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I found an otherwise reasonably good Vancouver Sun editorial that seemed to have forgotten some vital information for its readers, so I corrected it for them.
I do like the way the editorial opens and closes, though. Much like a blog entry by the famous and brilliant thinker, Joel Johannesen. Do you think they’ve been reading Joel Johannesen blog entries over the years? You do? Are you currently high on the crack cocaine?
“The provincial government should heed the union campaign to open more of the publicly owned liquor stores on Sunday. Then it should sell them all.”
Oof! Pow! Take that, unions! But… well yes. You’re finally right, Vancouver Sun. I’ve been telling you that for at least 20 years. Next thing you know you’ll be reading (my former columnist) Ann Coulter’s books and getting really smart. [PAID LINK — As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.]
So where the hell have you been? I mean aside from demonstrably sipping the socialist Kool-Aid served up by your friends in the liberal-left/progressive/useful idiot set.
Don’t even answer! You’re on a roll! This penultimate government wrongly meddling in retail idea sounds even more Joel-esque, if you’ll excuse my self-satisfying banality:
“As with the wholesale business, there is no longer any reason for the government to be operating liquor stores. Now that politicians no longer believe that public morality is at stake, there is no more reason to have state-owned liquor stores than there is for government getting into the grocery business or selling suits or screwdrivers.”
Well, yeah! And welcome to our enlightened world! And here’s some more places where there’s no need for state-owned anything: car insurance, basic health care, ferry boat cruises, choo-choo trains, slutty gambling and lotteries, TV and radio and internet news and entertainment and porn and discussion forums, movie-making, art galleries, and myriad other such businesses the state is involved in and has been lo these many years without you having said a disparaging word, thereby enabling and encouraging the progressives to the virtual tipping point into abject socialism.
I wonder why the Vancouver Sun has suddenly and shockingly seen even this modicum of light with regard to freedom and smaller government, and capitalism, and conservative thinking, in this one, lone industry. Maybe they’re high on crack! I suspect it will only last a day, so soak it in, readers! Tomorrow, they’ll be back to demanding more social housing, welfare entitlements, free grants and welfare and supports of various kinds from government, more state involvement in everything from the arts to science and yes, more meddling in business and building that reliance on the state.
Alas, the last paragraph disappoints, as expected. Here, again as expected, they wrongly open the giant red socialist or progressive or liberal-fascist door a crack, to allow for more yummy government to, indeed, meddle in business. Which is wrong. Shut the damn door. Lock it. Throw the key away.
“Governments should only be in businesses in which there is a unique public benefit that cannot be achieved in any other way. With rare exceptions, the government should avoid using its extraordinary powers to compete with the private sector. Liquor stores do not meet that test.”
No government-in-business meets that test. Not the government’s ridiculous monopoly auto insurance scheme, not their 
mammoth state-owned, state-run power-generating idiocy, not the ferry boat and cruise ship business that they’re in, not meddling in real estate and “providing” more “affordable housing,” not mortgage insurance, and no, not the healthcare industry either. Government never needs to be in any business. Ever. It impedes citizens from entering the marketplace and doing it better and cheaper in every way, it creates big, expensive, nanny-state governments; it increases personal and family reliance on the state, while reducing self-reliance and personal responsibility. And ultimately if creates serfs out of free people. And doing that is, well, that’s progressive. Thanks Flo.
And God knows a government run by me would instantly get out of any business that competes against its own citizens, the way that most of them like the federal state-owned CBC (and most others) do. And then I’d ban such government activity. As I’ve also been asking for years in one of my cooler epithets, what kind of government competes against its own citizens in business for profits? Indeed, using its “extraordinary powers to compete with the private sector,” as you awakened ones at the Sun put it. No no, please answer that question. Honestly.
I think it should be unconstitutional for the state to be involved in any business at all.
But I’ll refrain from holding my breath and waiting for the Vancouver Sun to pick up on that Joelism.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
Contact Mr. Johannesen about this article using this form. Please refer to article's title.
FOLLOW @JoelJohannesen ON X!
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