Bootleggers & Baptists: How Economic Forces and Moral Persuasion Interact to Shape Regulatory Politics Read Free

what experimental economics can teach us. Our universities, Clemson University, George Mason University, and Johnson and Wales University, provided invaluable support as well as inspiration for our scholarly activities.
    Although the ideas and papers that have emerged from our academic work have been essential to the book’s development, there would be no book if not for the support of the Searle Freedom Trust and Cato Institute, which respectively funded our enterprise and published the book. In addition to providing funds, Searle president Kim Dennis urged us to the task. Cato executive vice president David Boaz guided the publication process with the able assistance of Cato research fellow Julian Sanchez, who reviewed and commented on the entire manuscript. To Kim, Cato, David, and Julian, we extend our heartfelt appreciation. We are also deeply grateful to colleagues who read and commented on the manuscript. Chief among these is Roger Meiners, who worked through the complete manuscript offering many useful comments for revision along the way. We are indeed grateful to Roger and, as with other readers, we hold him blameless for our final product. Other readers include Dan Foster, David Rose, and Bart Wilson. Comments and criticisms received from these scholars made the book far better and much more readable. Of course, we note that the final product is ours. We alone are responsible for errors of fact or logic that remain in the pages to follow.
    We close on a very personal note. The book is the product of a grandfather–grandson effort: Bruce Yandle, the grandfather; Adam Smith, the grandson. We are both economists and students of regulation, public choice, and the market process. Our collaboration has been ably assisted by a person especially important to us, Kathryn Yandle Smith, former newspaper editor and professional writer, who read and commented on the entire manuscript as it was being written, revised, and written again. We have already noted that errors that remain are ours; improved readability and logic of thought are due to Kathryn’s generous effort. She did wonders while navigating the often turbulent waters occupied by her determined father and son.

1. Bootleggers and Baptists: A Winning Coalition
    “Baptists question Amazon porn sales, oppose tax break.”
    That headline appeared in the Columbia, South Carolina, State newspaper (O’Connor 2011) in April 2011, above a story describing a controversy over an Amazon.com distribution center under construction in South Carolina. The facility would employ 1,200 people. Amid high unemployment, the state’s previous governor attracted the company with the promise of a five-year exemption from sales tax on purchases by South Carolina residents. The exemption, which gave Amazon an advantage over conventional retailers, was seen as critical for bringing the center to South Carolina.
    Construction of the Amazon fulfillment center was pretty far along when Baptist leaders rallied in opposition to the tax break—and to Amazon’s presence—spurred by moral concerns about unrated videos sold by the website, which they considered to be pornographic. “We obviously have great concern about pornography, wherever it is sold in South Carolina,” said Joe Mack, the director of public policy at the Christian Worldview Center at North Greenville University, a school affiliated with the South Carolina Baptist Convention. “We’d be opposed to anybody who is selling it” (O’Connor 2011). Of course, the location of the distribution center would have no effect on whether residents could buy videos from Amazon, but this fact appeared to make little difference.
    While these Baptists bristled at the prospect of pornography consumption, an unlikely alliance had formed among competing big retailers—including Walmart, Best Buy, and Target—and small Main Street retailers. The common denominator linking these otherwise adversarial firms is a fixed brick-and-mortar