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A Smattering of Quotes from: Last Call – the Rise and Fall of Prohibition

I have written a couple blog posts recently based on reflections inspired by Daniel Okrent’s wonderful book, Last Call. But there are so many wonderful tidbits from this book, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite quotes.

First there is William Jennings Bryan, a prominent force in the Democratic Party at the end of the 19th century, who colorfully described his opposition to the theory of evolution:

“It is better to trust in the Rock of Ages than to know the age of rocks.”

Of course he is completely wrong. But at least he is wrong eloquently.


Then there is the Kentucky Distillers and Distribution Company, which sought out a local alcohol treatment center and offered to sell them names of their frequent customers for $400. They bragged to the treatment center that:

 

“Our customers are your prospective patients.”

So much for business ethics!


I particularly enjoyed the song title by songwriter Albert Von Tilzer. He cleverly captured one of the unforeseen benefits of Prohibition, with his

 

“I Never Knew I Had a Wonderful Wife until the Time Went Dry.”


A newspaper reporter mocked the inability of Prohibition law to prevent people from drinking:

 

“It was absolutely impossible to get a drink in Detroit unless you walked at least 10 feet and told the busy bartender what you wanted in a voice loud enough for him to hear you above the uproar.”

Another person commented on the impossibility of stopping liquor smuggling across the US/Canadian border by saying:

“You cannot keep liquor from dripping through a dotted line.”

A man who made his business selling Scotch gave colorful advice:

“Of two evils, choose the more interesting.”

That is an aphorism that Oscar Wilde would be proud of.


And then, of course, there was Ernest Hemingway boldly claiming that

 

“a man does not exist until he is drunk.”

Ernest, Ernest, Ernest…

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Another Review of Critical Decisions

Here’s a link to a review of Critical Decisions published in a journal called Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. The reviewer had some nice things to say, but felt it wasn’t theoretical enough for his liking. Not surprising given that I wrote the book for a general audience, and not for an academic one. But this kind of review does motivate me to try to write some more spin-off articles, aimed at academic audiences, to go into some of the theoretical issues I raise in Critical Decisions in a more thorough, and academic manner. Good to remember in the meantime: writers have to know their audience. And my goal in writing Critical Decisions was to reach a broad one, not just an academic one.

 

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Is the Penalty for Not Getting Health Insurance Too Small to Work?

As part of Obamacare, people are required to get health insurance or pay a penalty. That’s what’s known infamously as the individual mandate. But is the penalty too small to matter? For some people, the penalty might be as low as $95. Would anyone in their right mind, who is not otherwise inclined to buy health insurance, buy it just to avoid such a small penalty? Here is an interesting Marketplace report that looks at this topic, quoting me and a several others who argue that the size of the penalty isn’t the only thing that matters.

 

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How Anti-Alcohol Regulations Promoted…Prostitution?!

John “Eagle-faced” Raines had a simple goal in mind: put a big hurt into the evil saloon industry that was threatening the moral fabric of late 19th century New York State.  Low wage workers were spending huge chunks of their Sundays (for many, the only day of their weekend) tipping pints at dingy saloons, when they would have been better off spending that money on food and clothing for their families.

Raines could have pushed for New York to ban all alcohol sales on Sundays.  But that would have gone too far.  Many proper men of ample means were known to enjoy a drink or two on Sundays.  So Raines and his legislative pals came up with a clever solution: they banned Sunday alcohol sales at saloons but not at hotels.  (Technically, they allowed establishments to serve alcohol on Sundays if the establishment also served meals and had at least ten bedrooms.)  Well-to-do men, after all, primarily gathered in New York’s fancy hotels for their libations.  Daniel Okrent summarizes Raines’ intentions (in his marvelous book: Last Call) as “prohibition for the other guy, not for me.”  (See here for another post inspired by the book.)

