Hanlon’s Razor is a heuristic, not a law

Earlier I had attributed New Brunswick’s introduction of state beer to the collision of a simpleminded desire to keep people from drinking too much with the harsh realities of free trade (in this case, across the NB-QC border).  Stupidity, in other words, rather than malice.

Turns out I was wrong.

Commenter Cooper Krebs sets me straight: this is straightforward regulatory capture by Moosehead.

Past history has clearly indicated that although the day to day beer business is run by NB Liquor, the overall strategy of the beer business is controlled by Moosehead breweries. It has been an unstated goal of NB Liquor to protect Moosehead from Bud, Labatt, Molson and anything elsse that might erode their market share.

[...]

But essentially this is a very anti-competitive move by NB Liquor. The everyday low price of 18.67 per 12 pack can does not compete with Quebec prices at all so this will have no impact on “beer bleed” as NB Liquor CEO Dana Clendenning christined the purchase of beer in Quebec by New Brunswickers. What it does do is allow Moosehead to have a beer prominently displayed at the lowest price allowed in every corner of this province at no cost to them. In fact we, the taxpayers, pay them to make the beer so it can be sold back to us.

[...]

The 2 million dollar opportunity cost of Selection beer will have an impact. It will result in price increases for wine and spirits.

If you are beginning to think that the consumer is really getting screwed here, you are on the right track. Don’t forget to think about Pumphouse and Piccaroons. Their tax dollars are being used by a Crown Corporation to directly compete with them. Incredible but true.

Those stood out to me as the highlights, but you really ought to read the whole thing.

Corvette C6.R GT2 is on for Mid-Ohio

Motorsports mumblings is on hiatus for the moment.  After the 24 Heures du Mans and the SCCA June Sprints, I’ve somewhat burnt out on covered-wheel racing, and while the German GP was a lot of fun to watch I am thoroughly sick and fucking tired of FIA/FOTA/Formula One politics.  (Secret message to Bernie Ecclestone: Get cancer and die in a freak radiotherapy-machine fire, you pompous twat.)  And with Audi and Peugeot abstaining from racing until at least the Petit Le Mans, I’m a bit uninterested in real-world motorsport for the moment.

Almost.

Y’see, Jake’s back:

• Corvette C6.R GT2 officially entered for Mid-Ohio (Planet Le Mans)

Fuck yeah!

Still not a market failure

John Makin explains the forces behind the housing bubble — its genesis in a dubious notion of home-ownership as a public good; its rapid growth due to deliberate changes in tax policy and banking regulations; and its disasterous Fed-encouraged swelling once the tech bubble burst:

• A Government Failure, Not a Market Failure (Wall Street Journal)

When I started to write the Glib Dilettante series on the credit crisis, this was what I had hoped to produce.

It would be foolish to utterly absolve the private players in this particular drama — the investment bankers, for example, who cut shitty mortgages into tranches and expected them to smell like roses, or the house-flippers who staked hundreds of thousands of dollars on the assumption that housing prices would continue to skyrocket indefinitely.  I’m not doing that, and neither is Makin: markets respond to incentives, and when your incentives are nonsensical your markets will do nonsensical things.  The point, however, is that these nonsensical incentives didn’t just appear out of thin air, nor were they craftily fabricated by avaricious tie-wearing fat-cats in pin-striped suits.  A few were imposed by force from Capitol Hill, and those were so imposed in the sincere belief that they would help people.  The rest grew unexpectedly from those legislative fiats, but they are no less artificial for having done so.

At this stage in the game, though, I can’t imagine that anyone who still sees the housing bubble as a market failure is willing to be persuaded otherwise.

I never said I was mature about this sort of thing

Sorry folks, still building up a proper rant on BC taxes and the like.

But on that subject, I inadvertently came up with a rather compelling idea at the pub this evening.  It seems to me that taxes needn’t be paid strictly in currency: that, since we’re ostensibly paying taxes to promote the general welfare, it ought to be permissible to pay taxes in goods useful for improving that general welfare.  After all, if I pay taxes in cash money, someone has to take that cash money and buy food for the hungry — but if I pay taxes in canned chili (for example), it can go directly to the hungry without any interference (and therefore entropy and loss of value) at the hands of those poor overworked bureaucrats tasked with turning bucks into borscht.

“But Matt”, you cry, “What about those poor bureaucrats?  If everyone paid their taxes in useful goods, they wouldn’t be able to extract their own salaries therefrom!”  Fortunately, I have a littoral answer:

Nonetheless, the fact that it’s apparently permissible to pay taxes in an intermediate currency — cash money — raises an interesting question: if we can pay taxes in one currency which must be somehow* transmuted into something useful, why oughtn’t we pay taxes in any currency which can be transmuted into something useful?

For example, energy independence and renewable energy are high upon our list of national — nay, international — priorities.  Some of us Canadians are a bit apprehensive of the environmental impact of the Alberta oilsands, and if we follow the example of the farm lobby Down South we’ll end up growing a lot of grain to produce bioethanol.  That grain needs fertilizer.  That fertilizer needs hydrocarbons and nitrogen.

Well, I have something that contains hydrocarbons and nitrogen, particularly after washing down a large bowl of chili with a few pints of Guinness.

I therefore submit that it is my patriotic duty to pay my taxes in shit.

Not only is this a heretofore largely untapped resource, but it has a far less inhibitive effect upon the economy than does raising taxes in the form of collecting currency.  Accepting excreta as tax not only strengthens a vital and strategic component of our national economic structure: it also captures a valuable resource that’s being literally flushed down the toilet and will almost certainly vastly improve citizen morale.

It also occurs to me that this may be the one means by which the grain-growing Western provinces would be happy to take shit from Ontario and Quebec.  I suppose we’d have to disinfect it first to prevent a pervasive infection of dumbworms, but still.

——

* Namely, through a free market; not that you’d hear any government fuck admit as much

Planes, trains, and automobiles

Traveling by car may be long and tedious, but it does leave one in control of one’s own destiny.  Last year, confronted with flooding in southern Wisconsin, my parents drove to a family reunion in Iowa by way of northern Illinois.  Seven months previously, Northwest Airlines reacted to an unexpected snowstorm over the Rocky Mountains by canceling every flight related to those delayed.

Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I am no particular fan of air travel.  Travel by car is, in a transcontinental sense, often somewhat inconvenient.  It gives me some sour satisfaction to discover that trains are no better.

• Amtrack Sucks (Reason.com)

(Hat tip: Jalopnik)

It does make it somewhat easier to face the prospect of a day wasted in air travel tomorrow somewhat easier to face.

Beers of Milwaukee, vol. 24

Nope, not done yet.

Today’s first beer is Mad Hatter IPA from the New Holland Brewing Company.  It reminds me very much of Tree’s Hophead IPA, only with a bit less bitter hoppy goodness and a bit more hoppy complexity.  It’s not as sweet as most IPAs I’ve tried that go for “aromatic floral/citrus complexity” rather than bludgeoning you about the head with hops, and that really makes the beer for me.

The second is Flying Dog’s “Double Dog” Double Pale Ale, which is apparently a double recipe of their Doggy Style ale.  Whereas Doggy Style is bitter and hoppy while carrying some smooth malty goodness along for the ride, Double Dog is thick and sweet as you sip it, but almost immediately gives way to a bittersweet richness that sticks around for a long time, much longer than Doggy Style’s abruptly-disappearing aftertaste.  It runs 11.5% ABV, which is perfectly appropriate: this is not a beer you’re likely to guzzle.  I’m enjoying it, but I’ve yet to fall in love.