I suppose that 58% of the people wanting bars to be non-smoking isn’t “enough”, is that right? Maybe the market would have provided them if 75 or 80% of the people wanted it to be non-smoking.
Or, the market was failing to provide what people wanted. It happens. Economics 101 deals with situations called externalities where people want something (like unpolluted rivers) but the market alone isn’t able to provide it.
But, continue to tell us about how the market will provide everything everyone wants, even when there’s rock-solid proof that nearly 60% of the population of these states wanted something and there was NO market movement that direction. You can also tell us all how going non-smoking will ruin the bar and restaurant industries, even though all of the states who have enacted these rules have thriving industries. Why let facts and stuff get in the way of a cool theory?
Hey, thanks for the snarky reply! Much appreciated. And special, special thanks for assuming I hold a position–that bars will necessarily suffer economically, that the market will fulfill every want–that I have not offered. Just super, sparky! Keep up the good work.
And that fact-ignoring theory I reference is called the Law of Supply and Demand. You may have heard mention of it. 100% of the population might indisputably express a preference for something, but that doesn’t mean that they’re willing to make it an economic reality–for example, oh, I don’t know, by actually paying for it. People may be perfectly willing to vote for something (no skin off their nose) that they wouldn’t lift a finger or spend a dime to install in some other manner. Passionate rhetoric starts to evaporate when we witness the actual market at work.
If there’s no movement in the direction of non-smoking bars in a given area–get ready, here I go with a controversial economic position that ignores the facts again–that means by economic definition that the supply side detects no profitable reason to move in that direction. Let me word that another way: there is no profitable demand detected. It’s not because they’re evil men, lapdogs of the tobacco industry. Supply will chase demand dollars to the point of equilibrium when a gap is detected. It has always operated thusly. Read *Wealth of Nations * for other similar, wacky and illogical theories that those of us in the fringe, tin-foil hat crowd hold dear.
But, hey, I apologize for offering economic thoughts after you brought economics into the thread. How silly of me!
Sometimes, the thing that is most profitable for the individual is not the thing that is best for society. S&D is great when allocating limited resources to satisfy unlimited wants, but it doesn’t know a thing about what’s best for the country.
The classic example is a polluting manufacturer. S&D does not have a working mechanism for the market to tell manufacturers to stop dumping their crap in the river. The only people who are harmed are the ones living along the river, everyone else doesn’t get the connection between buying the cheap paper and the dead fish along the Hudson. The only way the manufacturers can be made nonpolluting is to legislate it, that’s one of the most important roles of government, to augment with laws the things the free market cannot effectively handle.
S&D allows for situations like slavery, child labor, child pornography, sweatshops, “whites only” restaurants, polluted air and water, clear-cutting rain forests, and a bazillion other lousy things that would exist if not for the actions of the government to curtail them. Smoking is just one minor issue the market doesn’t handle well. I don’t really get the insistence that the market does handle the issue well, when the evidence shows that the market does absolutely nothing while the majority of the populace wants a change.
Or it was a choice between a job they know is unhealthy, a job they hate, and going homeless and hungry. I don’t see any moral difference between that and telling someone you will work for them as a prostitute or they’ll break your legs.
The exemption for family-owned businesses under the newly-passed Ohio smoking ban reads as follows (see link):
“Family-owned and operated places of employment in which all employees are related to the owner, but only if the enclosed areas of the place of employment are not open to the public, are in a free standing structure occupied solely by the place of employment, and smoke from the place of employment does not migrate into an enclosed area where smoking is prohibited under the provisions of this chapter.” (bolding added)
Your watering hole will have to abide by the smoking ban like all the other bars and restaurants covered under the initiative.
There’s still a solution - join a private non-profit club without any employees, obtain a valid liquor license, and as long as you comply with the law in other respects, you and your smoking buddies can light up all you want.
As they are in California, last time I heard. But I was talking about a group of friends getting together and opening a bar. Even if they’re all chain smokers and they hire no employees, their bar must be nonsmoking.
That is precisely what happened here in my town, and precisely why I opposed the no-smoking law that passed in Montana last year.