But like so many government regulations, this one had unintended consequences.  Saloon owners were not going to lose their best day of business without looking for a way around the legislation.  So they adapted.  They began serving meals, or at least pretending to serve them.  Some saloons even mocked the Raines law by placing a brick between two pieces of bread “sat out on the counter, in derision of the state law”…(Read more and view comments at Forbes)

 

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Thomas Paine on the Cost of Liberty

Powerful words from Thomas Paine, spoken September 11, 1777:

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”

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Jeremy Bentham Rejecting the Idea of Human Equality

In many ways, Jeremy Bentham was all about equality. As the father of utilitarianism, he believed that all social policy should be designed to maximize the happiness and pleasures of humans’ experience while minimizing the pains and miseries. And in espousing this theory of justice, he didn’t distinguish between upper class and lower class and men or women. He strove for politics that maximized human happiness. Nevertheless, when he first read the Declaration of Independence, he scoffed at the idea that all men are created equal:

“’All men,’ they tell us, ‘are created equal.’ This surely is a new discovery; now, for the first time, we learn, that a child, at the moment of its birth, has the same quantity of natural power as the parent, the same quantity of political power as the magistrate.”

I guess Bentham missed the idea that when Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, he meant equal in terms of the rights they hold in front of their governments.

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Teddy Roosevelt and the Psychology of Military Prepardness

“There are higher things in this life than the soft and easy enjoyment of material comfort.  It is through strife, or the readiness for strife, that a nation must win greatness. We ask for a great navy, partly because we feel that no national life is worth having if the nation is not willing, when the need shall arise, to stake everything on the supreme arbitrariment of war, and to pour out its blood, its treasure, and its tears like water, rather than submit to the loss of honor and reknown.”

Amazing quote, whatever you think about Roosevelt’s militaristic and nationalistic world view.  But President McKinley’s response to Roosevelt’s speech reveals an interesting aspect of decision psychology, one I write about in Critical Decisions:  the way that responsibility influences people’s willingness to make bold choices.  McKinley was on record as promoting a policy of non-aggression, but spoke favorably about Roosevelt’s speech:

“I suspect that Roosevelt is right, and the only difference between him and me is that mine is the greater responsibility.”

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Trial and Error in Reducing Medicare Readmissions

Thought I’d pass along a simple picture showing the results of Medicare efforts to reduce hospital readmissions. To their credit, the folks of Medicare are not sure what will work, so they have been pilot testing lots of programs. But as this picture from a January 2012 Congressional Budget Office briefing shows, there is wide variability in the effectiveness of these kinds of programs.

The bottom line here: if you don’t know what’s going to work, test of competing ideas. Find what works, and disseminate it. Then make sure to see if it is still working! Nothing easy here, but at least folks over at Medicare are trying to figure this out.

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Would the Founding Fathers Approve of a Sugar Tax?

Recently Mayor Michael Bloomberg learned that his Big Gulp ban had been blocked by a state Supreme Court judge for arbitrarily targeting these consumer goods without a legal rationale.  Determined to combat the obesity epidemic, Bloomberg will no doubt appeal this decision.  But he shouldn’t.  Instead, he should look back at the history of alcohol prohibition and recognize that taxing sugar is a much better way to combat obesity than banning sugary beverages.

In 1791, Alexander Hamilton was trying to figure out how the nascent U.S. government could pay for its activities.  The US government was quite lean in those early days, but not so lean it didn’t need a bit of revenue.  Hamilton was trying to think of a fair and efficient way of collecting funds, when he had an aha moment: alcohol!  “There appears to be no article” he wrote “…which is an object of more equal consumption throughout the U.S.”

Whether rich or poor, northern or southern, Hamilton realized that most men drank, meaning that an alcohol tax would be spread across the population relatively evenly, and wouldn’t require a complex bureaucracy to determine if everyone is paying their fair share.  True, some people drank to excess and this tax would hurt them hard.  But on the other hand, the tax might even help them.  As Daniel Okrent points out in his book Last Call: “Hamilton even found social value in taxing alcohol: it might discourage people from drinking the stuff.”

Sin taxes, it turns out, have been part of the American fabric since the days when we first stitched thirteen states together into a unified country… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)

 

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Thomas Jefferson the Pragmatist

“When we reflect how difficult it is to move or inflect the great machine of society, how impossible to advance the notions of a whole people suddenly to ideal right, we see the wisdom of Solon’s remark that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.”

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