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Given the evidence that people chose to smoke freely and frequently before it was banned in airports, planes, offices, stadiums, etc..., the answer to your question is that, "No, people do not seem to be able to choose not to smoke when it harms others." [...]
So you're saying everyone in the world smokes? That's pretty easy to disprove... I don't.
We have a smart one here. Real genius....
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Originally Posted by Bluefly
You can say that the child is a human capable of free will and that the "free market" will decide whether that child survives wandering into the street, but that's a pretty inhumane and anti-life means of forcing a child still incapable of protecting itself into a decision it cannot possibly make. That child is our society.
It's sad that no one explained this to you, but children don't just fall from the sky. They come from somewhere... Maybe you can figure this out, it starts with a p... that's right, parents. Now you know.
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Originally Posted by Bluefly
And your argument about losing money due to regulation is wishful thinking. Most businesses see steady or increased revenue. It seems only those that cater to a predominantly smoking clientele (such as dive bars or small casinos) see negative impacts.
Yeah, that's why you have so many business owners saying, "thank you, massa government, for forcing us to do what we could have done by ourselves if we wanted to. Thank you for sending inspectors out to keep an eye on us, to make sure that we do what's in our interest anyway. Thank you for throwing us in jail when we choose to make less money by not running our businesses the way we want. Thank you for raising our taxes to pay for all this."
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Originally Posted by Bluefly
[...]
One year after smoking ban, Thayer Street sees business as usual - Metro
This reminds me of a rapist saying: "I raped this girl once and then spied on her again a year later, she seemed to be doing fine - see rape is a-OK."
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Originally Posted by Bluefly
I think conventional conservatives need to all study the word "socialist" before using it in a sentence. [...]
I'm not a conservative. And everyone who believes in "society" is a socialist: Reagan, Bushes, McCain, Palin, Bob Barr, and so on. It's just a matter of degree.
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Originally Posted by Bluefly
I'm all for your free market solution of reparations for harming others, but history proves that it doesn't happen.[...]
It's depressing to think what the world would look like if everyone shared your logic of "if it was never done before, it will never be done". The Wright brothers would have stuck to bicycles. Oh, wait, whoever invented bicycles would have been deterred as well: no one can balace on a wheel. And whoever invented the wheel...
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Originally Posted by Bluefly
[...] Your ideas won't work until WE THE PEOPLE (not our government) understand that "all life is One" [...]
All life is not "one". Each individual human being has an individual capacity for thought, emotion, and action.
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Originally Posted by Bluefly
[...] and choose actions that do not harm others against their will.
If you want to reduce the number of people being "harmed against their will", start with the entity that does most of the harm - government. It has outright killed hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century alone, maimed countless others, and it cuts the potential economic growth at least in half. Over time, the latter accumilates to trillions upon trillions of dollars that could have gone to other things, including things that raise people's longevity and quality of life. You'd have to smoke quite a few packs a day to equal the damage the government is doing!
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Originally Posted by missingmich96
Even if the bar is privatey owned it is still serving the public. I can serve my family a meal from my dirty kitchen and not wash my hands or follow other healthy practices and no one cares. But a restaurant has to follow govt. health codes or risk being shut down. Isn't poor air quality in a bar kind of the same thing? You have to make sure your restaurant,bar, or store is healthy and safe for the patrons, no?
Here we go again...
There's no such thing as "public". There are individuals who CHOOSE to do business with a given establishment, and the establishment CHOOSES to do business with them, exchanging value for value, voluntarily. In the case of the waiter, it's an exchange of labor for money. The the case of a customer, it's an exchange of money for food and hospitality. If any of the parties involved isn't happy with the rules set into place by the business owner, they can go somewhere else. If enough people do that, this creates an economic incentive for the owner to change his rules, or else he may continue losing money and eventually his business will be extinct. No fascism required.
Last edited by Alex Libman; 01-06-2009 at 11:53 AM..