No, it certainly “knows” something about it, but I’ll allow it is an imperfect, and sometimes ruthless, mechanism. But that wasn’t my point. I was responding to a very specific economic notion you introduced, that the lone non-smoking establishment would place itself at an economic disadvantage. That could be true, but it is at least somewhat at odds with the notion that there is a strong, broad, deeply held preference for non-smoking establishments. Given that, the guy who changes strategy and bans smoking in his joint makes a mint. That’s all I was trying to explain.
If your argument is that banning smoking creates the greatest overall good, regardless of the profitability, then fine. We’ll disagree. But then your cartel point is a red herring.
The majority of the population can want lots of things, that doesn’t make it reasonable. Let me ask you a question (I’ve asked this in other smoking ban threads). Suppose I want to open a place that specifically caters to smokers. I’ll advertise it that way. I’ll put a big neon sign on the wall: Stratocaster’s Smoker’s Lounge. Let’s make it interesting: I’ll make it a private club. Anyone can join for $1, which buys you a lifetime membership (drinks and food are extra), and you sign a waiver / acknowledgement that this smoker’s lounge will indeed–gasp!–have smoking in it. It’s the only way you can get in the door.
Let’s make it even more interesting. Let’s say I pay the waitstaff a premium, let’s say 50% over the going rate, to compensate for the smoke. They too sign a waiver. Let’s also assume I’ll only hire adults, people we can assume are capable of making decisions for themselves.
So, there will be a clientele interested in this type of establishment, and an owner willing to accommodate the interest. Can you understand at all, to any degree, why it might seem overbearing, intrusive, obnoxious to these people if someone else says, “No, no, no! Tough shit. That place–your establishment–has to conform to what I want. Every place must. Period.” Remember, we’re not talking about hospitals or libraries or subway platforms. It’s a bar. Why can’t I open a bar that specifically caters to people who would be happy for the service? Why isn’t your option not to go there, if it’s not your cup of tea? Why is there no compromise possible?
I went to the Villages last year. They have a no smoking inside the bowling alley rule. What a pleasure it was not to look though a smokey haze.
How about a cover charge for smokers. They are dirtier and burn holes on pool tables and bar counters.
Non smokers should be able to hit the pool for cleaning of clothes.
I think it’s a matter of merging theory with actual observation.
Theory would suggest if 60% of the population wanted something, that the market would make some non-trivial attempt to fill that need. Observation doesn’t seem to bear that out, so I look for adjustments to the basic theory to explain why. That’s where I came up with ideas like the cartel, I think it fits the observed behavior.
On the “smoker’s lounge” idea, I actually don’t mind the concept. However, if the implementation results in bars all becoming smokers lounges, then you may as well not have the law in the first place. I believe the “private club” idea is in force in some places for alcohol consumption. The reality is that anyone can walk into any bar, get “sponsored” by the resident barfly, pay $1 and drink all they want. Rather than actually changing where alcohol is consumed, it just inserts a cumbersome process.
I don’t know the right way to implement it, but I wouldn’t be against it in principle.
You are making a mistake by thinking that the entire voting population goes to bars. You are also making a mistake by thinking that because people want something in theory they will also support that same thing when it actually costs them something.
In your first mistake, it’s undeniable that the majority of voters in most places want bars/restaurants to be smoke free. So what? The people who determine the makeup of bars/restaurants are the portion of the public who actually go to them.
In your second mistake, you are assuming that a person’s preference will be the same regardless of the cost imposed on the person. Sure, as a nonsmoker I may want to go to bars without smoke (and I do). However, do I support this concept enough to actually do something that costs me? No. I won’t boycott bars that allow smoking. The trade off to me is that, while I don’t like smoking, I like drinking in bars more than I dislike smoking. So I’m willing to put up with it.
People can vote and say they want whatever. When it actually comes down to imposing costs on themselves to achieve that, however, that’s when you see what people’s priorities really are. In those places without any or many non-smoking bars, it is clear that the priorities of the portion of the population that goes to bars doesn’t really put too much of a premium on non-smoking venues.
Just looking at the numbers, 58% of the population voted not to have smoking in bars. That’s not the same as saying that 58% of the population wants to go to a smokeless bar on a regular basis. It’s also not the same thing as saying 42% of the population are bar-hopping smokers, either.
Nope, theory would suggest that if 60% of the population were willing to pay for something, then supply will fill that need if it’s profitable. Period. Conversely, if supply is not created, it’s because there isn’t a profitable demand detected. If there is not a single non-smoking bar that gets opened, I don’t know how one can conclude anything other than the fact that there is not a strong demand for such establishments. It’s the very definition of Supply and Demand.
