There are countless unnecessary restrictions on goods, and I’d argue that about 90% of the laws and regulations surrounding them should be rewritten or scrapped entirely. Take Florida’s alcohol laws, for example: liquor must pass through at least three different hands before it can be sold to a consumer—Manufacturer > Distributor > Retailer > Customer. I once worked for a retailer in Florida, and I couldn’t understand the logic, especially since my company also produced its own products. Even though they were both the Manufacturer and Retailer, they still had to use a distributor just to sell their own goods due to this outdated system.
Sure, they justify it by claiming it’s a leftover from Prohibition, but that’s a weak excuse. Yes, there was a black market for alcohol back then, but Prohibition ended 91 years ago. How have we not figured out a better way to handle alcohol sales in nearly a century? The answer is simple: it’s part of the system by design.
Car dealerships operate in much the same way. There’s no reason cars can’t be sold directly to consumers, as long as manufacturers have the necessary distribution infrastructure. Regulations should be enforced at the point of manufacture or import, and sales tax should be collected by the seller and then remitted to the federal government. For foreign manufacturers, if they want to sell in the U.S., they should be required to register in whatever state they choose, regardless of sales volume.
And here’s the kicker: What’s to stop the company I worked for from setting up a shell distribution company, acting as their own intermediary, and inflating the price to sell it to themselves as the retailer? They could then mark up the price again before selling it to you, essentially bypassing any real value or competition while still skirting around the system.
Because the state decides who and how many distributors there are and the current ones already pay their annual bribes to the right people to keep their monopoly
There are countless unnecessary restrictions on goods, and I’d argue that about 90% of the laws and regulations surrounding them should be rewritten or scrapped entirely. Take Florida’s alcohol laws, for example: liquor must pass through at least three different hands before it can be sold to a consumer—Manufacturer > Distributor > Retailer > Customer. I once worked for a retailer in Florida, and I couldn’t understand the logic, especially since my company also produced its own products. Even though they were both the Manufacturer and Retailer, they still had to use a distributor just to sell their own goods due to this outdated system.
Sure, they justify it by claiming it’s a leftover from Prohibition, but that’s a weak excuse. Yes, there was a black market for alcohol back then, but Prohibition ended 91 years ago. How have we not figured out a better way to handle alcohol sales in nearly a century? The answer is simple: it’s part of the system by design.
Car dealerships operate in much the same way. There’s no reason cars can’t be sold directly to consumers, as long as manufacturers have the necessary distribution infrastructure. Regulations should be enforced at the point of manufacture or import, and sales tax should be collected by the seller and then remitted to the federal government. For foreign manufacturers, if they want to sell in the U.S., they should be required to register in whatever state they choose, regardless of sales volume.
And here’s the kicker: What’s to stop the company I worked for from setting up a shell distribution company, acting as their own intermediary, and inflating the price to sell it to themselves as the retailer? They could then mark up the price again before selling it to you, essentially bypassing any real value or competition while still skirting around the system.
The purpose of a system is what it does
Because greed.
Because the state decides who and how many distributors there are and the current ones already pay their annual bribes to the right people to keep their monopoly