...if your goal is to minimise alcohol-related harm, you might want the alcohol monopolies in West Auckland to remain. Overall, it's ambiguous whether the proposal is to eliminate the alcohol monopolies is good or not, since there are gains in economic welfare, but probably offsetting losses in terms of alcohol-related harm.The fight is ongoing, as this New Zealand Herald article from a few weeks ago notes:
About 12,500 people have signed the group's petition calling for a referendum on the current set-up, which is dominated by the Portage and Waitakere Licensing Trusts...
Smale's group - the West Auckland Licensing Trust Action Group (Waltag) — needs about 28,000 signatures (15 per cent of almost 190,000 registered electors) to force what would be the first vote on a competition proposal for 16 years.It's interesting to think about this in the context of yesterday's post about why few individuals oppose new (or renewed) alcohol outlet licence applications. In the case of licence objections, the cost is relatively high for individuals, while the potential benefits are shared across many people, so that for most individuals the costs of objecting outweigh the benefits. So, few individuals object to licence applications. How important is this issue to the community as a whole? It's hard to tell, because most people won't object to a licence application (but as I noted yesterday, interest groups or politicians are more likely to do so).
However, the cost of signing a petition is tiny - it takes only a few moments of your time to scrawl your name and address on a sheet of paper. So, the benefits of signing the petition (to broaden access to alcohol) easily exceed the costs for many people. This is part of the reason why the group calling for the referendum in West Auckland has gathered 12,500 signatures. The cost of signing a petition is low, so it never surprises me that petitions on virtually anything gain many signatures. Even worse are the online petitions like Change.org, where the extent of the cost to anyone of signing the petition is a click of their mouse. How important are these issues to the community as a whole? Again, it's hard to tell, but it's important enough that people took the time to sign a petition (or to click a button on their mouse). However, there is no protesting on the streets, and no hikoi taking the petition to parliament, so it clearly isn't as important as other issues.
The most surprising thing may be that the West Auckland group has only managed to gather 12,500 signatures. Given that the cost of signing a petition is pretty low, that suggests to me that many people don't want increased availability of alcohol in West Auckland. And as noted in my post last year, that might be a good thing if your goal is to minimise alcohol-related harm.
Read more:
- Alcohol outlets, licence objections, and the problem of public goods
- Why you might want alcohol sellers to be monopolies
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