Again, I would suggest to you that if every single bar went this route, it would tell us something about how profitable the demand for non-smoking bars is.
You could be clearer: if not a single non-smoking bar gets opened, then the market cannot reliably predict a profit for fulfilling the demand, given the cost of turning away its existing customer base. Changing to a non-smoking bar is a risk of turning away 100% of your existing customers for some unknown number of new customers, and businesses are often averse to such risks.
Whenever proposals to ban smoking come up, anti-smoking forces invariably insist that the bans won’t hurt bars’ business in the least- quite, the contrary, they insist, business will SKYROCKET as all the people who’ve been avoiding smoky bars now come back out.
Well, anti-smokers, here’s a suggestion: if you REALLY believe what you’re saying, PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS! Dig into your life savings, and and open a smoke-free bar in a stretch of town where all the competing bars are filled with smoke.
I mean, if you’re sure you’re right, you’re bound to rake in huge profits. So, what are you waiting for?
You’re making my point. If the vast majority of customers either prefer smoking establishments, or their non-smoking preference is not strong enough to actually frequent a non-smoking establishment if one is available, that should tell us something about the level of demand. It defies believability that not a single bar–not one–would switch to non-smoking in the face of all this noise, if it’s conceivable that changing would boost profit. Someone in that sea of bars would be the pioneer.
Again, bar owners, being the capitalists they are, would not open non-smoking bars out of the goodness of their hearts. Supply chases profitable demand–the vacuum will be filled as quickly as any barriers to entry permit it to occur, and in this instance, there are none. Bar owners would do it because they could make a mint. It has actually worked in area where there’s a strong demand–the market fixes it.
You’re making a strawman argument here. We’ve been through several votes locally and on a statewide level here in Ohio on public smoking bans, and our experience has been similar to localities elsewhere - advocates of public smoking restrictions do not suggest that business will boom after laws go into effect. Comments on economic effects are generally to refute false claims by the tobacco companies and bar and restaurant lobbies that business will be hurt and jobs lost.
For information on where the false claims are coming from, check out this site.
More here on economic studies. The authors conclude that when studies use hard data (i.e. sales receipts) and don’t rely on subjective impressions and gloomy predictions, the studies do not show a negative impact of public smoking bans (some have demonstrated increased sales). The reports claiming a negative impact consistently use poor methodology and don’t appear in published journals (thus avoiding a rigorous review process).
I wasn’t attempting to disprove your point. All I wanted to do was add clarity to your notion that there was obviously “no strong demand.”
It isn’t enough that demand has to be strong; there could well be an equally strong demand for smoking bars as non-smoking ones. That demand has to be sufficiently strong to overcome potential loss of customers from the present business model — and since the new model can risk up to 100% of current customers, the risk is correspondingly high.
All things being equal, if there’s 40% of the population who wants smoking, 40% who wants non-smoking, and 20% who doesn’t care, you could switch to non-smoking, but is it worth an expensive changeover + advertising to secure a customer base no bigger than you had before?
I completely agree with astorian that the petition-gatherers could have just proved the business model of a non-smoking bar was viable — once you demonstrate there’s money in it, others will follow.
Precisely. It’s saying that 58% of the population wants to prevent smokers from having a bar available to them where they can smoke.
If you (that’s a generic “you,” Fish, not you specifically) want a fair ordinance that provides smokers, nonsmokers, and bar owners with options, then make bars nonsmoking and issue some number of permits to convert to a smoking establishment - make it equal to 1/3 of the bars in town or some other number. Any bar that has a permit loses it if they convert to nonsmoking or shut down. The number of extant permits is adjusted each year based on the number of bars in town (it only goes down by attrition).
Customers, bar owners, and staff then all have options, and we get to watch how the competition works out.
This proposal assumes that jobs are so plentiful that bar workers who don’t want to undergo the health risks of exposure to secondhand smoke can find employment in a non-smoking establishment - and it’s doubtful this could be documented.
It makes about as much sense as suggesting that a portion of any industry be exempted from worker health and safety laws because of the convenience of a minority of customers.
All I wanted to do was add clarity to your notion that there was obviously “no strong demand.”