The employer is, of course, liable for a number of accidents that might occur on his property, on a negligence theory. And as an “invitee” I have an even better chance to recover for injury under older common law rules. Specifically, the property owner is obligated to warn his invitees of a dangerous condition on his property.
Tort law definitely allows for the doctrine of assuming the risk. That can be either explicit, or implicit. Probably a sign at the front door, saying “Smoking Allowed Inside - Patrons May Encounter Second-Hand Smoke” would do the trick.
What other ways exist to decide my actions in society than through the market? The market is merely the free exchange of goods and services. If I want something, I find someone who can provide it and exchange value for value. The only other way to get what I want is to put a gun to someone’s head and take it by force, and I still fail to see how that’s a viable alternative. Frankly, I don’t see how compelling others to give me what I want should be a legitimate avenue of pursuit. But anyways, how are we to debate in this case?
I believe, for a long litany of simple reasons, in the basic principles of individual freedom as commonly advocated by libertarianism. Now, every time we debate whether such-and-such policy should be implemented, do we actually have to spend 4-5 pages debating the fundamentals of why we hold our particular perspectives?
Well just do this. I want to smoke, the restaurant wants to let me on their property and will allow me to smoke while I drink and eat, the wait-staff agrees to work there in exchange for compensation in the form of wages. I see several freely adopted contractual relationships there. Give me a reason why these individual adults, acting free of compulsion and/or fraud to enter an agreement by their own will, should be prohibited from making and acting upon that agreement?
What other ways exist to decide my actions in society than through the market? The market is merely the free exchange of goods and services. If I want something, I find someone who can provide it and exchange value for value. The only other way to get what I want is to put a gun to someone’s head and take it by force, and I still fail to see how that’s a viable alternative. Frankly, I don’t see how compelling others to give me what I want should be a legitimate avenue of pursuit. But anyways, how are we to debate in this case?
I believe, for a long litany of simple reasons, in the basic principles of individual freedom as commonly advocated by libertarianism. Now, every time we debate whether such-and-such policy should be implemented, do we actually have to spend 4-5 pages debating the fundamentals of why we hold our particular perspectives?
Well just do this. I want to smoke, the restaurant wants to let me on their property and will allow me to smoke while I drink and eat, the wait-staff agrees to work there in exchange for compensation in the form of wages. I see several freely adopted contractual relationships there. Give me a reason why these individual adults, acting free of compulsion and/or fraud to enter an agreement by their own will, should be prohibited from making and acting upon that agreement?
In my city, restaurants and bars have color-coded signs on the door that say whether smoking is allowed inside (green: no smoking; yellow: smoking in designated areas; red: smoking everywhere). If you don’t like smoke, then when you see a yellow or red sign, you can continue down the street until you find a green sign. Problem solved.
Should employees be forced to work around smoke? Of course not… and they aren’t. They can continue down the street until they find a green sign, just like anyone else.
Now, what if there aren’t enough green-signed restaurants to serve all the people who don’t want to be around smoke? In that case, I would support a “smoking license” rationing system (only X smoking restaurants allowed per square mile), because the market is not responding to demand.
But an all-out ban on an otherwise legal activity–such that an owner, a bartender, a waitress, and a customer who all smoke are prohibited from coming together to do business–is ridiculous.
Please. I’m a liberal nonsmoker and I’m against a smoking ban. It’s not about left or right, it’s about wanting to force businesses to offer the environment you prefer.
Well, propaganda zombie, I’ve been there, and I took at look at the largest and most comprehensive such study ever made, one done by the World Health Organization:
[QUOTE]
Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure to ETS and lung cancer risk. We did find weak evidence of a dose–response relationship
between risk of lung cancer and exposure to spousal and workplace ETS. There was no detectable risk after cessation of exposure.
[QUOTE]
And if you look at their paper in depth, you will find that their “weak” relationship is so tiny that the confidence interval includes LOWER risk than for the general population.
