Simpleton’s Economics (Economica Simplitica)

Chapter 5 Alcohol and Drugs

The Utopian Dream of a Government of dictators drugging the population and having them in a constant state of stupor was Aldous Huxley’s vision for the future .Soma in Brave New World certainly hit the spot, combining imaginary lascivious good looks with sex and a drug that just made your own World seem a better place to be in. The aim to forget about reality.

Fast forward to today and we find that the Media and Government have refined control even further Keeping people in a constant state of fear is also an excellent way of controlling voters and therefore ensuring your next election victory or increased sales of whatever you are pushing.

Pushing, is that not what drug dealers do? Push Marketing is a form of direct response marketing to entice consumers. We are a soft target for whatever anyone wants to push.

The National Health Service, so we are told, is at maximum capacity and can’t cope with it’s 80 million potential customers. Yet we have an Economy that creates a demand for Alcohol fueled by advertising and enticement, as well as the widely held belief that alcohol relaxes you and makes everything more fun.

You are a boring , stick in the mud if you try to lecture people not to drink. Stop drinking and your liver and other organs will be happier, but will your mind? Well you won’t know until you try. The NHS probably would be grateful for the reduced workload in dealing with the aftermath of Alcohol fueled incidents. They’ve tried the lecturing and that hasn’t worked. So the NHS just picks up the mess.

The tragedy about this is it mainly affects the young, our culture is geared towards using alcohol at all Social Events. University Bars sell cheap alcohol, Sports Events have numerous bars, Theatre and Concert events push alcohol at us.

Interestingly a number of years ago ,the morose vegetarian entertainer, Morrissey ,insisted on making the food outlets to his concert venues purely vegetarian, but he kept the alcohol. Admirably , Morrisey cared about the sentient feelings of animal we eat, but when it came to profits he knew letting people drink would make them happier at the concert and therefore maybe a more receptive to his show. Banning alcohol would have not gone down well. Unlike cheer leading for vegetarianism.

Economic Booms are basically selling stuff. Let’s face it if we don’t sell stuff , we don’t have growth, and that would be a disaster for the Economy, wouldn’t it? It does matter where our growth comes from , even if it’s something that is inherently bad for us. I’ll stick to Alcohol for this chapter, because it lends itself so well to my theory that Growth isn’t always good.

We need an Economic Theory which says that Growth isn’t always good. The free market says we can do what we want, again that feeds into drinking uncontrollably. It’s an unpleasant sight to see youngsters piling out of Nightclubs and Bars, unable to stand up properly, not knowing where they are and relying on others to get them safely home. No different from the tragedy of working class men at the turn of the century, spending their family’s household income at their local bar.

What in our culture tells us this is a good thing? For the Working Class Men ,at the turn of the century, alcohol allowed them to forget their horrendous working conditions, but today, what is it people want to forget? That their desk isn’t wide enough, that they didn’t get a good appraisal from their boss, that their upcoming exams are getting closer, that whatever targets they have been given are really difficult and in their view unobtainable.

Whatever the perceived problems are , the solution is to go out and drink alcohol with your friends and forget all about it. But we all know , that it isn’t a solution. To go out and be with people and drink water or fruit juices or tea would be just as helpful.

Alcohol is very pleasant and addictive, it can be advertised anywhere with the proviso to drink responsibly (whatever that means). Shops and supermarkets are enforcers of rules which limit the age at which alcohol can be purchased across their counters. The sad thing is that these rules are enforced by the youngsters themselves with their Saturday jobs or their Summer break jobs, and they don’t always understand the significance of what they are being asked to do. To assess whether someone should be sold a product. This is very unnatural territory when the whole point of a shop is to sell things.

The contradiction even in those very outlets is the way the packaging of alcohol on the shelves is made attractive . The scandal of alcopops and the almost cartoon packaging on bottles and tins. With drinks that looked like fruit juices and were sweet to the taste. They aren’t trying to attract the thirty something sophisticated wine drinker are they?

It seems that the rules are made to stop people buying a product , but at the same time the product is made attractive to buy, because at the end of the day we want to sell it and have growth in the economy. The free market says it’s all good. People will have choice.

If drugs such as heroin, amphetamines and valium were packaged in such away and were sold in supermarkets , there would be total outcry. Yet , that is an opportunity for growth that we have not take yet. Alcohol is a safer bet ,less addictive and more palatable. A bottle of wine is so much more attractive than a tab of un-prescribed amphetamine.

If we added up the damage done by alcohol in society and compared contribution to GDP, would the answer be positive or negative. I don’t know , don’t think the Economists have worked that one out or perhaps the market dictates that the Economist who is working for the drinks industry on their new Growth Model is being paid more and has more of a voice.