Baptists and Bootleggers

ReasonTV has a new video up on “Bootleggers and Baptists.”

This is a concept that relates to virtually everything we do here at the Commonwealth Foundation. The gist is that Baptists supported Prohibition out of good intentions – they believed alcohol abuse was a great evil, and government should ban it. Bootleggers, on the other hand, saw Prohibition as a chance to get rich (any many, like Al Capone, did), since they would have a virtual monopoly.

Today this same trend – a coalition between the “true believers” and the special interests who profit off a policy – occurs in almost every major government-funded program or regulation, from “economic development” to education spending to liquor store privatization to environmental and energy policy.