I thought we were talking about Ohio.
The sidewalk is owned by the government and it gets to set the rules about them. On my private property, however, I can drive my car wherever I want. I can invite people over to drive their cars wherever they want.
No one is guaranteed a certain job. Just because I want to work somewhere does not mean the owner of the business is obligated to give me a job. A job is a contract between an employee and an employer. If two people can come to an agreement, then someone gets employed and both benefit. However, sometimes both employers and employees must make trade-offs. The employee may not like certain things about the employer or the employment situation and the employer may not like certain thing about the employee, but both agree to the job because the trade-offs are worth it.
Employees of bars know they are going into a job where smoking exists. If they don’t like smoke, they can refuse to take the job.
I’d say it’s the hallmark of liberals’ position – damn the business owner, his rights don’t matter and we’ll force him to run his business however we please.
I never said employees’ lives and health were unimportant. I don’t believe in forcing anyone to work around smoke. If people choose jobs in a smoky location, however, that is their choice. They made the trade-off, and to them it’s worth it. I don’t believe in paternalistically telling them that they can’t make that choice or they are too stupid so the government will decide for them how to live their life.
This is a ridiculous analogy. Firing bullets into the air is a violation of property rights. Unless you can assure your bullets will stay on your own property, you have no right to do this. Bar owners can guarantee their smoke will stay within their property, so you have no reason to complain.
It is also the right (and responsibility) of the government to control what goes on in public accomodations. Once you decide to open up a public business, you give up your comprehensive right to decide what goes on in the space.
If you want to smoke in your bowling alley, go right ahead and build it, and invite your friends over every friday to bowl and drink and smoke with you. You don’t even need a liquor license! Once you decide to open it up to the public, you agree to follow the rules that your municipality set up to govern businesses.
You don’t get to discriminate, you don’t get to serve undercooked chicken, you don’t get to serve alcohol without a license, and you don’t get to allow/encourage smoking inside.
Yes, because there are an unlimited number or jobs, and no one actually needs one. :rolleyes:
You could use your exact argument for justifying indentured servitude, or bosses requiring their female employees to provide sex for them, or for their employees to sit and take it while the boss whips them. You whine and whine about the poor, oppressed businesses and their “freedom”, and demonstrated over and over you care nothing about the employees or their freedom, or health for that matter.
“Your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.” You seem to confuse property ownership with totalitarian rule. Never, ever do you have the kind of absolute right to do whatever you want and to hell with the rights of others, anywhere. You’d have to go back to the plantations in the days of slavery for that kind of one sided authority in this country.
Oh, don’t be silly. Plenty of people take and keep jobs they hate, jobs they know are bad for them because they have no choice; they need the money. You might as well claim someone with a gun pointed at his face is free to do what he wants.
No, you believe in telling them that their employers own them. I honestly believe people like you would relegalize slavery if you could; your worship of businesses and the rights of the employer over the employee is that extreme, that absolute.
Unless you are asserting they own the bodies of everyone who enters the bar ( you probably believe just that, deep down ), and that the bar is airtight, they can guarantee no such thing.
So you think everyone should be guaranteed the job he or she wants, then?
Of course I care about the freedom of employees. I care about their freedom to enter into a contract with another free person. I don’t think that employees should have more freedom than employers, as you seem to desire.
I don’t want that. I don’t think anyone should be able to infringe on the rights of others. I think two people should have the freedom to negotiate a contract that is mutually beneficial to both. You don’t support this kind of freedom, instead preferring a paternalistic state that tells employees that they are too stupid to make choices for themselves.
That’s simply historically ignorant.
And that is their choice. As I said, the trade-off (money to support themselves) is worth the bad job.
I wasn’t aware that anyone was being forced to work at gun point. People desire money and they take jobs to work. It’s a choice they make, and if they don’t like the choices available to them, they have other choices (get more education or training, move, start their own business, etc.). People change jobs all the time.
That’s just stupid. I’m the one that believes in freedom – you are the one that wants to use the government to interfere in peoples’ lives. I believe that people should be free to operate a business with only minimal government interference. I believe that employees should be free to find the job that suits them, regardless of whether paternalistic liberals like you think they should have such a job.
To say that I support slavery is about the stupidest thing I’ve heard on this board.
