OneThingsForSure wrote:But is prevention not better than cure, Mr Q?
Well, that's nice rhetoric, but I'm not sure the facts stack up.
I happily concede that taxes will influence people's behaviour. If you make something more expensive, then all else being equal, consumption of it will decrease. But as I've made the point before, the problem with alcohol is that by its very nature, it's a substance that affects judgment and decision making. Remember, people aren't going out and getting involved in fights after having 3 beers - it's more likely to be closer to 10. As I've also argued, I don't think we can rule out the impact of drugs either. Perversely, increasing the tax on alcohol - which by definition raises the price of alcohol relative to other goods - might actually result in greater consumption of drugs among some classes of consumer. From the government's point of view, that would not be a desirable outcome.
But, more broadly than that, fights do not occur because people are drunk. They occur because people are aggressive. For some people, alcohol increases the likelihood of them getting into fights. For plenty of others, it doesn't. When I get drunk for instance, I get extremely chatty, and then very sleepy. I've never once started a fight, and don't reasonably expect I ever will - even when I'm drunk, my common sense doesn't go out the window. The onus is on those people who are aware they have a problem with violence to limit their consumption of alcohol. If they get into fights while drunk, they should - in my mind, at least - reasonably expect tough police action to be taken against them. The community has a right to feel safe.
Beyond this, additional blunt measures such as teenage curfews and what have you are likely to do more harm than good. They unfairly impact the majority of decent, law-abiding citizens for the sake of targeting what is still ostensibly a minority of cretins who are causing the problems. Defending this on the basis of 'prevention is better than cure' is entirely counter-productive - prevention in this instance deliberately restricts the rights of others who have done nothing at all wrong. In the case of, say, teenage curfews, what you're effectively signalling to young people is "we don't trust you". That is disrespectful to them, and will only encourage them to transgress against a society that is shunning them. In short, it risks making the 'problem' worse, not better.
When government intervenes in the economy and in society, it causes people to change their behaviour. That is self-evident. The question then is not whether a tax or some other policy will bring about a change in behaviour, but rather will it bring about the
desired change in behaviour. Society is predicated on a system of incentives and disincentives, yet these do not function independently of one another. We make decisions based on relative judgment or whether we would rather do something as opposed to something else. So when we consider policies that affect 'something', we must be mindful of what the 'something else' is as well. Most critically, we should never assume that more government intervention is always preferable to less. As has been correctly noted here, much of Europe takes a far more relaxed attitude to Britain with respect of alcohol, and yet the problems of violence and crime related to alcohol consumption appear to be lower on the continent. Any policy can yield unintended consequences. It's not unfair to question whether that's the case here.