You toss out red herring like you work at a fish market. We could talk all day about the millions our government alone has killed. Yet we're talking about cigarette smoking here. Sure if you want to draw a misconstrued line all over the place we can relate our government's foreign policy to cigarette smoke in public places, but yet all you seem to do is show your contempt for government (rightly so) instead of truly addressing the issue at hand. I agree that probably having the government ban is perhaps not the best method, but since cigarette smoke is detrimental to health and disruptive in many public places, I would support the ban solely because it looks as if there is are few realistic alternatives.
I don't see it as a property rights issue at all. For example, gambling may be legal in some states, but that doesn't mean that if I were a retail shop owner I can take a couple hundred square feet of floor space and put in slot machines.
The scary aspect about the anti-smoking groups and orginizations like MADD is their relentless lust for power. It starts with just wanting a non-smoking section or a blood alcohol limit of .10. Then it is no smoking, period, indoors and a .08. Next thing you know it's no smoking outdoors and breath interlock devices on all automobiles- Where does it end? A hell of a lot of people in this nation make a lot of profit devising schemes to regulate what they deem as undesirable behavior and have the backing of insurance, health, and pharmaceutical companies. That's not "We the People", that's corporate mob rule.
I don't see it as a property rights issue at all. For example, gambling may be legal in some states, but that doesn't mean that if I were a retail shop owner I can take a couple hundred square feet of floor space and put in slot machines.
The scary aspect about the anti-smoking groups and orginizations like MADD is their relentless lust for power. It starts with just wanting a non-smoking section or a blood alcohol limit of .10. Then it is no smoking, period, indoors and a .08. Next thing you know it's no smoking outdoors and breath interlock devices on all automobiles- Where does it end? A hell of a lot of people in this nation make a lot of profit devising schemes to regulate what they deem as undesirable behavior and have the backing of insurance, health, and pharmaceutical companies. That's not "We the People", that's corporate mob rule.
Too true, thats why I feel that perhaps a complete ban on smoking in ALL public places could be overstepping some boundaries. There are a lot of people who like to take things way too far and make profit from it, which isn't really the correct way to go about it. I understand that people in MADD are out with a vengeance to stop drunk driving solely because some people are irresponsible. Does that mean that everyone has to suffer? Of course not. Does that mean we need vigilante rule and oppressive regulations? But yet I also realize there are a lot of irresponsible people making irresponsible decisions out there and it seems as time goes on, we only see more occurrences of DUI's and drunk driving. The real issue at hand is finding the middle road, one where people have both the opportunity to visit establishments of their choice, that populate our landscape in equal measure, so noone feels slighted. Should all bars be smoke free? I don't think so, but I do feel that there should be just as many smoke free bars and bowling alleys in a certain-mile radius as smoking ones. Is that too much to ask for?
Bluefly, I have posted all that needs be said, your ideas are of a tyrant plain and simple. Our country was founded on liberty for all and as a republic to protect the minority from mob rule simple democracy mob rule to which you subscribe. As I said tyranny.BTW, I love your "quotes" around the phrase free markets....a dead give away of a statist. You would have been shown the door at the writing of our Constitution.
Xlabel...you could if you got a license........what is wrong with the suposed thinkers on this forum........it is property rights...it is a fact.........LIKE IT OR NOT....consult a constitutional attorney.......nobody gives a damn about your opinions, the law is the law.
I am done with this topic.... also saddened to see the citizenry forsake civil liberties for the sake of convienence, the public schools should be shut down and remade as institutions of thought and reason based on our Constitution. They are worse than abject failures.
Last edited by walls; 01-06-2009 at 01:00 PM..
Reason: post script
So you're saying everyone in the world smokes? That's pretty easy to disprove... I don't. We have a smart one here. Real genius....
Wow. I never said that. I never implied that. Your conclusion has absolutely nothing to do with my point. I'm not sure your capacity for comprehension is to a level befitting this conversation.
