Yeah, the claims of the article are kind of bizarre. I'm not an enemy of regulation as such but I recall post-prohibition regulations were very much designed to make drinking a miserable experience and prohibition itself destroyed traditions of drinking for enjoy in favor of drinking for drunkenness.

Growing up in the 70's, American beer was putrid except for a few, hard to find brands. It seems like microbrews followed after "imported beer" became a synonym for "brew that isn't horrible."

Edit: it really is worth mentioning (because the article somehow doesn't) that craft beer in the US (and earlier in England with the Campaign for Real Ale) was a consumer movement for quality as much as it was a movement of businesses. A variety of foods have had this but it's not necessarily something that can be easily transplanted to other products.

NY Times has to insert a general lefty bias into almost every article. New Yorker does this too. Both great papers, but I've learned to detect it and dismiss it over the years

Tasting rooms are a sort of panacea for upstart breweries. If your business plan involves constantly having your tasting room packed, then you're in for a hard time because only a handful of trendy breweries will manage that with hype. Where, actually ramping up production enough to a level beyond 50 barrels is the sustainable land where then you can expand through bootstrapping or more capital investment. In other words, it's hard to turn a profit without breaking past the tasting room.

The 90's microbrewery boom was fueled by brewpubs, many of which went public because they grew so quickly. Rock Bottom, Gordon Biersch, BJs, Iron Hill, Heartland, Russian River, Pizza Port, etc. That growth was more fueled by being a place you could eat and also grab a beer, but they couldn't figure out the distribution hacks needed to reach beyond the few square miles of the shopping mall or downtown block they were located.