Where There's Smoke, You Don't Have to Be
Yet again, the anti-smoking activists want the government to intervene in the economy and the private property (or what should be considered truly private property) of entrepreneurs. But you do not have to breathe in any second-hand smoke while you are eating, drinking, socializing, or gambling. You do not have to serve, bartend, or deal cards in a smoke-filled environment to earn a paycheck. The confusion results from a lack of clarity on what "public" and "private" mean. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (149)
CJ Maloney
Excellent article. I live in NYC, and the good news is first, many bars are beginning to just ignore the smoking ban. Second, Bloomberg's no smoking laws created some terrific underground bars - not too hard to find - where you can smoke cigarettes; we call them "cig-easies".
The hypocrisy of the non-smoking laws are evident in the fact that the upper class cigar bars - those frequented by Bloomberg and other political parasites - are allowed to smoke all they please. It's only the working masses who, seemingly, can't handle smoke. Massa’ Bloomberg and all his parasite cronies can breathe it in just fine.
This is just one example where disobedience to the political elite is not only morally correct, but beneficial. Laws like these make me, when I watch JFK, root for Lee Harvey Oswald.
Published: April 21, 2006 9:09 AM
Dave Weilacher
A potential flaw in your argument is that your restaurant is likely a sole proprietorship or partnership. The casinos and most restaurant chains etc are limited liability corporations. These are a government created entity that were lobbied for by business people that didn't want to be personally liable for their own business decisions.
Funny that a sole proprietor doesn't have this same luxury.
So you allow the state into business to protect you from your own decisions then complain when they take over.
Legend may be correct. Blood sucking vampires can't come in unless you invite them.
Published: April 21, 2006 9:18 AM
np
and yet.. another example of the superior culture of the french... the best part was at the end..
But Attrazic, the restaurant association leader and bar owner, said that in addition to threatening the livelihoods of the owners of small rural bars and cafes, a smoking ban would strip the French of an important part of their culture.
"Is it shameful to smoke?" Attrazic asked. "I think that smoking a good cigar with a tasty Armagnac is part of our lifestyle."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/20/AR2006042001918_pf.html
Published: April 21, 2006 9:51 AM
Ron Brown
Mr Weilacher makes a good point regarding corporations.
Incentives being powerful and undeniable, I've often argued that better business decisions would be made if there were no government protection of personal assets. After all, how could it be otherwise?
None of this, of course, justifies property rights violations by the state, in this instance smoking bans.
Published: April 21, 2006 10:12 AM
Danny LeRoy
Excellent article Ninos.
In Alberta, many local governments are banning smoking in all "public" places. I have pointed out to elected officials, using similar arguments to yours, how their act of agression reduces the use of one's private property and ultimatly leads not to prosperty, but to poverty. While politicians sometimes begrudgingly acknowledge this argument, to them it is a side issue -- smoking must be banned because it is dangerous, dirty and costly and most people are in favour of the bans.
With regard to smoking, politics is currently trumping economics. However, citizens in Alberta will eventually pay a high price as the roots of this sort of central planning of the German variety spread further and constrict individual freedoms.
Published: April 21, 2006 10:18 AM
A.B. Dada
Great article. You should set up track-backs for us other bloggers!
Published: April 21, 2006 10:24 AM
Mitche Leigh Hunt
Pray there will be more and more graduate students (or any other kind thereof) like Ninos P. Malek. I am a reformed cigarette smoker, with a quaint needlepointed admonition centered on the mantle in my living room. It reads: "If you are smoking in here, you had better be on fire." By this means, I have handled my property rights to my satisfaction.
Malek's writing is brilliant, the way he can so clearly reason and succinctly handle the language: ". . . when people learn the difference between the words 'public' and 'private,' then maybe the incredible waste of time and taxpayer dollars that go toward smoking legislation will stop. Maybe then the government will stop interfering with property rights and start protecting them."
I repeat it because it is beautiful!!!!!!
Published: April 21, 2006 10:25 AM
W. E. Schetlick, JD, LLM
Nice piece and reasonably well-argued, but the "property rights" argument won't go anywhere because of the ongoing legal notion of "public accomodation" and the denial by the courts of equal legal status to claims based upon "property rights" as opposed to "fundamental rights".
If property rights were treated the same as personal rights by the courts, the property right would still be "regulated", but the regulation could only be constitutional if it were narrowly tailored to protect an important state interest.
Assuming "public health" would be the operative state interest, the extent of constitutional constitutional regulation would be the requirement that the bar owner or restaurant owner post a conspicuous sign warning potential patrons and employees of the alleged health hazards related to exposure to ambient, second-hand smoke.
Unfortunately, courts usually do not protect bar owners and others with ownership interests in places of "public accomodation" from all forms of regulation affecting their property rights.
I haven't yet the argument that the smoking ban represents a form of compensable, regulatory taking, and I think that argument may be more availing these days . . .
Published: April 21, 2006 11:06 AM
Barney Sieber
If smokers have the freedom to spoil others enjoyment of public places then I should have freedom to spray mace in their faces and spoil their enjoyment. There is absolutely no difference.
Published: April 21, 2006 11:19 AM
billwald
I propose a law against farting in public. It smells worse than ciggybutt smoke and produces greenhouse gasses. Chronic farters should be required to wear fart collection devises and recycle their output.
