A lot of things that we took as immutable facts of life in the US are actually arbitrary and unnecessary restrictions on free movement or trade that are designed to force you to pay for things unnecessarily or destroy free markets and unfairly protect incumbents/institutions.
Example: I’m low on contact lenses. Without being able to see, I can’t work.
In the US, contact lenses are for sale by prescription only(!). I had my office ship a few boxes I had left over in Germany, as it is both impossible to go to Germany as well as impossible to safely visit the local office in the US to which one must pay $150 to get the piece of paper to be allowed to purchase what is an uncontrolled item in almost every other country in the world.
FedEx has blocked the shipment, demanding a prescription, which does not exist.
Who is this benefitting? Who is being protected from which harms by these laws?
I don’t even drink alcohol and I think that liquor sales licensing is insane, especially when coupled with the OUTRAGEOUS list of additional restrictions they are allowed to place on businesses just because they serve alcohol some of the time (the restrictions the state gets to apply to the biz are 24/7). jwz’s extensive documentation on the CA ABC’s tyranny is an especially good example.
Yes, contact lenses are medical devices that needs to be regulated. Imagine if you bought contacts from Amazon, received a counterfeit batch, and it wrecked your vision? Who could you even sue?
These laws protect you the consumer. I am sorry you are inconvenienced.
Alcohol abuse is the third largest preventable cause of death in the US and the death rate has doubled in the last 20 years. Kills on average 88,000 people per year in the US. Liquor licensing is one of the few tools we have to protect us.
> Imagine if you bought contacts from Amazon, received a counterfeit batch, and it wrecked your vision? Who could you even sue?
The same entity I would sue if I was damaged by any other product that was unfit for purpose: the dealer and/or manufacturer who sold the faulty goods.
Your argument doesn't really hold up with that example.
Alcohol abuse, drunk driving aside, doesn't directly physically harm anyone who doesn't fully consent to the effects of alcohol in their body. You're fine to believe that people shouldn't drink, or shouldn't drink as much as they do: I even agree with you.
You're not fine to think that people should use the threat of violence (police/regulation enforcement) against people who would peacefully sell alcohol to consenting adults who wish to buy it.
Thanks for the tip. I've considered the original shipment of 200EUR (plus 60EUR shipping) a loss, and I've just ordered another 150GBP of lenses; with any luck those will reach me within a month. This whole mess is so unbelievably wasteful.
If they're not going to do away with them entirely, laws and regulations should have a "suspend_in_disaster" flag when passed, the same way they have giant carve-outs for bans of things for human beings that don't apply at all to the police.
Until recently there were sites selling contact lenses (like visiondirect.co.uk) that would flaunt this rule, but visiondirect was recently being investigated for it so YMMV.
I am happy to spend up to probably $100k as necessary to avoid committing papertrailed violations of federal laws. I've seen far too many people go to the torture section of jail in the US due to overzealous prosecution of utterly ridiculous laws. The DoJ scares the fuck out of me.
A lot of things that we took as immutable facts of life in the US are actually arbitrary and unnecessary restrictions on free movement or trade that are designed to force you to pay for things unnecessarily or destroy free markets and unfairly protect incumbents/institutions.
Example: I’m low on contact lenses. Without being able to see, I can’t work.
In the US, contact lenses are for sale by prescription only(!). I had my office ship a few boxes I had left over in Germany, as it is both impossible to go to Germany as well as impossible to safely visit the local office in the US to which one must pay $150 to get the piece of paper to be allowed to purchase what is an uncontrolled item in almost every other country in the world.
FedEx has blocked the shipment, demanding a prescription, which does not exist.
Who is this benefitting? Who is being protected from which harms by these laws?
I don’t even drink alcohol and I think that liquor sales licensing is insane, especially when coupled with the OUTRAGEOUS list of additional restrictions they are allowed to place on businesses just because they serve alcohol some of the time (the restrictions the state gets to apply to the biz are 24/7). jwz’s extensive documentation on the CA ABC’s tyranny is an especially good example.