Now that just makes me wonder how the economics pans out in an Islamic country.

turns out the article is mostly focused on US restaurants; but I agree, German street food is not complete without a Pislner.

> German street food is not complete without a Pilsner

German here. For lunch, no one I know ever drinks alcoholic beverages (except maybe when going to a nice restaurant with the whole family on the weekend). And I don't think people are eating street food for dinner all that much, except maybe Döner. But even at Döner places, I don't think I've ever seen people drinking beer. They mostly don't drink anything, and some drink Ayran.

Well for some cafe and restaurants Shisha.

There's always a way to make healthy profits without dealing in immoral and despicable practices.

I wouldn't say always - it becomes a lot harder if your competitors are willing to stoop and you don't have enough customers who care!

It's not immoral to sell someone a drink that they want to have with their meal.

It's been proven what the dangers of alcohol are. Practically the only benefits are monetary for the seller.

I don't drink much these days but I think that's taking it a little far. You could make the same argument about fatty foods and many other things.

There are non-drink culinary uses for it too. The wholesale banning of alcohol misses the point a lot of the time. I had a friend who taught cake decorating and it's common to mix high concentration alcohol with coloured dust to paint on sugar flowers because it's a great solvent, evaporates quickly, and doesn't soak into the sugar. No one eats this part of the cake. But in some countries with Islamic students they were so unwilling to be anywhere near alcohol they used water. Perhaps I'm mistaken but I thought the original intent of those commands was regarding intoxication (which I don't fully disagree with) so this seems odd to me.

Correct, it's mainly to avoid intoxication and the ramifications that come out of it. However, I agree with what those students did. They have principles and they stuck to them. The alcohol could have mixed with the food for instance, even though it wasn't meant to be consumed directly. Secondly, someone could unknowingly consume it thinking it was edible.

As to your first point, highly processed foods are definitely something to watch out for. However, the effects of alcohol are immediate, and can be seen in a single sitting. Countless instances of rape, drunk driving, and homicides that come out of it. You won't see someone consume a couple of meals at a fast food place then lose his decision making ability for instance.

Considering she runs a takeaway Streetfood place i highly doubt she ever intended "restaurants" to be meaning "... and also bars"

Ah the benefits of selling an addictive substance in a market with a large base of addicts and a legal environment that largely shields you from liability for even the fairly direct consequences of your product (such as drunk driving after serving at places and times where the non-availability of alternatives guarentees that most of your patrons will be driving).

Most customers who have a glass of wine or beer with their dinner don't qualify as addicted. Also, the restaurants make the same (or even more profit) when selling alcohol-free beverages with their food.

Yeah, but I don't generally sit down and drink 3 cokes in one sitting. Alcohol is a great money maker because there's a large standard deviation to how many drinks a given person might order. It would be very rare for a customer to drink 3 cokes with dinner but not uncommon for someone to order 3 beers.

> Yeah, but I don't generally sit down and drink 3 cokes in one sitting

Do you generally sit down and drink 3 beers in one sitting?

> It would be very rare for a customer to drink 3 cokes with dinner but not uncommon for someone to order 3 beers.

At home, I drink much as I'm thirsty for, be it soda, beer, wine, tea, water... I certainly don't drink more just because it's alcoholic. I might drink less, or switch to something else, if I'm starting to feel drunk and it's not an occasion for such.

At a restaurant, I order less when alcohol is involved. I prefer to have my senses about me if I'll be driving home...

Where I drink 5 or 6 with lunch. Not coke - sweet tea.

When I am out in larger groups, the number of drinks varies little with what was ordered, be it beer, alcohol-free beer or other beverages. This is one medium to large sized glass of beverage for a lunch and several in the evening. Coke might be an exception, but it is very rare, that someone orders coke in a restaurant. Usually you have fruit juices of many variations, often as a "Schorle", that is fruit juice mixed with sparkling water. Or just water. And the prices differ only little between a glass of beer and of juice.

Perhaps I should clarify: my statement applies for Germany and probably holds true for large parts of Europe.

Are you arguing for prohibition? Or just prohibition outside of a few handful of cities where driving is uncommon?

I wasn't arguing for anything-- it's just an observation.

A bar would be a very different and less profitable business if they had the normal spectrum of liability other businesses have when their actions result in predictable harm. Or even if just law enforcement weren't effectively prevented from staking out bars and stopping obviously drunk patrons as soon as they started to drive.

Similarly, I also believe they'd be much less profitable if not for the rather alarming amount of addiction and abuse.

I don't think prohibition is a good idea but the fact that I'm opposed to prohibition doesn't make me blind to the externalities that bars create which are a component of their profitability.

There are lots of less than perfect things in the world. We can make them better by willing to discuss them and not being to quick to assume that any criticism is a call for a prohibition. In this case, especially, there was a comparison with other businesses and more than anything I wanted to point out that it wasn't a fair comparison because of bars unusual amount of externalized costs.

I don't think better enforcement of drunk driving laws would force bars to change. Why do you believe that?

Well, like, food is addictive too. In fact, pretty much anything and everything is addictive to someone, no matter how mundane or weird.

Are you suggesting that alcohol addiction is equivalent to 'pretty much anything and everything [being] addictive to someone'?