Published: April 21, 2006 11:27 AM
W. E. Schetlick
Mr. Sieber:
Perhaps you haven't read the articel carefully. I do not speak for the author in this regard, but I think it fair to assume that he'd agree . . . he is saying that bars and restaurants are not "public" places, but rather "private" places . . . the law mistreats/mischaracterizes them as "public".
As to the rest of your comment: if I am standing in a public place where and when I am otherwise permitted to be and otherwise minding my own business, and you consider my presence as "spoiling your enjoyment" of that public place, should you be able to spray mace in my face and be protected by the law? If "yes" what law or moral theory of law can you cite to support your position?
Published: April 21, 2006 11:29 AM
Charles McClure
Your article reflects the attitutde of the founder of your school. Your self interest lies in wanting to smoke your cigar regardless of to whom you might cause a health problem. The argument about the right to smoke or not to smoke is ludicrous. The real problem is reckless endangerment. If your selfish need to appease your addiction comes ahead of the welfare of others, you not only deserve not the right to smoke, but the right to exist. The LAW says, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." By smoking where it harms others, you have proven that you have no respect for others. By smoking at all proves that you have no respect for yourself. So, smoke if you must, but obey the real LAW, not the codes, rules, and regulations of corrupt man.
Published: April 21, 2006 11:46 AM
Martin
The smoking ban is a simple thing of the right to CHOOSE. Staff and non-smokers cannot choose to stop breathing, but smokers CAN CHOOSE where to smoke.
At the moment staff is at highest risk, and non-smoking guests are discriminated, so a smoking ban is simple, fair and liberal.
Of course a bar or pub are "private", but my own car is also private but that does not mean i have the right to drive with 200miles/h through every red light.
Opening a business, doesn't allow me to hurt my staff. The argument, staff could leave is ridiculous. If you use this argument, we don't need any laws because you could say that snipers can shoot at others, and the people could simply stay home, so no one will be hurt!
In a free and democratic society everybody should DECIDE BY HIS OWN, without smokers tellimg them what to do, to leave or to quit a job. Thats the fact.
So if smokers want to smoke at workplaces of others, non-smokers should also be able to kick smokers in the face at their workplace; if smokers don't like that, they can simply quit their job or leave if somebody want to have fun with kicking! Great solution!
Its no question that toxic smoke at workplaces is against human rights, and the freedom of choice not to smoke. Smokers are free to smoke everywhere, except workplaces of others, so whats all the fuss about? A bit tolerance is the keyword, so simply accept the CHOICE of adults not to smoke. Smokers can smoke, and non-smokers are not forced to, so a smoking ban takes no rights away.
Published: April 21, 2006 11:57 AM
W. E. Schetlick
I am beginning to think that people are not bothering to actually read the materials presented before commenting on them.
I don't speak for the author, but I believe he would make no argument that anyone has a discrete "right to smoke". If people get together and voluntarily decide they want to smoke or be in the presence of those who smoke, how is that "reckless endangerment" any more than a boxing match is "reckless endangerment" to the voluntary participants?
No one is claiming that exposure to second-hand smoke may or may not be hazardous; rather, the author is claiming that he has the right to allow people to enter his own private property and engage in risky behavior provided that they know of the risk and choose to stay notwithstanding. This is no different than the risk that legal cigar bar owners are allowed to offer, but not "cigarette bar" owners.
So far as we can tell, the reason that cigar bar owners are allowed to continue allowing smoking is because a rule prohibiting smoking would surely have a deleterious effect on his business . . . given that the bottom line for cigar bars is based upon sale and consumption of cigars . . .
But this is beside the point if the issue is "health" and not property, right?
Published: April 21, 2006 12:01 PM
W.E. Schetlick
Straw men are lightweights.
To the best of my knowledge, there are no places where liquor or food is served where the owner claims that she will kick customers or employees in the face whenever she pleases, and that the employees and customers will have to assume the risk of injury.
There is a good reason for that: no one would either work in such a place or patronize such a place.
However, there are people who are apparently willing to accept the relatively smaller risk of being exposed to second-hand smoke in exchange for salary or going to any particular bar or restaurant to eat or drink. That such people don't have to do so is just fine by all accounts. Those that are risk averse or who are simply annoyed by smoke can go to restaurants and bars that do not permit smoking.
Published: April 21, 2006 12:14 PM
A.B. Dada
Martin:
You're confused, unfortunately.
The smoking ban is a simple thing of the right to CHOOSE. Staff and non-smokers cannot choose to stop breathing, but smokers CAN CHOOSE where to smoke.
The can CHOOSE to not work there or eat there. Nothing forces them to CHOOSE to do either. If you see smoke and don't like it, run, don't stay.
At the moment staff is at highest risk, and non-smoking guests are discriminated, so a smoking ban is simple, fair and liberal.
There is no discrimination here except against the person who invested their time and money in opening a restaurant to serve people of his choice. If it is my restaurant, I should be able to welcome and deny whoever I want. You are free to open a restaurant next door catering to those I don't.
Of course a bar or pub are "private", but my own car is also private but that does not mean i have the right to drive with 200miles/h through every red light.
Driving your car at 200 MPH has nothing to do with private property -- the roads are public. If you want to sit in your car and smoke a cigarette, sleep or whistle Dixie, you're not hurting anyone. If I put my cigarette out on your arm, I'm hurting you directly. If you walk into my cigarette that is lit on purpose, you are hurting yourself. If you see me smoking and you stick around to inhale my smoke, you're hurting yourself. Make the right choice yourself.
