Washington State Frees Liquor Sales: some quick thoughts
I hate to let an increase in liberty go by without a little celebration.
For the past 78 years, Washington State has had a set of (effectively) state-operated liquor stores, with identical pricing and inventory. Today, that system is gone, replaced by private liquor sales. The law was overturned by a ballot initiative, heavily backed by Costco.
This is an interesting experiment in letting a little chaos emerge. Unfortunately, it’s not really a transition to a free market, since there are all sorts of licensing restrictions on who may trade in the demon rum. However, there will initially be about 5 times as many legal retailers as were previously present.
The transition is going to be messy. There’s lots of licensed retailers who haven’t obtained inventory. There’s a thousand people who were voted out of their jobs. Change is often messy.
After the transition, I expect prices will be roughly the same because of taxes and fees. What I expect will be much better is the selection and variety, especially of locally produced products from folks like Oola and Pacific Distillery. Many of those businesses were seriously inhibited by the complex and chummy system that was present.
I also expect surprise and look forward to it.
So raise a toast to the slow unwinding of a very silly system of prohibition.