Monday, October 13, 2008

Alaska: Still In 1920

This Land - Bootleggers Playing Hide-and-Seek on the Tundra - Series - NYTimes.com
Many rural Alaskan communities consider alcohol to be the primary accelerant for crime, domestic strife and other social problems, and either ban it outright or, as in Bethel, tightly restrict its use.
This little tit-bit seems to have passed me by, but it seems most of Alaska thinks its still 1920, and is still enforcing Prohibition? LOL. Maybe their clocks all stopped 80 years ago or something. But yeah, prohibition, we all saw how well that worked, and as this article indicates there is absolutely no smuggling or crime related to this law.

I also just started to think about how the word "smuggle" doesn't really even make sense in a capitalist society. I thought everything was a commodity, everything is for sale? Oh, so everything except alcohol. And certain drugs which you have arbitrarily listed. Notice how when corporations sell things it's "trade" but when poor people try to make a fucking living, it's "smuggling".
By the way, a fifth of R&R — which stands for Rich & Rare, a highbrow name for a bottom-shelf blend — sells for $10 or so in Anchorage. But that same bottle can sell for as much as $300 in a dry village in the tundra, making R&R the bootlegger’s current alcohol of choice and the trooper’s alcohol of interest.
Buy for $10, sell for $300!? This is the kind of deal companies are desperately looking for in the markets every day. You'd be insane not to supply that demand.

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