So if smokers want to smoke at workplaces of others, non-smokers should also be able to kick smokers in the face at their workplace; if smokers don't like that, they can simply quit their job or leave if somebody want to have fun with kicking!
If I kick you, I make the first move. If you inhale my smoke, you made the decision instead of leaving the premises. Different perspectives.
Smokers are free to smoke everywhere, except workplaces of others, so whats all the fuss about?
Above the workplace of others is something called the privately owned business of others. The owner of the property has the first and last call as long as they don't give someone the option to walk out before an action is taken against them. The laws don't make life easier for employees, they make things more expensive for customers and property owners who have to fight ridiculous lawsuits.
Published: April 21, 2006 12:14 PM
BillG (not Gates)
AB Dada wrote:
"If I kick you, I make the first move. If you inhale my smoke, you made the decision instead of leaving the premises. Different perspectives."
BillG responds:
doesn't that really depend on who was there first and whether or not inhaling your smoke is an infringement on my right to breath and whether or not breathing second hand smoke is infact harmful?
Published: April 21, 2006 12:41 PM
W. E. Schetlick
The common law treated an intentional tort like a battery or an assault (intentional kick) completely differently from the way it treated hazardous conditions on property.
A kick would be considered an unconsented, uninvited touching or a bodily trespass from one to another that required a showing/proof of injury by the injured plaintiff caused by the kicking defendant.
The existence of tobacco smoke on one's real property would be considered a hazardous condition on the owner/defendant's property and that imposed certain obligations upon the property owner to warn of the condition, depending upon the the legal status of the person on the property.
The common law recognized the right of the property owner to maintain a hazardous condition on his property; after all, it was his property and no one had the right to go on that property without the owner's permission. However, if the owner invited people onto his property for business purposes (a business invitee), the property owner was required to warn the invitee of the hazardous condition. The old law imposed no duty upon the owner to warn a trespasser of a hazardous condition.
In the current instance, that of maintaining an alleged hazardous condition on the property, the highest duty the owner would owe to business invitees (customers) would be to warn them of the condition. The law imposed no duty to correct the condition. In the alternative, the owner could post a notice indicating that anyone coming upon his property who did not assume the risk of the hazardous condition would be treated as a trespasser, not as a business invitee . . . in this way, the owner was withdrawing his consent to anyone coming upon his property unless they agreed to be "smoked" as it were.
Published: April 21, 2006 1:24 PM
W. E. Schetlick
I did neglect to mention in my last comment that the property owner's duty to warn, in addition to being a function of the legal status of those coming upon the property, was also directly related to the latent or patent nature of the hazardous condition itself.
For example, if the condition was completely patent (a room full of cigarette smoke) and nothing more, the duty of the owner would be limited to a warning that ambient tobacco smoke was on the property, and that such tobacco smoke constituted a potential health hazard, and then list the known risks. The decision of whether to enter and remain upon the owner's property was then contingent upon the acceptance of the property visitor of whatever risks were attendant thereto.
Published: April 21, 2006 1:47 PM
Don B
An excellent piece, but the real problem with smoking bans, which we just had delivered unto us here in CO, isn't just the bans themself, which Mr. Malek expounded on quite intelligently. These bans are just the proverbial camels nose under the tent. A new avalanche of personal regulatory restraints, property rights violations and enhancment of the nanny-police state is in the offing. There may be a dawn after this darkness, but we're only at about nine PM. Ten hours of rape and abuse by government to come...
Published: April 21, 2006 2:01 PM
W.E. Schetlick
Recognition and protection of property rights to the nth degree by the government (where government exists) is a critical precondition for a reasonably free and prosperous society.
People and the society they live in are far better off when individuals order their own affairs and define their voluntary relationships with others absent initiating force or the threat of physical force or fraud with others.
The common law was still imposed by the monopoly courts and by a monopoly government funded by taxes, so the system it maintained was not purely libertarian in every respect.
However, the old common law system recognized the right of property owners to arrange relationships with others coming upon their property within a voluntarist framework and allowed for the maximal amount of personal liberty for both the property owner and the visitor.
And it was virtually costless, since both parties knew what their respective rights and liabilities were, and the law imposed almost zero affirmative obligations on the parties. And there were no ongoing enforcement costs, either.
On the whole, a far better system than the current regime of positive law.
Published: April 21, 2006 2:30 PM
Alfred Wamsley
"Is it shameful to smoke?" Attrazic asked. "I think that smoking a good cigar with a tasty Armagnac is part of our lifestyle."
If you want to smoke a good cigar in your own home and drink a tasty Armagnac, then I think that is fine but he minute you light up in a room full of people, smokers or nonsmokers you are guilty of assault on each and everyone in that room and THAT is why we have laws against your doing it.
Whether you like it or not, every animal born to breathe fresh air has a right to have clean fresh air to breath, Smokers have no such intrinsic right, it is a personal choice to degrade their body, pollute the air we all have to breathe and to assault everyone in the area that inhales their pollutants when they breathe.
I am a militant non-smoker, a lifelong addict of clean fresh air, and I maintain that every human being has the right and the inherant obligation to defend himself against assault of ANY kind be it noise, smoke, chemicals, bodily harm etc. I personally know smokers who cannot stand cigar smoke and leave the bar/restaurant/premises if someone lights one up.
