Let’s not be naïve: There’s no such thing as a free market, especially for craft brewers in Texas.

Before you blame Big Government, aka the lawmakers and regulators that usually interfere with free markets in unprofitable ways, you might want to look at the Big Beer Distributor lobby first.

Just look at Brent Deckard of Künstler Brewing — close to where I live in San Antonio. He’s been running his brewpub for a little more than a year and already hit some weird restrictions. I enjoy talking to new entrepreneurs like Deckard because they are full of fresh outrage about restrictions on their ability to make a living.

Künstler is licensed as a brewpub, which means customers may drink beer brewed on premises. Customers may also purchase a limited amount of beer “to go,” for home consumption. That brewpub-style business has only been legal since 2013.

Künstler may not, however, sell any other brewer’s beer on premises. That’s illegal. It can, however, sell wine or cider made elsewhere, which makes no particular sense, especially when compared with the beer restriction. Deckard could pay a fee to a beer distributor to sell other brewers’ beers on his premises, even though the beer remained at his brewpub the whole time.

Why should we care about this labyrinth of brewpub laws? Only that in a highly unfree market, consumers always get fewer choices, at higher prices. And entrepreneurs have fewer ways to serve the public.

Moving up to a somewhat higher scale of production, restrictions also seem to make little sense to Eugene Simor, president of Alamo Beer Co. He operates under a beer manufacturer’s license, which allows you to drink beer at his facility, located just east of downtown San Antonio.

You can buy his product by the case in grocery stores. But don’t dare purchase his beer directly from his facility to take away and consume elsewhere. That’s illegal. Because, well, why exactly?

Technically, under Alamo’s manufacturer’s license, Simor’s brewery can’t do what Künstler can do, which is to sell its own beer “to go.” And why is that? Well, basically, distributors need to get paid. Only small brewpubs can sell their stuff “to go,” while larger brewers can’t in order to protect distributors from the free market.

Says Simor, “I am disgusted that our elected officials continue to side with the big money-donating distributors at the expense of the hardworking small brewery owners. Texas is the only state that does not allow a small brewery like mine to sell a case of beer directly to customers.”

Now, there are obviously solid reasons to regulate alcohol sales and distribution. Few people would advocate a libertarian free-for-all in the beer market, in which my 8-year old could fill up her growler with an IPA for her birthday party, or my 12-year old could manufacture some dangerous-to-consume concoction of water, grain, hops and yeast. Especially if she brewed a Berliner-style sour. Gross!

Anyway.

As Charles Vallhonrat, executive director of the Texas Craft Brewers Guild, explained to me, post-Prohibition regulations in Texas (and most states, for that matter) have strongly split up the three roles of making, distributing and selling beer. Businesses that want to engage in more than one of the those three activities have traditionally been severely restricted in part for safety reasons and in part to protect one kind of business from pushing around the other kind in an uncompetitive manner.

The growth of craft brewing over the past two decades has represented a challenge to this traditional system, as small-time makers of beer have sought to sell directly to their customers in a variety of ways, cutting out the distribution step.

As Vallhonrat tells it, craft beer makers aren’t looking to upturn the system. They want to loosen restrictions.

In Texas, they got their wish in 2013 with sweeping new laws allowing brewpubs to brew more beer and sell it through distributors, to retailers or directly to customers for consumption off-site. Although the new freedom came with its own set of still-complicated rules as brewers Deckard and Simor have found.

Craft brewers view a 2017 law passed in Texas as pushback by distributors and large beer makers, which sought to limit the volume of brewer sales made directly to consumers while preserving the status quo around distribution.

Rick Donley, president of the Beer Alliance of Texas, which represents distributors’ interests, disagrees with some of my characterization of the tensions between craft brewers, distributors and the 2017 law.

“Beer distributors absolutely regard the craft sector as important customers. Beer distributors look forward to continuing to partner with crafts as our customers, as they use our delivery and marketing systems to grow their brands,” he wrote me.

The Beer Alliance points out that the three-tier system has served the market well and that 2017 restrictions don’t impact the overwhelming majority of craft brewers in Texas. The Beer Alliance, Donley continues, supported the 2013 changes that expanded what brewpubs could do.

Oddly, not everyone cares about beer, or the minutiae of beer laws, so let me try to make my view of this fight applicable to other businesses and industries.

The central issue that a brewpub or beer manufacturer faces is not one of big government versus free markets. Because again, free markets don’t exist. I see the central tension as an economic incumbent versus challenger.

This same issue — incumbent versus challenger — drove the Uber/Lyft versus taxi drivers fight that played out in cities worldwide the past four years. It’s what a lot of telecom and media fights have been about since the 1980s.

Since technology companies like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google miraculously transformed themselves from upstarts to incumbents over the past decade, the interesting upcoming regulatory fights will hinge on how much they can shape laws favorable to their businesses.

Upstarts — such as craft beer makers — have to work a lot harder to make the case that regulations should crack open a bit more to allow them to meet customer demand. That’s a hard fight.