{"id":14273,"date":"2012-03-24T10:17:15","date_gmt":"2012-03-24T15:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14273"},"modified":"2012-03-24T10:17:15","modified_gmt":"2012-03-24T15:17:15","slug":"when-you-change-the-meaning-of-words-to-suit-your-purposes-you-can-prove-anything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/03\/24\/when-you-change-the-meaning-of-words-to-suit-your-purposes-you-can-prove-anything\/","title":{"rendered":"“When you change the meaning of words to suit your purposes, you can ‘prove’ anything”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Bowman<\/a> discusses the injustice of minimum alcohol pricing at the Adam Smith Institute blog:<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve struggled to write something about minimum alcohol pricing today. It\u2019s a hugely important issue, and one I care deeply about. But I can\u2019t help but be angry at the people who’ve proposed it, and the government made up of supposed \u201cconservatives\u201d and \u201cliberals\u201d who plan on implementing it. It’s anti-individualism at its worst.<\/p>\n

The \u201cevidence-based\u201d arguments made for minimum alcohol pricing are, in fact, based on distortion and bad science. The policy is paternalistic, indiscriminate, and only hits people who are frugal or on lower incomes. Slippery slope arguments are common, for good reason. But they\u2019re especially appropriate here.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The idea that there should be a price floor for alcohol is well-loved by public health types, and often supported unthinkingly by middle class voters, often due to the media coverage of “binge drinking” among the young. It disproportionally hurts the poor, by increasing the cost of buying the cheapest forms of alcohol (which the poor are more likely to buy). To many, this is seen as a feature rather than a bug, as they assume that it will act to decrease alcohol consumption. Instead, it’s more likely to force poor drinkers to pay less for other things (like food and clothing) and will not measurably decrease alcohol consumption — how is it compassionate to make poor people even more poor?<\/p>\n

\n

The politics of this are straightforward but effective: target the most marginal, \u201cproblem\u201d group \u2013 in this case, binge drinkers \u2013 with a low minimum price to pass an apparently-trivial law.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

The justifications for this are completely, utterly bogus. Britain does not have a drinking problem: as ASI fellow Chris Snowdon has pointed out, we drink less today than ten years ago, less than a hundred years ago, and far less than we did before that.<\/p>\n

Internationally, we are in the middle of the table in the European rankings, behind France, Germany and Spain, and far behind the Czech Republic and Luxemburg.<\/p>\n

But what about binge drinking? In fact, the definition of \u201cbinge drinking\u201d has been warped beyond all recognition. Four pints in a day counts as a \u201cbinge\u201d for an adult man, according to official definitions. A woman drinking three standard (175ml) glasses of wine is \u201cbinging\u201d as well.<\/p>\n

As Chris points out, the number of diseases defined as \u201calcohol related\u201d has tripled in the last 25 years. When you change the meaning of words to suit your purposes, you can \u201cprove\u201d anything.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Bowman discusses the injustice of minimum alcohol pricing at the Adam Smith Institute blog: I\u2019ve struggled to write something about minimum alcohol pricing today. It\u2019s a hugely important issue, and one I care deeply about. But I can\u2019t help but be angry at the people who’ve proposed it, and the government made up of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,66,10,53],"tags":[104,91,661,118],"class_list":["post-14273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-health-science","category-liberty","category-politics","tag-booze","tag-poverty","tag-regulation","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3Id","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14274,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14273\/revisions\/14274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}