Pursuant to the fact that one can never find a cop when one needs one, I maintain that I have as much right to be in any public place and to defend myself from your filthy and despicable personal habit that YOU have CHOSEN to share with me and to throw-up all over your nice new Brooks Brothers' Suit or to knock the stem-winding shit out of you if you don't cease and desist immediately after I voice my objection to your smoking. And that includes in your own home if I am an invited and, therefore, esteemed guest.
The onus is upon you, Sir, not upon me or anyone else who objects to the smoking habit and, for once, our society is beginning to put the horse where it properly belongs, in front of the cart, and is making laws to assuage the discomfort of the vast majority of non-smokers who outnumber you smokers by a margin of 60% to your +/- 30%.
You, Sir, are in the ever decreasing minority and the pain and discomfort you have inflicted on the societal whole for well over 100 years has, up until now, been largely unregulated as have been the manners of smokers who ignored the pleas and obvious discomfort caused by their insidious habit. YOU brought this upon yourselves, Smokers, by your persistently rude and discourteous behavior of smoking when and where you pleased.
That has ended now. Get over it ...
Published: April 21, 2006 2:30 PM
Larry Didier
Mr. Milek and his supporters are NOT correct about the distinction between 'public' and 'private'. Public places are those which are generally open to nearly anyone (some age prohibitions are often appropriate) and private places are those into which you may enter ONLY at the request of the owner. To say that "ownership" is the criterion for defining 'public' vs. 'private' is ridiculous.
It is also the fact that it is a way for "smoker" and those who support smoking in public to "illogically" support their contention that government hasn't the right to control certain activities in certain instances. Gov't not only has the right, it has the responsibility to protect its citizens from the unhealthy acts of others. That's why gov't regulates businesses that discharge toxic chemicals into the environment, why lead was taken out of gasoline and paint, why children who haven't received the appropriate inoculations and vaccinations are not allowed to enter schools where they could infect, injure and even kill other children. It's why government attempts (tho' ineffectually at times) to control the carrying and discharge of firearms and the use of other weapons - to protect the general public. It's why we have speed limits on our highways - to make them safer for everyone there - even though your typical NASCAR driver could probably drive safely in excess of the speed limit, most people cannot and most roads are not constructed for such speed.
As free speech is limited (you can't yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater, to use the most hackneyed example) so are other behaviors, when they endanger the lives of those around them. And there is no doubt, based on today's science and research, that secondhand smoke is dangerous - one of the few 'Class A Carcinogens" identified by the EPA - and deserves to be restricted in those areas where others are present. Don't forget that the active smoker inhales less than 1/2 of the smoke produced by their cigarette (even less with cigars and pipes) and then they breathe back out more than 1/2 of that. That means the about 85% of the tobacco smoke, with its 4,000+ chemicals, and more than 69 proven carcinogens, is in the surrounding air. When it contacts another person's nose - that's when it becomes a public health issue. And that's true no matter how people choose to define words or twist their logic.
Published: April 21, 2006 2:44 PM
W.E. Schetlick
My sense of this is that some folks in here still think (and I use that term advisedly) is about "smoking rights" and not "property rights".
Unless I missed something, no one attacking the ban has claimed a right to smoke. The law (ban does not address the claimed existence of such a right) Clearly, there is no independent "right to smoke".
There is, however, a right to maintain your own property as you see fit or not. It is the violation of the right of property (the right to maintain an alleged hazardous condition on one's property) that is violated by the smoking ban. For sure, the common law at least would require that a business invitee be warned of the condition, permitting the invitee to decise whether to come upon the property with the hazardous condition or not. Having been warned, the invitee could still decide to take the risk. All parties' property and personal rights are protected thereby.
A contrary claim would mean that somehow a trepasser (a non-invitee) would have the right to dictate to the owner the condition of the property owners' property that he had no right to be on in the first place. A bizarre idea, at best.
Published: April 21, 2006 2:44 PM
banker
"These are a government created entity that were lobbied for by business people that didn't want to be personally liable for their own business decisions."--
Managers in a corporation don't own it (unless he/she is one of shareholders). Only shareholders, who don't operate it do. And shareholders can sometimes number from a few thousand to millions. Exactly how or why would you make that many people legally liable for business decisions made by managers?
Crimes are committed by people, not corporations. People go to jail, there is no point for making investors who own corporation legally liable for criminal decisions made by manager. The only reason why corporations were invented were to protect investors from losing more money than they put in. Any one who enters into a transaction with a corporate entity knows that they can not pursue the assets of the owners in case of default. There is no fraud. Again, this has nothing to do with criminal actions that may be committed by the managers, who actually run the company.
Published: April 21, 2006 3:07 PM
David Bailey
I sed the same argument of private property in the early 1960's when legislatures were passing anti-discrimination laws. I was rebuffed with restaurants and stores were public. Does an employer have a right based on private property to discriminate based on race, sex, etc.?
Published: April 21, 2006 3:16 PM
David Bailey
I used the same argument of private property in the early 1960's when legislatures were passing anti-discrimination laws. I was rebuffed with the reasoning that restaurants and stores were public. Does an employer have a right based on private property to discriminate based on race, sex, etc.?
Published: April 21, 2006 3:17 PM
W.E. Schetlick
I don't which question you are asking, but . . .
If you are asking the traditional legal question of whether one aspect (or one stick in the bundle)of the traditional rights to property is the right to exclude anyone from your private property for any reason whatsoever, the answer is "yes", of course, unconditionally.
