Never on a Sunday

I was on the noon show yesterday at WBOI, NPR, talking about Hoosier retailers, mostly grocery and convenience stores, making their latest push to legalize Sunday alcohol sales and to permit cold beer sales at places other than package stores. Here is the podcast (that 10-12 minute segment comes about three-quarters into the show, so you'll have to move the slider accordingly). I don't thnk I embarrassed myself too much, although K tells me I tended, as usual, to talk too fast and occasionally drop my voice at the end of a sentence. I. must. work. on. THAT.

One of the other guests was John Livengood, executive director of the Indiana Association of Beverage Retailers -- the package stores that are fighting the changes sought by the grocery stores. Earlier in the discussion, I had made the point that this was basically just a fight among retailers over market share. At the end of the broadcast, Livengood conceded that point but then put this spin on it:

It's about market share and their wanting to steal market share from the system that the state set up a long time ago and we think still works pretty good.

There wasn't any time left to rebut the point on the air, but I think it does need to be addressed. Market share isn't something that is "stolen." Retailers duke it out on a level playing field, and the ones who offer the best values survive, and those who don't, don't. Jobs are created and lost, stores come and go, and the more competition there is, the better it usually is for consumers.

That's basic capitalism, but it isn't what Livengood seeks. Note that he talks about "the system that the state set up." He wants to keep the current rules set by the state because it limits his competition. That's called crony capitalism, and it's not something believers in the free market support, although too often that's where we end up. Package stores have a near monopoly on cold-beer sales, and if it's broken, the competition won't just be from the dwindling number of grocery stores; it will include the burgeoning number of "convenience" stores that most gas stations seem to be turning into. And with Sunday sales forbidden, package stores have a free day off. If Sunday sales are permitted, they'll have to open up to compete with the grocery stores that are open on Sunday, which would require hiring more people.

Livengood is right that package stores will suffer if the rules are changed, that some people will lose their jobs and some package stores will close. But that's the retail game. And package-store representatives are right that the playing field won't quite be level if they're forced into greater competition. Package stores have to have expensive licenses that the grocery stores don't, and they also have extra rules. Grocery clerks can be 18, for example, but package-store clerks must be 21.

But changing the law (which the state probably won't do unless public support goes above the 50 percent mark where it's now hovering) would also be a good opportunity to look at all the rules and adjust them until the playing field is level.