As a side comment in an interesting post about the correlation between label typography and wine quality, Stefan Geens writes about queues at Swedish Systembolaget stores (the state-run monopoly for selling alcohol), and wonders about the possibility in a black market for queue tickets, had such a system been present in Russia.
Such a black market in queue tickets sometimes happened at Swedish Systembolaget shops some ten years ago. I remember it well: rush hour, Friday afternoon, looong waiting times (40 minutes or so), stressed out academics and other upper middle class people that bought home the Friday dinner goodies on their way home.
Enter the ragged entrepreneur: middle-aged men, who by the look of it drank professionally, in parks and under bridges, walked in and printed out queue numbers and then sold them outside Systembolaget. They gained 5 kr or so for each ticket, buyers gained 35 minutes in a stressful situation (thereby, no doubt, reducing the risk of both cardiovascular complications as well as disharmony among the waiting family members at home).
Now, that is all gone, at least in my home town, Lund. Systembolaget is open Saturdays, so the Friday afternoon rush has abated. Systemet shops in Lund are of the supermarket variety, not the queue-to-a-counter type. Queues are much shorter, and there aren’t any numbers in use.
An evolution for ordinary consumers, but the professional drinkers lost a kind of beautiful extra income. Philosophically, one could muse about the structure of Swedish alcohol policy that for a time created a small but welcome extra flow of cash for people who were slowly drinking themselves to death; or, economists studying entrepreneurship could use the example to find entrepreneurs in all walks of life. Since I am neither an economist nor a philosopher, I leave that as an exercise to the reader.
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