If you are asking whether the law currently recognizes that aspect of proeprty rights in the US, the answer is "no" as the "public accomodation" laws from the 1960's clearly evicerated that traditional right.
The smoking bans are not really related at all to the issue of health, or the so-called power of government to protect people's health. Ever since the public accomodation laws evicerated property rights, the government really needed no such justification to invade one's property to comport with its policy . . . but it does provide a nice cover for such fascist policies.
One thing you should note: the ban on yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is not a limitation on free speech. You have no right to yell "fire" in a crowded theater because such action violates the conditions of the limited license you bought when you purchased a ticket. You agree to pay a fee to come on the premises to watch a movie, not to cause a stampede. That's what your ticket buys . . . if you yell "fire" in a crowded theater, you are not only breaching a contract, but you have trepassed as well under applicable property laws.
Published: April 21, 2006 3:36 PM
cynical
To Larry Didier:
I am not your commrade. You have no responsibility for me and I detest the mere thought. Like hell my property is not my property because you stepped on it. The same goes for all the imaginative ways you wish to impose your will on me by de facto stealing my property.
Published: April 21, 2006 4:16 PM
OM
When a river flows through your property, you only "own it" when it is on your property. If you introduce pollutants into the river, you are trespassing on the property of those downstream. The same with air. If you introduce pollutants into the air you are violating everyone's property rights. The right to clean air goes together with property rights. Therefore smokers are in violation since they trespass ofv others' property. Otherwise you could argue that a property owner has a right to blow White Phosphorous into the air and everyone who doesn't like it can move away. What about the right to life?
Published: April 21, 2006 6:19 PM
banker
"The right to clean air goes together with property rights. Therefore smokers are in violation since they trespass ofv others' property. "--OM
I think it is safe to say once someone smokes a cigarette that only a few grams of tobaco are diluted into the atmosphere of several million cubic kilometers of air. I would hardly call that tresspassing, else one could not smoke anywhere on the planet, even inside of a house.
Published: April 21, 2006 6:34 PM
BillG (not Gates)
we only have the individual equal access right to use the sky as a source and sink for sustenance as long as our use does not infringe on the equal rights of others.
the appearance of negative externalities determines the extent to which that infringement occurs because beyond the sustainable yield they become a tax on our labor.
Published: April 21, 2006 7:13 PM
Daniel Coleman
Many in this comment section seem to think that this discussion is about a right to smoke or a right to not smoke.
Might I suggest reading the article next time before contributing? The author very clearly says:
"The bottom line is that if you are a smoker, you do not have a right to smoke in my house nor in my place of business. If you want to smoke at a restaurant, bar, strip club, or casino, open your own. If you can't, stay home.
And if you are a nonsmoker, you do not have a right to a smoke-free environment in my house or in my place of business. If you want a smoke-free restaurant, bar, strip club, or casino, then open up your own darn place. If you can't, then stay home."
This isn't about the communal sharing of the air, this isn't your rights within a workplace. This is about property rights.
Published: April 21, 2006 7:37 PM
banker
"negative externalities"- kindly define this in a non-arbitrary way (ie more than one person can come to the exact same conclusion when asked what that is)
"sustainable yield"- either come up with an exact number or quit putting this in your posts.
Published: April 21, 2006 8:03 PM
W.E. Schetlick
If this were a "health issue" and the government really was interested in protecting people from their own folly for their own good, government would simply ban the use of tobacco products, whether smoking or chewing or dipping or whatever. The smoking ban would extend to private homes as well (particularly where more than one person lived) . . . and the casinos in New Jersey would have been included in the ban as well.
But this is not a smoking rights issue, per se. This is about property rights . . . government extends its tentacles into areas designated as "public accomodations" . . . of which reatil establishments are a part.
The more interesting issue is the one posed by the new and "improved" enforcement of the ban on "public drunkenness". Pursuant to local ordinances in Texas prohibiting "public drunkenness", policemen are now arresting people in bars who had more than two drinks while they were watching and the patrons were still seated in the bar and bothering no one. . . under the premise that bars are "public accomodations" and that people having more than two drinks in a short period of time would exhibit a blood alcohol level in excess of the legal limit (therefore, they are legally drunk in public).
Now this is ironic because some bar owners and employees objected when the police showed up in their place of businesses with their testing equipment and sat around watching the owner's invitees imbibe. When the police went to arrest some of the patrons, the bar owner intervened, indicating that the patron(s) was his guest nad should not be disturbed. The police arrested the bartender for obstruction of justice and interfering with lawful arrest. Some bar owners have even been arrested for being intoxicated in their own bars!
The same police cannot come into your house and arrest for public drunkenness, but they can arrest you for being intoxicated in your best friend's bar even if your best friend wants you there on his property and you are otherwise bothering no one.
Published: April 21, 2006 8:06 PM
BillG (not Gates)
negative externalities - costs not being able to be include in the purchase price of goods which defines the extent to which the economic system is inefficient.
sustainable yield - the amount of a common resource that can be used without degrading the asset itself inorder to continue further optimum use.
Published: April 21, 2006 8:23 PM
W.E. Schetlick
I'm beginning to despair that some of the commentators in here are not reading the other posts before they comment.
The law always allowed property owners to maintain hazardous conditions on their own property, including "bad air", whether carcinogenic or tear gas or anything like that. Business invitees had a cause of action against the property owner only if the owner failed to warn the business invitee (including employees) of the hazardous condition and any latent risks of exposure to the hazard.