Don’t worry, the exacte same lawyers who engineered the “tobacco settlement” are now filing lawsuits against fast food establishments for FORCING people to get fat.
I am not joking.
The nannies and busybodies are industriously leading the sheeple and propaganda zombies along their merry path. First demon rum (oops, sanity reasserted, try again), then demon tobacco, now demon food.
Don’t worry, eventually we will live in a country where it will be illegal to make any decision at all and everything will be planned out nice and safe for us. We just have to be happy in our slavery.
Exactly, why not? It’s like saying, well, in this warehouse I work in, boxes keep falling on my head. I guess I’ll wait until the government makes a regulation against falling boxes before I quit. cmosdes said
I expect employees to have a brain in their head to avoid dangerous working conditions. And if my employeer injured me in any way, I would quit.
It’s nice to see there are people still nostalgic for the good old days of the 19th century. Back then, workplaces pretty much followed the model that Bruce_Daddy and others are advocating. And they were wretched and downright dangerous places. And when someone suggested that maybe that wasn’t a good thing, they were told that the employees always had the choice to work someplace safer. "
But somehow, it never worked out that way. There was nowhere safer. Because when there is always someone there to take the place of the person who quit because of “unsafe working conditions,” no employer had the incentive to provide for minimally safe working conditions. And as long the burden was placed on the replaceable employee to seek out safe places of work, there was no way to provide that incentive.
It’s easy for those of us typing on our computers, many of whom have white collar jobs, savings accounts, and retirement plans, to say stuff like “if my employee injured me, I would quit,” and forget that there is a whole world of people out there who just don’t have that choice. Unless and until we come into an era of severe labor shortage (which hasn’t happened in foodservice, for example), there is no way that employees can, by changing jobs, create the necessary incentives to force employers to compete for employees by, for example, providing safer working conditions.
Read the whole report. The “risk” posed in the workplace from ETS is debatable. However, it may still qualify under being “unpleasant conditions”, but if that’s the real reason, then be honest about it and stop fraudulently claiming “cancer” or other risks.
If you’ll read up above, I have offered no opinion on the risks or lack of risks from secondhand smoke. The title of this thread is “property owners rights and smokers,” not “is secondhand smoke a danger.” Several posters (ExecutiveJesus, RexDart, Bruce_Daddy) have said or implied that the property owner has the right to allow or not allow smoking on their property, and that if such smoke is dangerous, the duty is on the customers and employees to find somewhere else to eat and work (respectively).
An important question, however, is that where is the money coming from to make the workplace safer? If it’s coming out of the employer’s pockets, then arguably the workers are paying for it anyway in lower wages AND they then have no incentive themselves to take the efforts to be safe and careful that they otherwise would have.
You also seem to have the assumption that if a worker can’t find a job that’s safe enough for them, whatever specific owner they want to pester about this are obligated to provide one. If workers can’t find good work, that’s bad, but why is it the fault of any specific employer? If there’s a moral duty to provide safer jobs for those that want them, shouldn’t that duty fall equally on everyone, and come out of general taxes instead of out of one single employer’s pocket?
jeevmon, I suppose we’ll just have to disagree. I believe in personal responsibility and have faith in people to make the correct choices for themselves and you apparently have faith in the government to protect people who are not able to live healthy, safe productive lives with out it.
Could you please explain to us why we are supposed to believe the results of this study (which, by the way, did not show the lack of an effect on lung cancer rates but merely an effect that was not statistically significant given their small sample size) over all the other studies that have been done, besides the fact that it seems to sort of give the answer that you want to believe? In a field with many epidemicological studies, it is almost always possible to cherry-pick a few to support anything you want unless the effect being studied is really huge.
Also, could you explain why WHO itself issued a press release saying that the study was being misinterpretted and that it did not demonstrate that secondhand smoke does not cause lung cancer?
