Hmmm…I thought that was pretty clear; because of the “‘smoking license’ rationing system (only X smoking restaurants allowed per square mile)” to which he referred.
Well I don’t know what you mean by “status quo”, since every state has its own laws on the matter (which is why I didn’t use the term “status quo”), but it is most certainly different from the Libertarian ideal of letting the business owners do whatever they please in that he’s suggesting regulation if necessary by offering a finite number of “smoking licenses”.
Balderdash. As I pointed out, the number of non-smoking venues was extremely limited before there was any legislation. The choice to go to nonsmoking establishments did not exist, or was severly curtailed. If restaurants and bars that allow smoking are the only thing available, and non-smokers go to them, it does NOT mean they “don’t care” about the smoking; it means that their need to eat and drink is sufficient that they will put up with the irritant of smoke out of necessity. Let’s say, hypothetically, that all airlines had planes with bare wooden seats. If that were the only way for me to get from point A to point B, I would still fly in an airplane. Because I didn’t “stay home” doesn’t mean I’m indifferent, and that I wouldn’t rather have padded seats.
Then, I hope you don’t drive a car, because drivers are affecting my environnement and my health and offending my nose with their exhausts, and even disturbing me with the noise they make. And of course, I face a lethal risk at any moment as soon as I step out of my apartment.
Given that I don’t own a car, how much drivers should be PAYING to me, in your opinion? (Of course, they can always choose not to use their stinky cars around me, at leat not without asking me if I mind)
clairobscur: That is a good point. On the other hand, isn’t this one of the reasons why gasoline is taxed very heavily in Europe…to try to recoup some of these externalized costs? (I suppose one could say taxes on cigarettes here do that for them…although I personally don’t feel happy with the tradeoff; i.e., I still found the smoke in my clothes issue to be an annoyance probably not worth any less taxes I might be paying because cigarette smokers are paying more. [Past tense here because NY state went smoke-free in all restaurants and bars a few months ago! Some bars now look totally different when there’s enough visibility to actually see clearly across the room!])
Of course, people who work around cars for eight hours a day every day have numerous safety standards and health/safety regulations to their job. Just ask a toll booth collector. Even when I worked for a car parts store we had very strict regulations about how we treated certain chemicles.
You are correct, and I apologize; I was unduly focused on the signage issue and simply overlooked the line about rationing.
However, this raises the very real problem of how to decide which establishments get licenses and which don’t. That decision might well be tantamount to the government picking economic winners and losers. Not to mention the opportunity for corruption – if your brother-in-law Louie works in the licensing bureau, you’re golden; if not, you’re stuck. **
Perhaps I should have used “status quo ante.” In most places, there isn’t a ban in place – it is quite literally the Libertarian ideal when it comes to smoking in restaurants and bars. And even in those places which have them, blanket smoking bans on those types of establishments are a relatively new beast. **
No one “has” to go out to a restaurant or bar. It is a wholly voluntary activity. Even if we assume there are no nonsmoking alternatives, there is always the choice to stay home and have a barbeque.
But of course, there are nonsmoking alternatives. Many restaurants have specific nonsmoking and smoking sections, sections that were not mandated by the government. Restaurants put those sections in place to appeal to their nonsmoking clientele. The market formed a solution to the problem. **
Funny you should mention that, because I routinely see ads for air travel touting that they have more legroom and more comfortable seating than their competitors. Folks are willing to pay a little more for a cushion.
And even if they aren’t, so what? If the overwhelming number of air travelers aren’t willing to pay for comfortable seats – if they prefer low fares to comfort – why should the government step in and mandate that consumers bear those costs anyway?
DogFace - The fast food lawsuits are old news- lawyers have been trying to bring them for years. They have been rejected and will continue to be rejected because they’re just too far out there on the infringement of liberty scale. It’s good for our nation that lawyers bring these cases, and good that judges smack them down; it shows us where our society is.
Bruce_Daddy - The same argument was used by tobacco companies when lawsuits and agencies tried to restrict, regulate, or control tobacco. In the 50s, I assure you that Communism seemed like a threat to dwarf good ol’ nicotine, and people generally felt the way you do. But science isn’t fixed at the level of understanding of one generation. As we learn more about how the world around us works, we will learn more about what we can do to prolong and improve life. I dont see anything unusual with saying that, dollar-for-life, second hand smoke might be more dangerous than “defense”. Even if it isn’t, it may be dangerous ENOUGH to warrant intervention. I’m not privy to the scientific facts, but I’m willing to leave that up to the professional medical establishment. That’s their job.