Again, this is idiotic. Sure, some small bit of smoke may leave the bar when doors open, but I have yet to see any scientific study that would say this is toxic. Furthermore, if someone enters the bar he or she knows there will be smoke there and is consenting to be around it.
I really don’t like the argument that if someone doesn’t like their working conditions, they can just up and find a better job. That is really just not true in a lot of cases.
When the choice is between supporting yourself and not supporting yourself, that’s not much of a choice, is it? “Well, I could work at this shitty job, or I could not work and be out on the streets and starve.” How is that a valid choice? It’s nice to think that someone could just go back to school or get more training, but that’s simply not possible, financially or logistically, for a lot of people, no matter how much you might like it to be. As far as starting their own business, you’re kidding, right? I’m trying to envision this scenario:
“Well, I’ve been working in a bar trying to make ends meet for a while now, and I’m really not happy about the working conditions. So with all the money I’ve saved up from my crummy low-paying job, I certainly have enough capital to fund my own business instead.” For whom is this a realistic possibility? If you have the funds, the means, and the ability to start your own business, you probably don’t need to be working in the shitty-ass job to start with. And yes, I know your Aunt Mary Sue started her own business from nothing, etc., etc., but I’m talking about the majority of people in this situation here.
The fact is, a lot of people find themselves working in suboptimal working conditions, for not enough money, because it’s the only choice they have, vs. being out on the streets. And I don’t care how many Ayn Rand books you’ve read, being out on the streets is really not a viable choice. We pass workplace regulations so that people don’t have to be in the position of quitting their jobs and not being able to support themselves just to be able to save their health.
What about the guy who likes to shoot a little herion, ride his open-piped chopper at 100mph without a helmet to the park to drink a few beers while looking at kiddie-porn on his stolen laptop?
They will just ‘go smokeless’.
Paternalistic nannyism is typically associated with liberals. The conservative position is that people who are seriously offended by smoke are free to patronize (or work in) some other place.
I’ve never smoked, but I’m with those who say that the bar owner should have the right to decide this. Bars are not public property.
Don’t forget to compare us to Hitler!
MsWhatsIt, I understand what you are saying about peoples’ job situation, but that does not make it any less of a choice they make. Probably very few people work in jobs that are perfect. Even people who own their own businesses often think the job sucks. But every choice we make involves trade-offs.
A lot of people work shitty jobs, especially in the beginning of their working lives. A lot of people move out of these jobs as they gain experience, skills, etc. Some continue working these jobs for a variety of factors. Or, people work dangerous jobs because the trade-off is worth it.
Take my father, for instance. He worked in a samwill all his life. It was a shitty job in the snese that it was very physical work, fairly dangerous, he was exposed to the weather, and he hated the mill management. However, these jobs were highly prized because they paid pretty well for the area. His job, although crappy in some respects, allowed us to live on one salary in a rural area. That trade-off was worth it to him because he wasn’t going to move (he specifically moved to that area because it was rural), get more training, or commute to a big city to work. For me, however, although I love the area, I wasn’t going to put up with the bullshit of working in a sawmill, so I got an education and moved away. And while I’d be much happier living where I grew up, the trade-off of the job opportunities available is not worth it.
Everyone makes these sort of decisions. The range of choices for some pepole is more limited, I recognize that. However, imposing government regulations usually harms these people more than most. For example, take a bartender. It doesn’t take much education to be a bartender. You can fairly easily learn the basic skills to do this, so it’s an ideal job for people who would otherwise have few options. It pays pretty well, too. However, under the guise of “helping” this person, liberals want to ban smoking. Now, maybe this bartender smokes himself or maybe he doesn’t mind smoke. Maybe he even prefers that customers smoke, because they tend to drink more when they don’t have to walk outside every 20 minutes. To the liberals, that doesn’t matter. He should be protected! So what happens? Maybe he starts seeing his tips reduced when the ban takes effect. Or, a worse case scenario, the bar owner isn’t making enough money and closes the bar. So now the bartender either is taking home less money or is out of a job, all because liberals want to prevent him from making a choice about whether or not he wants to work in a place that allows smoking.
Putting more and more restrictions on businesses hurts business owners, but it also hurts workers by restricting the types of jobs available.
Also I wonder what a best-case scenario would be for the anti-smoking folks? Would they make tobacco an illegal substance? what about alcohol? That harms people other than the drinker, let’s make that illegal too. Or high fat foods, or gambling.
