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🌍 Economics
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Why moral crusaders and crooks often want the same law
💡 Rules justified purely on moral grounds often survive because someone quietly profits from them — always ask who the hidden beneficiary is.
In the American South, many counties once banned alcohol sales on Sundays. Two very different groups cheered the rule: the Baptists, who preached that the Sabbath should stay dry, and the bootleggers, who sold illegal liquor on exactly the day legal stores were forced to close. The preachers supplied the moral cover; the smugglers pocketed the profit. Economist Bruce Yandle named this recurring pattern "Bootleggers and Baptists."