In which government is, once again, the root of the problem

[unixronin]

I went to look at Rocky Mountain Meadery this morning, which it turns out has renamed itself Meadery of the Rockies since I last bought mead from them.  It turns out that, thanks to your tax dollars at work, Rocky Mountain Meadery — or Meadery of the Rockies — no longer ships mead interstate.

Why?

In 2005, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed its long standing position that state laws violate the Commerce Clause if they mandate "differential treatment of in-state and out-of-state economic interests that benefit the former and burden the latter."  This rule prohibits states from permitting in-state wineries to ship wine in-state while that state prohibits out-of-state wineries from shipping wine into the state.  Consequently, states are now requiring wineries to obtain licenses to ship within and into their states.  For us to purchase 20 or more licenses, plus incur the additional cost of paper work, tax compliance, and monthly reports would be prohibitive.  Therefore, we have decided not to ship wine interstate at the present time.

So, yet another active producer of goods that has had to cut back its business, and its contribution to the overall economy, because it can no longer afford the cost of compliance with government edicts.

Personally, I think we've had about all the government we can stand.

(As for our mead supply, it turns out Redstone Meadery does ship interstate, and has way cool bottles to boot.)

Comments

[hugh_mannity]

You might be able to get B Nektar mead -- they ship to MA and one of my local stores carries it.

[unixronin]

Thanks for the pointer, I'll check them out. :)

[merlinpendragon]

Redstone Meadery does not ship to Kansas, nor do they have a distributor in this state. Grrrr......

[unixronin]

As you should see above, hugh_mannity pointed me at B. Nektar, which ships to all states via WineBuys.

[robhansen]

Historical precedent may be interesting. During the Thirty Years’ War, Germany suffered terrible famines and starvation. The cause of this is usually misattributed to the marauding armies that were roaming the land, but the actual cause was more pervasive: tax policy.

This was far, far before the modern German state. Germany was a Balkanized realm of tiny little fiefs, each ruled by people looking out for only their own short term interests. For farmers to travel from Swabia to Berlin to sell grain at market they would easily have to cross a dozen or more intermediary provinces, each of which exacted their own tolls, taxes and fees. This raised the cost of food far in excess of both (a) what farmers were willing to sell at and (b) what people were willing to buy at, leading to famine conditions even though grain production was not all that badly damaged by the war.

The parallels seem obvious.

[vatine]

I must confess to (mostly) making my own mead. Does have other drawbacks, though.

[beckyzoole]

Seems to me that the problem is at the state government level. The federal government (the US Supreme Court) wants all the states to treat the products of all wineries equally, whether they're in-state or out-of-state. IDEALLY, that would mean that all wineries would be able to ship wherever they want. But these 20+ states just won't give up on the revenue cash cow of winery shipping licenses.

Bah. I don't care for state governments much anyway. They were required when transportation and communication between the states took weeks. But now, they mostly lead to more balkanization and less commerce. Basically, they add yet another layer of government. But that's another rant for another time....

[unixronin]

I guess that's a matter for opinion. I, for one would like to see much more independent and self-reliant state governments, except in matters that truly do relate to interstate commerce or - for example - the 'full faith and credit' clause, and a much smaller and far less intrusive Federal government. As it is, our ever-more-bloated Federal government is sucking the lifeblood out of the entire nation. I have used the metastatic cancer analogy before, and I stand by it.


That said, in this specific case, yes, the problem is at the state government level. In most cases, the state governments really don't care who's shipping wine into, out of, or within their states ... as long as they control it. But they're all about the control.

And, as we all know, the power to regulate anything is the power to destroy it.