Regulations and rules and laws indiscriminately targeting everyone doing business, the intent to make illegal or otherwise regulated stuff more difficult to produce, sell et c out of a misguided sense of moral authority, is making legal business even less profitable than the already heavy leavies imposed by taxation and fees - is the "tongue on the scale" causing severly increased rates of bankruptcy.
Two examples from here:
1) Any place serving alcohol outdoors, such as a pub, must from 1 January of this year also have indoor seating, even if the outdoor serving area is a seasonal one, open only during Summer.
Which is causing restauranteurs and pub-owners to shutter their businesses instead of investing lots and lots of money into re-building (after the 1-3 year long waiting time for permits, unless someone appeals the permit-process causing further dealys, add to that tens of thousands, or even higher, fees that must be paid for the process to even start - and paid again in full, every time you re-apply).
2) Selling alcoholic beverages from your own farm or brewery, small-scale, is so tightly regulated it's Pythonesque. One (1) bottle of alcohol, 750ml maximum, 40% maximum, or (3) bottles of wine, or 6L of beer. And to get to buy it, the customer must first sit through a 45 minute seminar arranged by the seller, on the dangers of alcohol consumption.
It's reminiscent of the 1700s, where each kind of fish came with a different tax rate, and taxman, and the fishers couldn't land the fish in Stockholm until the taxman for each kind had done his rounds on all the boats.
As regards the alcohol business in Scandinavia, well, it's the North, replete with its pietist-inspired Protestant ethic (pun intended): given the massive de-Christianisation of the area, it's a curious leftover of a bygone era (of course, Socialist paternalism is also hard to omit here).
To illustrate this: when 'we' have our departmental summer party (oh, how I viscerally hate these events), we typically hold it during after-hours (i.e., at 4:30 p.m. or so) in a nearby museum. There's a caterer who brings food, but since both said caterer lacks a liquor license as well as the museum also lacking the gov't permit to sell booze, it's always a BYOB (bring your own bottle) event. I personally don't much, if at-all, care, but it's the hypocrisy that annoys me: typically, colleagues will send out emails soliciting company for what is called 'forspiel' in Norwegian (whose spelling pains me as a native-speaker of German), i.e., 'who's going to join me for a drink or two before we head over to the departmental party'.
Alternate take:
Regulations and rules and laws indiscriminately targeting everyone doing business, the intent to make illegal or otherwise regulated stuff more difficult to produce, sell et c out of a misguided sense of moral authority, is making legal business even less profitable than the already heavy leavies imposed by taxation and fees - is the "tongue on the scale" causing severly increased rates of bankruptcy.
Two examples from here:
1) Any place serving alcohol outdoors, such as a pub, must from 1 January of this year also have indoor seating, even if the outdoor serving area is a seasonal one, open only during Summer.
Which is causing restauranteurs and pub-owners to shutter their businesses instead of investing lots and lots of money into re-building (after the 1-3 year long waiting time for permits, unless someone appeals the permit-process causing further dealys, add to that tens of thousands, or even higher, fees that must be paid for the process to even start - and paid again in full, every time you re-apply).
2) Selling alcoholic beverages from your own farm or brewery, small-scale, is so tightly regulated it's Pythonesque. One (1) bottle of alcohol, 750ml maximum, 40% maximum, or (3) bottles of wine, or 6L of beer. And to get to buy it, the customer must first sit through a 45 minute seminar arranged by the seller, on the dangers of alcohol consumption.
It's reminiscent of the 1700s, where each kind of fish came with a different tax rate, and taxman, and the fishers couldn't land the fish in Stockholm until the taxman for each kind had done his rounds on all the boats.
As regards the alcohol business in Scandinavia, well, it's the North, replete with its pietist-inspired Protestant ethic (pun intended): given the massive de-Christianisation of the area, it's a curious leftover of a bygone era (of course, Socialist paternalism is also hard to omit here).
To illustrate this: when 'we' have our departmental summer party (oh, how I viscerally hate these events), we typically hold it during after-hours (i.e., at 4:30 p.m. or so) in a nearby museum. There's a caterer who brings food, but since both said caterer lacks a liquor license as well as the museum also lacking the gov't permit to sell booze, it's always a BYOB (bring your own bottle) event. I personally don't much, if at-all, care, but it's the hypocrisy that annoys me: typically, colleagues will send out emails soliciting company for what is called 'forspiel' in Norwegian (whose spelling pains me as a native-speaker of German), i.e., 'who's going to join me for a drink or two before we head over to the departmental party'.
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