Jimmy Carter Saved Beer from Capitalism
Posted by Jeffrey EllisFeb 5
Regular readers of The Thinker will of course know by now that I am an unabashed proponent of free markets.
But every economic system has its disadvantages. Even though capitalism is better than any other system ever tried, it is not perfect. It does result in an unequal distribution of wealth. (Although some would argue that’s a feature, not a bug.) Worse still, it has given birth to that diabolical monstrosity known as marketing, including its evil modern-day incarnations: telemarketing, popup ads, and spam emails.
But worst of all, it has given us mass-produced (a.k.a. “macrobrewed”) beer.
Before prohibition, beer was brewed locally in relatively small batches. But by the end of prohibition, advancements in refrigeration and motor vehicles made it more economical to mass-produce and transport beer than to brew it locally. The large brewers which quickly came to dominance focused their efforts on the beer style that would best maximize profits: a light lager, made with cheap components, bland and inoffensive enough that it could be imbibed in large quantities (thereby increasing sales).
Normally I would be fine with maximizing profits. In a free market, maximum profits means that consumers are being optimally satisfied by some linear combination of price and quality, producers are maximizing their efficiency, and owners and investors are being commensurately rewarded. It’s a win-win for everyone. But in the case of beer, it’s caused the dumbing-down of American beer to the lowest common denominator. Local breweries producing good beer, the way beer was meant to be brewed, were squeezed out of the market.
Enter Jimmy Carter.
In 1978 Carter did the one single thing he got right during his entire presidency: he signed into law H.R. 1337, making home brewing legal. Home brewers began cloning many of the centuries-old beer styles in Europe, where macrobreweries had not killed off the craft as they did in the U.S. Eventually home brewing led to the growth of small breweries and brewpubs, and the whole microbrewery and craft beer phenomenon was born.
So it pains me to say it, but Jimmy Carter saved beer from capitalism. Thank you, Jimmy Carter.
Hey, wait a minute. I just realized, it’s not really capitalism’s fault that macrobreweries crowded real beer out of the market. The market can’t help it if Americans are tasteless and stupid. The market just reacts accordingly. Which leads me to hypothesize that there is a positive correlation between poor critical thinking skills and a propensity to drink shitty beer.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.


