Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

Author: robc

  • The Beer Wars:  An Incomplete History of the American Beer Industry (pt 1)

    Part I – Pre-prohibition

    This is part one (of five) in a series of the Beer Wars in America (primarily 1970-1990) and some before and after history.  There are much better beer historians than me who would be far more accurate.  At the end of each piece, I am going to include how the period in question effected a local brewery to me, Falls City.  It adds a bit of individuality to a big picture story.  And now let us begin.

    In the beginning of America there was beer, and it was good, but it wasn’t really an industry so I am going to ignore it.  The Mayflower had beer, Washington and Franklin brewed beer, some breweries existed on the Eastern Seaboard.  But the exciting stuff happened with a combination of the industrial revolution and the German invas…ummm, immigration wave in the 19th century.  This was followed by the commercial use of refrigeration and an industry was born.

    Below is a not-so-random selection of mostly-German, mostly Midwest, breweries that were founded in the mid 19th century and would continue to play a major part in our story in the late 20th century.  This list is by no means complete, but it gives you a flavor of the Germanic character of the industry in these days.

    Yuengling, 1829, Pottsville
    Falstaff, 1838, St Louis
    Ballantine, 1840, Newark
    Schaefer, 1842, New York
    Pabst 1844, Milwaukee
    Schlitz 1849, Milwaukee
    Stroh 1850, Detroit
    Blatz, 1851, Milwaukee
    Anheuser-Busch, 1852, St Louis
    Christian Moerlein, 1853, Cincinnati
    Leibmann, 1854, Brooklyn
    Hudepohl, 1855, Cincinnati
    Miller, 1855, Milwaukee
    Jacob Schmidt, 1855, St Paul
    Heileman, 1858, La Crosse
    Christian Schmidt, 1860, Philadelphia
    Hamm, 1865, St Paul
    Coors, 1873, Golden
    Sterling, 1880, Evansville
    Pfeiffer, 1882, Detroit
    Anchor, 1896, San Francisco

    The Seibel Institute in Chicago taught brewing in German up until World War I.  The Brewmaster’s meetings at Budweiser were held in German up until about the 1960s.  The inability to speak German limited a brewer’s advancement in the company in the first half of the 20th century.

    Prior to this time, American breweries were based in the English tradition and were primarily Ales.  Lager became King with the German influence.  In 1873 there were 4,131 breweries in America, a number that would not be topped until late 2015.  In the 60 years from 1865 to 1915, the amount of beer produced and the per capita drinking increased dramatically (from 3 to 18 gallons per capita per annum).  However, the number of breweries decreased as industrialization and refrigeration allowed for larger breweries.  See the chart below:

    1865-1915

    Year National Production (millions of barrels) Number of Breweries Average Brewery Size (barrels)
    1865 3.7 2,252 1,643
    1870 6.6 3,286 2,009
    1875 9.5 2,783 3,414
    1880 13.3 2,741 4,852
    1885 19.2 2,230 8,610
    1890 27.6 2,156 12,801
    1895 33.6 1,771 18,972
    1900 39.5 1,816 21,751
    1905 49.5 1,847 26,800
    1910 59.6 1,568 38,010
    1915 59.8 1,345 44,461

    Source: United States Brewers Association, 1979 Brewers Almanac, Washington DC: 12-13.

    Of course, by the next line in the chart, the number was zero.  At least legally.  But that is a story for another post.

    At the beginning of the 20th century, Central Consumers Company, an alliance of Louisville breweries, had many of the taverns in Louisville under contract as “tied houses.”  Basically, they had a monopoly and a contract to prevent the taverns from buying elsewhere.  Some independent taverns and grocery stores refused to sign on and instead created a cooperative brewery in 1905 – Falls City.  In 1911, Central Consumers tried to buy out Falls City, but the owners chose not to sell.  Falls City would continue to grow and succeed until a horrible shadow fell over the country with the 18th Amendment.