That is patently false. Jeevmon keeps beating me to the punch here, but to reiterate, if you look at history or at 3rd World countries presently, it is quite obvious that things do NOT “work themselves out”. Things are only the way they are today in the U.S. because of government intervention.
I wouldn’t be opposed to such a system, but I am vehemently opposed to the “let the market sort it out” system that so many smoking proponents seem to favor. The plain truth of the matter is that before they started enacting these smoking bans, the availability of non-smoking venues fell DISMALLY short of a number proportional to how many people desired such venues. Sure, that’s great for smokers, but it sucks for non-smokers. I’ve noticed that those of a Libertarian bent tend to employ circular reasoning in this regard. They claim that the “market” always responds to demand, then claim that lack of non-smoking venues is proof of lack of demand. It’s an unfalsifyable statement. You can never show that the market didn’t respond to demand if you define demand as what the market responded to.
Workplace safety is not simply a matter of employees being “safe and careful”. Would being “safe and careful” prevent black-lung disease or asbestosis, for example?
We can decide to take actions collectively through something called “democratic government”.
Like you said, getting too far into this is taking us on a hijack. Clearly, you are a market fundamentalist who believes that the only legitimate way for people to interact is through the market system (although I am sure you will come up with some exception where you want government too). I believe that markets have many virtues but that they are imperfect for a variety of reasons (deficiencies of information, effects of free exchanges between two parties on third parties, one-dollar-one-vote, the sometimes effectively coercive nature of interactions between an economically strong and economically weak person*, …) Thus, I see the need to sometimes take action collectively.
The one point I merely wanted to make is that your premises ordain your conclusions. I.e., noone should be surprised that you conclude that things like these smoking restrictions are unjustifiable when you start with the presumption that the market system is infallible…Or, at least, infallible in regards to this case. As blowero points out, the arguments by libertarians tend to get rather circular in this regard.
How is the system described by Mr2001 not a market-based system? It isn’t materally different from the status quo, the only difference being you can know whether or not a place allows smoking from the sign outside instead of having to open the door and peek inside. There’s nothing to prevent me, pre-ban, from peeking in the doors of pubs along a street until I find one with a “no smoking” sign inside. The signs are a nice convenience and nothing more. **
Obviously, most non-smokers didn’t care terribly much whether a particular venue allowed or disallowed smoking; if they did, they would not frequent establishments that permitted smoking – they would go to nonsmoking establishments or they would stay home. Market forces measure the depth as well as the breadth of demand.
Well, that part actually is the status quo here - by “my city” I meant Spokane, not the hypothetical land of Mr2001ville.
The part of my plan that hasn’t been implemented yet (AFAIK) is the smoking license, which would promote smoke-free restaurants by limiting the number of smoking restaurants. It’s still market-based, in a sense. Businesses would be allowed to bid on smoking licenses as they become available, or buy licenses from other businesses that are no longer using them.
Indeed they do… but even if all the people who hate smoke stay home, the market may not respond by offering nonsmoking restaurants. Restaurants may prefer to target the 75% of customers who don’t mind smoke, instead of the 25% who do. (Numbers are made up.)
To use another example, we see almost the same thing happening on network TV. The big four networks fight over the same audience (people who don’t have cable), so the programming tends to aim for the majority and ignore the minority. If most people want news at 6:00 PM, you’ll probably see news at 6:00 PM on every network, even if there’s a significant minority who would rather watch something else.
You’re wasting your (pause for irony) breath. But good points anyway.
Of course, well beyond the documented cancer hazards of secondhand smoke are the variety of miseries it poses for people with all sorts of chronic lung diseases - asthma, bronchitis, emphysema etc.
More “property rights” issues - "Hell, I own the coal mine/textile mill/vermiculite plant (this one’s for you, W.R. Grace) - why should I have to do anything about black lung/brown lung/mesothelioma? Here’s a couple studies I found that says the risks are way overblown! And those ungrateful workers can find a job someplace else.
