Bootleggers and Baptists is a colorful metaphor that may spark perhaps some religious connotations. However, it is just a colorful metaphor that describes the regulatory process in the United States that some people may deem as a burden. This book describes the dichotomy between the demands of the progressives to demand bigger government to solve problems versus the conservatives that believe bigger corporations is the way to go. This book attempts to answer the following question: where do economic regulations come from? Typical citizens would automatically presume the regulation would be promulgated by the actions of the President or Congress. However, the authors contend that the answer is more complicated than that. In economics textbooks, the general notion for the development of regulations is the correction of market failures. However, the authors argue that promulgation of regulations is caused by, and further shaped by, a combination of two distinct groups: Baptists and Bootleggers. This distinction between the Bootleggers and Baptists was espoused some 30 years before the publication of this book. In 1983, Bruce Yandle published an article in the journal, Regulation that distinguishes between these two groups. Yandle noted that public policies tend to be supported by "bootleggers," who saw their incomes increase as a result of a particular policy (as bootleggers did under Prohibition and under Blue Laws), and "Baptists," who supported public policies for moral reasons (Baptists tended to support prohibition and Blue Laws because they believed that alcohol was bad).
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