Bullshit. The LCBO provides alcohol millions of times more responsibly than a private mega casino would administer gambling..
Ah, yes. The great, the benevolent, the caring, Liquor Control Board of Ontario.
Full disclosure: my grandfather was a former commissioner of the LCBO in the 1960s. And today, my grandmother still enjoys a pretty pension from that
The whole "social responsibility" argument is just a weaker version of the prohibitionist argument. It's an argument against individual agency, and a belief that only "public" interests can ameliorate the bad consequences of alcohol and drug consumption. "Private" interests are always purely egoist, and often malevolent.
Philosophizing aside, I have a question: how many people here, who grew up in Ontario, actually had trouble obtaining liquor before they were nineteen? Go ahead and raise your hand... yeah, me either. Funny that.
Prohibition against adults doesn't work. And it doesn't really work against minors, either; they steal it from their parents. They get nineteen year old brothers/sisters to buy it for them, they do any number of clever things. But the LCBO's "social responsibility" is but a minor impedance to them.
You go to Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Portugal, and nobody gives a shit about this stuff. Yet, based on the logic of these pro-LCBO Light Prohibitionists like RC8, these societies should be in advanced states of social decay due to excessive alcohol consumption.
The only other angle on this, is the insane profit windfall the government gets from its alcohol monopoly. Which is pretty perverse, if you ask me. The whole base assumption of "needing" the LCBO is that the venomous private sector will turn every unsuspecting citizen into an alcohol abuser.
The homeless native Canadian who lives near me, bums money off people, and loads up on liquor at the LCBO every day is really benefiting from this *awesome*, socially responsible system.
But for anyone whose not a knee-jerk, pro-government type, you can already sense the perverse incentives at play. Not only is the government monopolizing the market, but it too, better than any private sector player could ever hope to, is squeezing as much profit out of the enterprise that it can. It advertises in the newspaper, on TV, on billboards for more of the serfs to come get their liquor fix. It brags as the sales volume increases year over year.
The Government of Ontario is, quite frankly, an alcohol-pusher. Just like it's a gambling-pusher.
Don't worry though. It's a pusher in a good way. Because it's "public".
Yeah, f$%k off.