    But there is a point to this part of the story – even in the face of monopoly, there isn’t a need for the government to fix the problem.  The plucky upstarts were able to succeed without subsidy and without selling out.  It’s a libertarian success story … for now.

  • Gedankenexperiment #2 – Getting Rid of the Clock in Football

    What?!? Why would you even consider this?

    First, this is a gedankenexperiment, not an actual proposal. Sometimes you just have to think about the world in different ways. Secondly, the clock rules in football are stupid, and other than tradition no one would create them the way they are. While this is an extreme example, here is the kind of things that happen with the current rules:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-ELRub8n7s

    What would replace them?

    Simple, there would be a play counter. Each quarter would consist of 35 plays from scrimmage (28 in High School). Exceptions would be extra points and plays with an accepted penalty (dead ball penalties occur during a dead ball and would be no different from today). Kickoffs and free kicks are not from scrimmage and would not count as plays. Field goal attempts and punts would. Thirty-five works out about right. Current NFL teams run just about 70 plays per game on average. Most colleges run a bit more, but see below for how that would change.
    There would still be a play clock, but its rule could be set for whatever pace of play is wanted, without concern for the game clock.

    How would this change the game?

    In many ways, not at all. In others, dramatically. The big changes would be:

    1. Passing vs Running – We wouldn’t have 4.5 hour long Washington State games because a pass play, whether complete or incomplete, in bounds or out, would take up the same “time” as a running play. On the other hand, an 18 play, all run, death-march drive would take up half a quarter instead of 60 to 65 percent of one.
    2. High tempo offenses wouldn’t get more plays. A high tempo offense would still have advantages, but adding extra possessions onto the game isn’t one of them.
    3. The end of half/game would change dramatically.
      • If you have the lead, 1st down and 4 or left on the play counter, you can take a knee (or 4). Much easier to figure out when you can go to victory formation.
      • Time outs aren’t for stopping the clock, they would be used like they are in the first half, to avoid confusion or to give a team a rest. We could probably reduce the number of them.
      • The field opens up for comeback offenses. You no longer need to throw sideline routes. The middle of the field is opened up, as is running plays if you think that would be more successful.
      • Clocking the ball goes away. No need to waste a play stopping the clock. In fact, it would be counterproductive.

    There are other ways it would change the game, discuss in the comments.

    What was the point of all this again?

    It was a fun idea I had about a decade ago and have been noodling around with since then. I do think it would make end of games more exciting, without the extra time out breaks and letting teams run whatever play works best. It gets rid of some of the arbitrariness in the rules, especially with the fast vs slow moving referees and the silliness over checking the clock to see if there is 1 second left or not. But it’s not a serious proposal…no wait, yes, it is. This would make football better. It should be done. There are no down sides, in my opinion, and plenty of advantages. You might disagree, but you would be wrong. It will never happen, this is further outside the Overton window than the Single Land Tax. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwYX52BP2Sk

    While we are on the topic of clocks in football, how about we get a clock that counts down and stops for injuries in soccer?

  • Funding Libertopia – a gedankenexperiment

    Introduction

    For those of you of an AnCap mindset, this article is probably not of much benefit. But for those of us that think a minarchy is necessary (and sufficient), the discussion of how to fund a micro-state is of more interest.
    Also, yes, this will be, in large part, a discussion of the Single Land Tax (SLT.) This is not the article on the SLT that I promised a year ago, but this is the one you are going to get. At least for now.

    Recent discussions of the SLT have got me thinking in different ways and led me to what I needed to do. it’s the answer to almost every problem: DO THE MATH

    The Auction

    I. Let us start with the premise of this thought experiment. A group of libertarians discovers a previous unfound island or planet or whatever. Either way, whether on sea or through space, I am pretty sure the ship is named Der Sausagefest. This land is entirely undeveloped. Their established minarchy will never spend any money it does not already have in its coffers. The land needs to be divided in a just manner. So they decide: We will divide the land into parcels and auction off the parcels. However, the auction won’t be for the price of land, the bidding will be the amount of land tax you (or any future owners) are committing to pay on the parcel each year going forward for all eternity. The land itself will be free, and come with complete property rights, except for being encumbered with the tax.