The ONLY differences between the old law and the new law is that the new law no longer permits the owner to maintain his property in the condition he sees fit, nor does it let his business invitees decide for themselves if they want to visit to do business him and assume the risk of exposure to any hazardous condition that the owner would warn them of. The law actually prohibits capitalistic acts between/among consenting adults.
Since the nominal owner can no longer dictate the terms of his contractual relationship with his emplyees and customers, the government has effectively turned his business into a publicly-directed franchise. The owner is no longer the owner, but merely a serf in the service of the government.
Published: April 21, 2006 8:26 PM
Sione Vatu
Alfred get's it completely wrong. For the record, if a man lights up a cigar in a room full of people and it's his room, then each individual in the room has a choice. The choice is, stay or leave.
If the room belongs some other person, then the choice about whether smoking is allowed or not rests with that person, the owner of the room. If the smoker is informed he may not smoke in the room, then the choice for the smoker is stay or leave. And of course the same choice remains for every other indiviual; stay or leave.
How simple is that? Obviously too simple for the likes of Alfred, for it is he who wishes to commit assault. All he requires is a motive.
In his missive we can readily identify his hatred and barely supressed violence. He writes how he is ready and prepared to commit bodily assault upon any other individual, regardless of context, who does not obey his command. Alfred is someone to be very careful of. Be ready to defend yourself from him for the mode of behaviour he espouses is not necessarily restrained to the sole topic of smoking. This type of person can never be trusted.
Now as far as warning people about the "hazards" of side-stream smoking, we are getting a little precious. There is little evidence and no proof that such smoke is dangerous. Nevertheless it can be unpleasant and I do prefer to avoid it myself (unless I'm doing the smoking).
I'm sure we've each encountered smoke in a bar or pub or whatever. It is common. Very common. We know what it is and we know whether we find it acceptible or not. So make the choice, stay or leave. Surely this does not require a great big sign saying:
THE MANAGEMENT AND EQUITY HOLDERS OF THIS PREMISES ALLOW THE USE OF CIGARETTES, CIGARS, BONGS & PIPES BY VISITORS AND PATRONS TO THESE PREMISES BUT DO NOT ALLOW ROLL-YOUR-OWNS AS THEY ARE CONSIDERED COMMON AND QUITE LOW CLASS. THE USE OF ALTERNATIVES TO TOBACCO ARE ALSO ALLOWED, SO WATCH OUT FOR TOBACCO GUM UNDER THE TABLES AND PEOPLE TRYING TO SELL YOU FUNNY STUFF AND ALSO PEOPLE WITH BLOWN PUPILS AND GIRLS WHO DANCE AND DANCE AND DANCE ALL NIGHT LONG. SOME PEOPLE FIND SUCH THINGS UNPLEASANT AND SOME FIND SUCH THINGS OFFENSIVE (BUT IF YOU THINK THAT'S BAD WAIT UNTIL YOU HEAR WHAT THE OTHER PATRONS ARE DISCUSSING; THEY MIGHT EVEN START TALKING ABOUT YOU AS YOU ENTER). BE WARNED THAT NOT ONLY ARE SOME OF THE ACTIVITIES AND PRODUCTS BEING USED ON THESE PREMISES POTENTIALLY UNPLEASANT OR DANGEROUS OR OBNOXIOUS OR CONSIDERED EVIL BY SOME, BUT ALSO SOME OF THE PATRONS COULD ALSO BE CONSIDERED BAD NEWS AS WELL. YOU ASSOCIATE WITH THEM AT YOUR OWN RISK. AS WITH ALL ELSE YOU HAVE A CHOICE OF ALTERNATIVES. IN THIS CASE YOU KNOW THE SCORE, STAY OR LEAVE. BEST OF LUCK. HAVE AN ENJOYABLE EVENING.
You can work it all out for yourselves within minutes of entering a place. Good or bad. Stay or leave.
Now a warning for Alfred. Alfred, should you ever come into my tavern and try your nonsense be prepared to be rapidly ejected by four or five large Polynesian boys. I do not want you here. Stay away. Stay out.
Sione
Published: April 21, 2006 8:30 PM
Peter
When a river flows through your property, you only "own it" when it is on your property. If you introduce pollutants into the river, you are trespassing on the property of those downstream.
This is, of course, false. Rights to the river are homesteaded in exactly the same way as rights to pieces of land. E.g., if you introduce pollutants that affect the already-homesteaded rights of those downriver, you're "trespassing"; but if there's no-one downriver when you move in, for example, you can dump whatever you like in the river (always assuming it doesn't affect already-homesteaded rights of others further out, etc.) and people who later move in downriver have no right complain.
Published: April 21, 2006 8:47 PM
W.E. Schetlick
Sione:
My comments and prescriptions assumed for the sake of argument that the science had proved beyond a doubt that any kind of exposure to second-hand smoke in a closed space (like a bar or restaurant) posed some degree of health risk.
Traditionally, the MOST the law would require of the property owner would be a sign warning of the hazard and nothing more. Then no liability could attach to any bar owner for any damages that any patron alleged emanated from second hand smoke in his bar.
One of the other reasons that the ban was institutes in New Jersey was to placate the demands of the health insurance industry.
The health insurance industry has a very powerful lobby in New Jersey, and the underwriters can't know how to spread whatever risk exists for exposure to second hand smoke.