Dewey et al - This debate is all over the place like projectile diharrea. Let me try to focus the debate. I suggest you take a peek at The Limits of Contract by Micheal Trebilecock. Great book about what is necessary for a market to do it’s job.
Essentially, a transaction is better or worse for the ideal market system (which is there to measure how much people like things, basically) when it is more 1. voluntary and 2. made with full information. Debates about how much liberty a person should have often fall into these categories; paternalism is advocated where the facts seem to show that people are coerced or uninformed.
This means you have two basic solutions to a market problem; government coercion to correct the private coercion, or information campaigns, depending on the problem. From a Liberty standpoint, then, it’s all about deciding whether the people being hurt are being hurt freely and with full informaiton.
(There’s some extra question about cognitive dissonance; is a person who is addicted, drunk, retarded, or otherwise impaired really able to process information; but this isn’t relevant here.)
But Liberty is not the only thing people care about. If it was, we would have a governmet only large enough to maximize our ability to make good market transactons. But we also care about the length and quality of our lives, we care about morality, we care about protecting our children… there’s a whole range of things people are willing to sacrifice some liberty to protect. If science shows that x number of people will be saved if we ban cigarettes in public places, then isn’t it just up to the democratic process to decide whether people weigh these lives over the associated liberty infringement?
Why is the government necessarily outside of the market? It is simply another forum for people to express their desires, which is exactly the point of having a market in the first place. If enough people organize around stopping an activity in the government, why is that materially different from people stopping the activity without the government, through illegal measures (violence) or legal measures (boycotts, protests, making life miserable for the landowner.) Is there something special about using the government that worries people who really value liberty?
Yes. The government enforces its dictates with guns.
Seriously, though, the market operates to make the least number of people unhappy: it fosters compromises like separate smoking sections. That’s a good thing in my book. And if a restaurant or bar looks over its clientele and sees that the overwhelming majority of them smoke, why shouldn’t it be allowed to cater to their desires?
If there is such a groundswell of support for eliminating smoking in restaurants, etc, then answer me this: why aren’t the people who think that opening nonsmoking restaurants and bars? If all that pent-up demand is really in place, then surely such an establishment will attract customers by the bushel. If all that consumer demand does in fact exist, why not put it to a real-world test?
This is not a serious question is it? Do you really not understand the difference between people (even a minority) freely choosing not to participate in a particular section of the market (boycott) and another group (the majoriy perhaps) forcing them to do so? I’m sure you do. I just had to ask.
Libery is not a comodity which can be parsed on a statistical basis. You can’t simply say that our society is very liberated even though we enslave 2% of the population. The old South of the united states was pretty free by that standard. Liberty is something that an individual has or he does not. My point being that the democratic process should not get to decide where I go to participate and freely associate with others. The whole purpose of a Constitution and Representative Republic is so that the deomcratic process cannot trample on the rights of the minority.
Only if you accept that certain people have “rights” to the productivity of others. This, however, a silly use of the word right. You would be more correct to suggest that the market sometimes tramples on the needs of the minority.
Well, I think this whole “productivity of others” thing makes it sound like the market correctly allocates to everyone the fruits from their productivity, which I think in a highly interactive society as ours and with all the deficiencies that markets can have, is an overly simplistic assumption (to put it mildly).
But, I would grant you that a word other than “rights”, such as “needs” would probably work better.
Well, no, not necessarily. Certainly people could be in possesion of property “incorrectly” as you say. They could have aquired if by force or fraudulent means. However, the needs of a third party are in no way a measure of such “correctness”. If this third party was the one forced or defrauded then he is entitled to the property. But if he is merely in need of the property, then he has no rights to it whatsoever.
So, you could make an argument that a smoking establishment has to have sufficient filters to prevent it from infringing on others properties. But it is quite another thing to suggest that the owners and freely associating customers of an establishment should be forced not to smoke at all.
Maybe they could…uh…I don’t know…get another job. The nanny state continues to grow. Everybody thinks its fine as long as only other people are affected. Just wait, they’ll get to you soon.
pervert - A person has liberty or he does not? That’s ridiculous. However you define liberty, you always have it to some degree. I prefer to think of liberty as the product of (How much I want to do something) * (The probabilty I will succeed at doing something) * (how different this particular thing is from everything else I can do) in a rough way. But you could define it otherwise.
Liberty is not an on-off switch. Our liberty is infringed when we’re prevented from stealing things, from using public places as we see fit, or anyone does anything else to prevent us from exercizing our will. People ROUTINELY give up some of thier liberty in exchange for other things- health, saftey, entertainment, whatever.