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It's sad that no one explained this to you, but children don't just fall from the sky. They come from somewhere... Maybe you can figure this out, it starts with a p... that's right, parents. Now you know.
Once again, irrelevant to the conversation. I have no idea what you're talking about. My point was that a child, like a young society, needs supervision. Children have p...parents. Societies have g...governments.
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Yeah, that's why you have so many business owners saying, "thank you, massa government, for forcing us to do what we could have done by ourselves if we wanted to. Thank you for sending inspectors out to keep an eye on us, to make sure that we do what's in our interest anyway. Thank you for throwing us in jail when we choose to make less money by not running our businesses the way we want. Thank you for raising our taxes to pay for all this."
Bars in New York, LA, DC, Seattle, and other cosmopolitan cities are doing fine. The bans have been overwhelmingly successful because they have attracted new clientele and families.
As was previously pointed out, you're not complaining about health standards in kitchens that protect the well being of the public. You'll argue that the market would put such restaurants out of business, but it doesn't. Scream about property rights when you're vomiting food poisoning from rat feces.
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This reminds me of a rapist saying: "I raped this girl once and then spied on her again a year later, she seemed to be doing fine - see rape is a-OK."
Absolutely absurd and irrelevant comparison, but you did get a bunch of ads for sex offenders sent to me, so thanks.
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It's depressing to think what the world would look like if everyone shared your logic of "if it was never done before, it will never be done". The Wright brothers would have stuck to bicycles. Oh, wait, whoever invented bicycles would have been deterred as well: no one can balace on a wheel. And whoever invented the wheel...
Wow. It's like you have absolutely no capacity for comprehension. I never said it couldn't be done. I'm the last that will sit on old ideas. Absolute last. I support the effort and hope it does get done. In the mean time, we need regulation to protect the public.
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All life is not "one". Each individual human being has an individual capacity for thought, emotion, and action.
...yes, but on a fundamental level all those individuals are part of the same energetic organism. Quantum theory is beginning to understand this. When we embrace that, we begin to realize that the leg competing with the liver for nutrients is a horrible way to run a body. That's when we begin to make choices that do not harm others, no matter what our "rights" are. That's when we move beyond needing government.
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If you want to reduce the number of people being "harmed against their will", start with the entity that does most of the harm - government. It has outright killed hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century alone, maimed countless others, and it cuts the potential economic growth at least in half. Over time, the latter accumilates to trillions upon trillions of dollars that could have gone to other things, including things that raise people's longevity and quality of life. You'd have to smoke quite a few packs a day to equal the damage the government is doing!
Irrelevant tangent. Stay off roads and highways. Stay out of libraries. Don't consume city water. Don't complain when someone buys the lot next to yours and puts a chemical waste dump there. Do not ever live somewhere that was designed instead of subject to the sprawling chaos of suburban disaster. Don't open your mail. Don't ever call the police and be sure to start running buckets from your well when your house is burning. THEN I might believe your rhetoric about how universally horrible government is.
It's funny. I just moved out of one of the wealthiest towns in the country. The people there - who identify as free marketeers and have thrived in such a system - celebrate the regulations and government control that have kept their town quaint, voted on the businesses allowed to enter their town, and therefore kept their property values high.
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There's no such thing as "public". There are individuals who CHOOSE to do business with a given establishment, and the establishment CHOOSES to do business with them, exchanging value for value, voluntarily.
You're so convinced you've got it all figured out. It's kind of cute. So, if my neighbor CHOOSES not to do business and builds a pig farm on his property, do I just ignore the stench and keep telling myself "there is no public! He has the right to not CHOOSE to do business with our government. So, I don't have a right to complain.
There is a public. It's there everyday at the rush hour traffic commute or on the subway. Get out of your books and watch the real world. The inner-mountain West is a prime example. Used to be libertarian until people started moving in and making destructive decisions. Then people realized the value of having a a voice through government to limit the negative impacts of decisions people make. Governments are just a means of people to live together. There's a reason the Northeast is progressive. They learned long ago the impact of others in such a dense region.