Underwriters can sell insurance and estimate premiums for people who smoke or don't smoke, but have a very difficult time estimating the risk of claims from people who are exposed to second-hand smoke. The insurance companies want to use the power of the government to make their own business of writing health insurance less risky and easier to estimate, thereby increasing their profit margins.
That's why you now have the ban in places of public accomodation, except in the casinos, whose lobby is every bit as influenctial, corrupt and greedy as the health insurance lobby.
Published: April 21, 2006 8:48 PM
Doug Rees
You know, I wish the anti-smoking Puritans in our society would go somewhere else, more in keeping with their overall philosophy--like, maybe, North Korea!!!
Published: April 21, 2006 9:00 PM
M E Hoffer
negative externalities - costs not being able to be include in the purchase price of goods which defines the extent to which the economic system is inefficient.
Do these really exist or are they just an excuse for lazy financial modelling in regard to pricing?
Or, are they the "backdoor" that allows State intervention to "cure" marketplace "inefficiencies"?
Published: April 21, 2006 9:52 PM
W.E. Schetlick
Again, this whole thing is not really about smoking at all or even Puritanism (well, maybe a little at the fringes); it's about property rights, risk pools and insurance premiums.
If the issue was really only about public health, the NJ Legislature would have simply banned the use of tobacco for everyone . . . at home, at work, in the bars, restuarants and casinos. But it's not about health at all, public or otherwise.
The government and GASPers are hoist on their own petard. Once the alleged "scientific" data they invented started to be foisted on the public showing that second-hand smoke could cause illnesses, people started to make insurance claims and workman's comp claims, etc. based upon this alleged cause and effect. Of course, insurance companies were in the middle of all this, and had not factored defending claims based upon alleged injuries and illnesses allegedly emanating from exposure to second-hand smoke into their risk assessments and pool determination.
Insurance companies, faced with the possibility of losses, did what they always do . . . just as they did in the case of mandatory "no-fault" automobile insurance. . . they go to the government and get an indirect subsidy via regulation/property rights infringement.
The losers in these cases are always owners of some property right (a right to sue or purchase their insurance or to invite smokers to buy and enjoy a product on the property owner's premises).
The public doesn't see the political machinations going on behind the scenes and it is in the interest of the parties at interest to mask their true interests, so the insurance companies present and the public buys into a purposeful mischaracterization of the issue invented by the insurance companies . . . the non-issue of "smokers' rights vs. non-smokers' rights" . . . which, of course is not the real issue at all.
The pols get away with this ledgerdemain all the time. They are good at it, as is clearly evidenced by the tone and tenor of some of the comments/debate on this thread.
Too bad. The public got fooled again. They thought the government was "protecting them from harm" when in fact all it was doing was protecting the pocket books of the vested interests . . .
Nice. Duh.
Published: April 21, 2006 10:07 PM
BillG (not Gates)
ME Hofer wrote:
"Do these really exist or are they just an excuse for lazy financial modelling in regard to pricing?
Or, are they the "backdoor" that allows State intervention to "cure" marketplace "inefficiencies"?"
BillG responds:
actually the cause was the neo-classical revolution where the state granted privileges allowing the natural opportunities afforded by nature to accrue to individuals which subsequently MUST shift costs onto society beyond a certain point (sustainable yield)
negative externalities are nothing but the shifting of costs where a third party not involved in a transaction is subject to a tax on their labor.
to address the problem within an equal liberty framework you have to revert back to classical liberalism that treated the natural commons as a seperate and distinct factor of production (not private capital) and limit it's use to the sustainable yield where the resulting economic rent (today this the negative externalities) must be returned directly and equally to the owners of the commons to protect their labor-based property rights.
Published: April 21, 2006 10:13 PM
BillG (not Gates)
WE Schetlick,
I have to say...in the little time that I have been posting here, you have given some of the most insightful commentaries of anyone I have had the pleasure of reading.
thanks!
Published: April 21, 2006 10:18 PM
W.E. Schetlick
Please, stop with the faux economics jargon. None of that applies in this case, anyway. Even Coase would have understood that this is not a case of transaction costs and the "efficient" assignment of economic rights in things.
The same information respecting the potential effect of exposure to second-hand smoke is available to both the customer and the owner, but only the individual customer or the employee knows how much risk each such indicvidual is willing to expose herself to and how much she is willing to pay to spread that risk through purchase of first-party insurance.
Published: April 21, 2006 10:30 PM
W.E. Schetlick
You're welcome. I have been involved as a taxpayer lobbyist in Trenton and have a strong background in Law and Economics (I have an LLM in U.S. Constitutional Law as well) and spend alot of time studying these issues.
Things and issues are rarely what they seem to be at first glance, and legislation of this kind always disfavors the politically/socially unpopular and less-effective lobbying group.
Legislation is never done in the "public interest", that term understood as an agglomoration of all unquantified and unquantifiable private interests. The sooner the average ranting, raging statist realizes this, the better we'll all be.
Published: April 21, 2006 10:39 PM
Jonathan Pinard
What is missing in this debate is whether smoking bans actually improve public health.
Despite an 8-year-old smoking ban in California and a 3-year-old smoking ban in New York, there has been no improvement in public health, reduction in diseases, said to be smoking related, or a reduction in healthcare expenses. In New York, per capita healthcare costs have actually risen by more than 20% since the smoking ban was implemented.