I’m all for the public health, but do we want to send police to arrest overweight people and criminalize chocolate?
One last thought, did those who voted for the smoking ban drive to the polling place? I wonder how much pollution your car put out, I know I was bothered while walking to my cast my vote. It’s an attack on my health!!! 
My point is that the right to smoke is not really a right at all, business owners do not have the authority to set rules that supercede the government in this case, and that supporters of this so-caller right is making up the rights part of it to further their cause. No right ever existed - it was just something that had no laws against it till recently.
For me it would be a way for the smoker to enjoy his drug of choice without effecting others. Perhaps something along the lines of a asthma inhaler.
Do what you want to yourself, just don’t involve me.
Turnabout is fair play. If a business owner is to be allowed godlike authority over his employees becaue they “choose” to be there, they should at least be allowed the freedom to choose which slavemaster will own them. And make no mistake, that’s the kind of “employee” and “employer” relationship people with your philosophy are promoting, one of master and slave. One where the employer has absolute rights and freedom, and the employee has none. Because to people with your philosophy, the only rights that matter are property rights. As in your response to my example of the bullet fired in the air; that it would be a matter of property rights. Not the public safety, not risking the lives of others; property rights.
I simply don’t believe you, given the views you have expressed. I don’t believe you care about them, nor do I believe you want them to be free, or consider them to be free. And what I want is for the employees not to be exploited and endangered by their employers.
Wrong. You believe that an employer owns his employees, that he has an absolute dominion over them, and they have no rights at all.
No, I’m saying the employer has more power than they do. The “freedom” you value is the freedom for the strong to crush the weak, for the rich to use the poor.
Utter garbage. People take and keep jobs they hate out of desperation all the time. That is not their choice any more than being forced at gunpoint is a choice.
Being forced to do something for economic reasons is no more “freedom” than being forced at gunpoint, or dragged around by large men, or having your loved ones taken hostage. The world you describe is a Libertarian fantasy that has never existed.
Freedom comes from the government. Without out it, society degenerates into an anarchy where the law of the jungle rules and the strong enslave the weak. That’s why failed states are always disasters, and not Libertarian paradises. We need the government to protect us from those who are stronger or more brutal or more numerous than ourselves.
Slavery is the inevitable result of your philosophy. It doesn’t matter in the slightest if you mean to support it; you do anyway.
The conservative position is “I am the Master, you are the slave. Now get to work, and send your daughter to my bed while you are at it ! And remember, it’s all God’s will, and you’ll burn in Hell if you disagree !”
And his employees and their lungs are not his property.
Hitler specifically ? No. Fascism in general ? Definitely. The strong preying on the weak, blaming the exploited for being exploited, disbelief in human rights, utter lack of compassion, believing the rich should rule everyone else; it all fits.
Really? Master and slave? Wow! Thank you for clarifying what I think. No matter what I write, you will always be there to tell me what I really mean. I’m glad there is such a smart person here when I get confused.
Property rights takes care of the problem. Sorry, but property rights are human rights. If you take away a person’s ability to own property, then you take away all his other rights. Property rights are the foundation of society, so of course I think they are important.
If you don’t believe me, then what’s the point of even talking? You arrogantly think you know what I really mean and really think. Since whatever I say you are going to stupidly say that I support slavery, then it really doesn’t matter what I write, does it?
Really? That’s what I believe? I never knew! Thank you once again for reading my mind.
There really is no point in trying to have an intelligent discussion with you, because you are incapable of actually discussing this issue. Instead, you claim that what I write isn’t really what I believe and then accuse me of supporting slavery. You prefer to avoid the issue and instead assign positions to me that I do not hold. It’s idiotic and I have better ways to spend my time.
What a joke. If you don’t want to be involved, don’t go to bar, restaurants, etc. that allow smoking.
For those that support smoking bans in bars in part due to the safety of the employees, I would like to know if you support a ban on contact sports.
No. However, I would support rules that make the sport safer, as long as the sport is left largely intact.
Baseball gets batting helmets, I still get to see the game, but the batter doesn’t need to get severely injured by a pitch.
Bars get smoke-free, I still get to go and drink, but the waitress doesn’t need to hack up a lung in the morning.