My point still stands, I think. If the democractic process is designed to produce the best result (balancing for the tyranny of the majority through structural safeguards) then isn’t the resulting tradeoff of liberty for quality of life at least one we have to take seriously? Isn’t it at least one that rational people could make? pervert, again - You suggest that whenever we infringe on market opertaion, we’re giving someone a right to someone else’s productivity. That’s a banal simplicity that I refer you to several texts to dispell.
Positive Liberty, Laurence Crocker
Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty
The Limits of Contract, Micheal Treiblecock
Philosophy, Politics and Society, Quentin Skinner
etc
No, My post was somewhat confusing. My point is not that liberty is binary. My point is that liberty is individual.
I’m not sure I follow your math. Let’s just stick to english.
** Liberty : The condition of being free from restriction or control.**
It does not need to reference how much or how different or any probabilities.
I would like to add that in the context of this discussion we may want to consider the concept of “political liberty”. That is the freedom from force. We are not talking about the freedom from addiction, psycosis, poverty, or any other unpleasantness other than force.
No. No. No. Liberty is not equal to motion. Just because I have “liberty” (ability in the physical sense) to steal without violating the laws of physics does not mean I have liberty (rights in the sociological / moral sense) to do so. The capacity to do something is not the same thing as the freedom or right to do it. Conversely a restriction on my ability to do something is not necessarily a limitation on my liberties. I cannot fly on air force one for example. This is not a limitation of my freedom to travel. For instance I think that a “liberty” to violate the rights of another is a contradiction in terms.
Yes, people often give up liberties. The active word there being give. It implies that the liberty is surrendered from the one who possesed it in the first place. Try phrasing it this way “People often have their liberties taken away in exchange for other things…”.
Well, that depends on what you mean by “the best result”. If you mean the most political freedom, then maybe. If you mean the most happiness, money, sex, or any other particular desireable property or activity then I don’t think so. Democratic government is not a means to enrich as many people as possible. It is not a means to the healthiest population. It is not even a means to the happiest population. It is simply a tool for a population to ensure the most freedoms for the members of that population. It has been said that Democracy is a terrible form of government. Its just the best we have.
Considering that, we do have to take the possibility (of the “tradeoff of liberty for quality of life”) seriously. Not because it is a valid trade, but because in a democracy the people ultimately have the legal power to enact any law that they wish. consider that if enough people wanted to, we could revive slavery in this country (perhaps enslaving red haired people this time :)). That legal power, however, is not a moral justification for anything. Others have hashed this legality vs. morality idea before.
As far as rational people making the trade, sure. they could. But that is not the trade you are asking for. You are asking people to decide if it is ok for them to impose something on others. When the paupers agree to tax millionares you cannot equate that to the paupers giving up their own freedoms.
I’m not sure I would phrase it that way. I see no need to invoke any concept of a market at all. That is, the smoking ban is not affecting much of the “market”. It is, however, a regulation on how certain individuals can use thier own property. That is what I object to.
BTW, I would have thought that what you were doing was invoking a right to someone else’s productivity in order to fiddle with market operations. Not the other way around.
“positive liberty” is a perversion of the concept of liberty. I aught to know
I should say that I do not smoke. I hate tobacco smoke. I find it a vile nasty habbit. But then so are many things people get up to in the privacy of their on cliques.
Perhaps that’s why many places have opted for outright bans, although serving alcohol requires a license, and the world hasn’t stopped spinning because of that, so I’m not seeing as how it’s infeasible. Speaking as a non-smoker, I think limiting the number of smoking establishments would be a good compromise. But if the choice is between an outright ban and virtually all establishments allowing smoking, with no middle ground, I’d favor the ban.
More and more places are passing non-smoking ordinances, so I don’t know if that’s true. Even if it is true, being the status quo in a majority of places doesn’t necessarily make it right. Also, there have always been places you weren’t allowed to smoke; now some areas are simply adding bars and restaurants to the list. It’s not like it’s a radically new concept.
No one “has” to smoke, either. It just seems to me that if there is a certain segment of society that engages in a filthy, annoying, and potentially health-threatening habit; if anyone ought to have to “stay home”, it should be the annoyers, not the annoyees.
There’s that circular reasoning I was talking about. You make the claim that consumers’ desire to have a healthy, clean, smoke-free environment will automatically be met by some mystical “market force”, as long as such a desire exists, without any evidence that such is the case. Then you use that as evidence that the desire for such an environment does not exist.
