, food price control, gasoline price control, and beer price control quickly to follow.  

There’s so little love for markets in Whitewater that I’m still waiting for a proposal that the goods people want should simply be regulated to a lower price.  (Markets: the voluntary — uncoercive — exchange of goods and services at prices mutually agreed between buyer and seller. What markets offer voluntarily and efficiently government coercively takes or inefficiently supplies.)   

Tucker begins Chapter 3 with an anecdote about political economics as recently as 1980: Senator Kennedy, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, advocated “price controls on major materials, energy, and medical services.”  (Nixon had imposed wage and price controls in 1971, lasting far longer than the initially-promised 90 day period.)  

What’s wrong with price controls?  Virtually everybody knows.  Ordinary, voluntary transactions take place at a market clearing price, where the price to supply goods matches the price buyers are willing to pay for them.  Students learn about supply, and demand, early in life, usually while still in secondary school.  (Although it’s nothing new for students, Tucker reminds readers that while Smith and other economists knew about the logical implications of supply and demand, mathematical models of supply and demand curves came only later, at the end of the nineteenth century.) 

One thing’s clear: price controls don’t work, no matter how needed they might initially seem.   A reduction in the price of a good leads only to its shortage, as suppliers will offer less.  Rent control works this way: apartments cost less, but then tenants won’t move, and new apartments unprofitable to build.  Builders stop building, and landlords re-convert for single family dwellings. A few get cheaper rents, but others go without accommodations.  

Both buyers and sellers seek an advantage, a lower or higher price, respectively.  They may look to a third party — government — to intervene, and strong-arm a result in their favor.  For buyers, that’s price control; for sellers, it’s price supports.  The request to government is short-term thinking — for a society, it leads to either too many, or too few, goods. Thinking only of immediate consequences is a big problem in Whitewater. 

(The whole Whitewater neighborhood planning process, even with recent developments from Monday’s Planning Commission meeting — that I will address another time — is an example of this problem.  Less restrictive in Whitewater is still too restrictive.) 

Imposing restrictions on the free flow of prices, for labor, goods, or capital, is destructive to productivity and prosperity.   

We’ve not tried restriction by price, but by land use, zoning, and so-called smart growth.   

Next: Chapter 4, The Liberation of the Professoriate.