    There shall be one exception to the eternal nature of the tax: if the owner wishes to, he may forfeit the property back to the state for re-auctioning. He may decide the tax is too damn high and try to “buy” It back at a lower tax. Or he may just decide he doesn’t want it. Whatever.

    The libertopian state will have a fixed income based on the initial auction. As it is sensible, the currency will be something like gold that is stable over the long term and so inflation won’t be a problem.

    II. Why an auction for the tax amount instead of selling the land? Technically, they are the same thing. The price you would pay is equal to the present value of the future cash flows of the property. And the same for the tax stream, the amount you are willing to bid is a stream with the same present value. But I can think of 3 reasons that the tax is better than an upfront cost:

    1. I don’t trust any state, even libertopia, with a large sum of money. Better to give them an annual income than a lump sum.

    2. While the state could turn around and invest the money, generating the same income stream as the tax, that involves the state choosing investments. We have seen how well that kind of thing works with CalPERS, for example. We don’t want the state choosing winners or losers or getting some PC thing going and divesting from the hookers and blow industries.

    3. This one is a little weird, and if you want to discount it, so be it. But the make-up of the initial libertopians may be diverse. Some will be flush with cash, others may be poor. While the poor could get a mortgage to pay the initial cost, that adds a level of risk that would lead to lower bidding by them. I find the stream payment to be more equitable.

    I see the obvious argument against the tax vs initial purchase price idea. The former is effectively an eternal mortgage, while the latter is over and done with. But as they are mathematically equivalent, I don’t see that as an actual issue. As I said in the introduction, we have to do the math.

    Application to Real Life

    I. None, probably. But I was thinking about it for two reasons. First, the recent discussion in which UCS and RCDean questioned the reality of imputed value. The fact that someone will pay for undeveloped land shows that imputed value or economic rents or whatever is a real thing. Even in my scenario, people would bid a positive amount for the plots, which implies that the imputed value is, in fact, a real thing that they do value.

    The second, and possibly more important, reason was that I have been thinking about what a land tax would due to the resale price of unimproved land. I came up with an answer but didn’t really like it. Hence, I had to do the math. And this gedankenexperiment was the result of that. A properly valued land value tax that was exactly at the value of the economic rents (no more and no less) would reduce the resale price of unimproved land to zero.

    That isn’t actually a real life situation though, as “unimproved” land is all but non-existent. Think about an empty lot in a neighborhood. Is it unimproved? Does it have a road bordering it? That is an improvement that increases the value of the land. So is a functioning court system. And deeds that can be trusted. And national defense. While they aren’t DIRECT improvements to the land, they all increase the value of the land. Being secure in your ownership is an improvement.

    In fact, it might even be a flaw in my gedankenexperiment. The landing of the spaceship Sausagefest may have improved the land. But it’s a small enough improvement that I stand behind the results.

    II. So how do we get from here to there? We really can’t. Without a tyranny, we can’t take all the land and auction it off. The land has improvements anyway. It would take a series of nukes to unimprove the land. The good thing about the auction was it valued the land tax properly. If we implemented one, it wouldn’t be done that way. A rate would be set, valuations would be calculated, and a crappy fiat money system would be used that wouldn’t allow anything like a stable pricing system. Humans would be involved and they screw everything up. Plus, people did pay for their land, and some of them oppose the idea of having to pay rent on it forever, too. Even if it did mean getting rid of every other form of taxation. Like any change in the tax system, there would be winners and losers (even if overall taxation was cut to a level that we won big overall), which is why it is so hard to make a change.

    The Georgist Single Land Tax is a utopian fantasy. And I still favor it over the current system or any other anyone has proposed.