Interesting discussion, I'd really like to see if You manage to reach any conclusion or just agree to disagree.
Regardless, remember to treat each other the way you'd like to be treated.
Yac.
Wow. I never said that. I never implied that. [...]
Yes you did.
You are trying to take away people's ability to independently weigh the factors that go into the decision of whether or not to smoke, and obviously be responsible for the consequences of their actions, you want the government to interfere preemptively. It isn't enough for you that people should merely be able to sue others for harming them against their will, and convince a jury that damage has been done, which would shine the light of reason on the "second hand smoke" hysteria - you want to take free will out of the equation completely, and I am telling you that you have no basis for this! If your logic was applied to rape then all sex would be outlawed!
I liked smoking when I tried it briefly, but I chose to drop the habit because of the negative consequences involved, including other people not liking to be around smokers - no government force was necessary to persuade me. Some people will choose to smoke, and if they harm someone - they individually are responsible.
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Originally Posted by Bluefly
[...] My point was that a child, like a young society, needs supervision. Children have p...parents. Societies have g...governments.
Ah, the socialist religion gets its own creation myth! Did your "government" deity get pregnant, decided to keep the baby, and nine month later gave birth to the "society" deity?
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Originally Posted by Bluefly
The bans have been overwhelmingly successful because they have attracted new clientele and families.
[SNIP]
I'm sorry, but you're simply not responding to logic. I even tried to make my arguments amusing, that didn't work either. It is not worth my time to debunk you any further. I have to pick my battles, and I have no interest in smoking, bars, or the specific state laws in question. I hope that others will pick up where I left off.
You are a perfect demonstration of why democracy doesn't work: some people will continue to regurgitate the same thing no matter what you tell them, and be perfectly willing to steal, imprison, or kill without any remorse.
In a free society, no one would suffer from your delusions other than yourself, but unfortunately in this society you are legitimizing government tyranny and there is nothing I can do except to keep as far away from people like you as I possibly can.
1. I never implied that all people smoke. You should be able to infer that.
2. The simple fact that people will get away with whatever they can requires some sort of entity to hold people responsible for their actions, if they have a negative impact. If the free market can be that entity, then so be it. I haven't seen much evidence of that yet. It's not as simple as you seem to hope it could be.
Interesting discussion, I'd really like to see if You manage to reach any conclusion or just agree to disagree.
Regardless, remember to treat each other the way you'd like to be treated.
Yac.
Maybe the lynchpin of this discussion has much to do with the 14th Amendment which, allowed Corporations (Civil Units) to be Persons (Individual Units) - and forcing Individuals (Individual Units) to be Corporations (Civil Units). Individuals should have Individual Rights - and Corporations should have Civil Rights.
A Corporation has always been a creation of a State.
I don't like thinking of myself as a creation of a State. "It is not he, or she, or them, or it, that you belong to." Bob Dylan
To this day, and in defiance of the 14th Amendment, the U.S. Patent Office has not, and, hopefully, will not issue a patent to a Corporation. The Patent Office was created, and resides, in the main body of the U.S. Constitution for the purpose of advancing the arts and sciences.
The U. S. Patent Office does not issue patents to Corporations because a Corporation does not have a brain with which to invent. An Individual has a brain with which it may invent.
Corporations should be stripped of Rights that were intended for Individuals - and be returned to only having Privileges; and Individuals should be stripped of the fictions that make each of them as a group, Corporations (Creations of a State) - and be returned to having Individual Rights.
Civil Rights are fine for Corporations, but I prefer Individual Rights for Individuals, just as the Founders intended.
I look to a de-homogenization of Corporations and Individuals.
It is difficult to hold Corporations responsible for their actions - because a corporation does not have a brain, or a soul. (Ask the Patent Office, or just about any religious leader)
Personally, I would rather buy non-homogenized milk - that way, I know what's what, and what's where.
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