This brings into serious question whether the statistical theories anti smoking crusaders use to foist smoking bans on an unwilling business community are accurate.
Having heard the propagandist’s statements "all studies show that second hand smoke is dangerous" I decided to read through many of the studies on second hand smoke. Please visit www.aboutsecondhandsmoke.com/ets_study_tables.html, you will likely be surprised by what you read.
During the movement towards the prohibition of alcohol during the early 1900's, moral extremists were often quoted as saying "there is no constitutional right to drink", many politicians agreed. Ironically, it took an amendment to the constitution to ban alcohol. Of course the amendment was repealed because as soon as alcohol was banned everyone wanted to drink. It is a shame that anti smoking extremists are so blind to the lessons of the past. Regardless of its merit, the forbidden fruit is often the one most desired.
Jonathan Pinard, Executive Director
New York Coalition of Social Smokers
www.socialsmokers.org
Published: April 21, 2006 10:42 PM
W.E. Schetlick
Suppose everyone voluntarily stopped smoking tobacco products tomorrow, but bar and restaurant owners kept lit cigarettes burning all the time the establishemnts were open. What result, assuming only that people are occasionally subject to second-hand smoke?
But really, the ban is not really about smoking or health, and the irrelvant "battle of statistics" was actually waged in Trenton prior to the passing of the ban. Some experts swore that the government-bought-and-paid-for studies (peer reviewed by other folks connected to the government) were accurate and showed the alleged nexus; tobacco industry studies cast substantial doubt on the "science" of the government studies.
Lawmakers have no idea what is true and what is not in this respect. They don't have to know. All they have to do is to vote the way the money and the votes flow.
This case was no different than any of the others.
Published: April 21, 2006 11:04 PM
banker
"negative externalities"- kindly define this in a non-arbitrary way (ie more than one person can come to the exact same conclusion when asked what that is)
"sustainable yield"- either come up with an exact number or quit putting this in your posts."
-- What I asked.
negative externalities - costs not being able to be include in the purchase price of goods which defines the extent to which the economic system is inefficient.
sustainable yield - the amount of a common resource that can be used without degrading the asset itself inorder to continue further optimum use.
-- What BillG wrote
Exactly what I expected, total, utter nonsense. What is the sustainable yield of coal? Oil? Know one even knows how much oil exists. How much is too much pollution in the air? How many trees can be cut down? You have no definite answer or have yet to provide one. How EXACTLY do you find the cost of a negative externatility? Use an example, please! REAL numbers, an actual example!
Published: April 21, 2006 11:10 PM
Robert Wutscher
Are non-smokers therefore to be relegated to an underclass in ‘open’ society, facing less choices than smokers? Smokers can choose to have a good meal at establishments that allow for smoking as well as at establishments that prohibit smoking (in which case they can desist from smoking for their time there). Committed non-smokers on the other hand only have the non-smoking places to choose from. Have you heard of places where the proprietor has asked the people not smoking on his premises to kindly leave?
The problem with the argument is not so much with its content (or logical structure), but with what’s missing or with what the applied logic cannot answer. One of the missing things is the implicit denial of the existence of discrimination. Non-smokers are generally discriminated against in situations where interactions are to occur between smokers and non-smokers. (Smokers are not bothered whether the non-smoker does not smoke, whereas non-smokers face the lesser alternative of interacting with their own kind, reducing the benefits of wider association otherwise open to the smokers).
Why is it that there are more establishments where smoking is allowed or that the areas reserved for smoking in restaurants are generally the aesthetically better ones? Surely the answer is not simply that there are more smokers than non-smokers, or that smokers spend more money than non-smokers or that smokers happen to be more social than non-smokers (who are having – voluntarily of course - to choose to stay at home). I may of course be proven wrong on empirical grounds!
Why is it that even as a committed non-smoker, it may be a bad entrepreneurial decision to open an establishment for non-smokers only? By opening a non-smoking establishment, I am automatically excluding the market of those who would also like to smoke with their meals. Why is it not, as in the case of alcohol, that proprietors do not sell cigarettes on the premises at more than triple their retail price or charge a ‘corkage’ fee for smoking? By opening up an establishment ‘open to all’, I can, in addition to the smokers whose enjoyment of eating and drinking at my restaurant is enhanced by their ‘free’ smoking, lure in some non-smokers, who are the ones facing the choice of having to balance being subjected to secondary smoke against some social enjoyment or business association/material advancement (whose returns increase through wider association). Why should some of the cost of smoking fall squarely on the shoulders of the non-smokers, particularly as they cannot control the cause, except by shunning social contact with smokers (who in turn do not have this concern)?
To advocate that logic dictates that non-smokers and smokers both have the choice as to smoking in their ‘private establishment/public places’, whilst at the same time appeasing those that feel discriminated against in an ‘open’ society, is to advocate complete segregation, i.e., BOTH non-smokers should be banned from smoking-designated areas and smokers from non-smoking ones. The free market will then work to support both parties within their compounds, allowing for representation of private establishments/public places on the basis of the needs of their patrons. Only in this way could one conceive of the contentment of both parties, even though the contentment of smokers could be enhanced by allowing them to go into non-smoking areas (in which case, if also allowed to smoke again, discrimination will again work itself in crowding out the non-smokers as proprietors see the benefits of opening up establishments ‘for all’).
This brings me to the next point of contention: the definition of public places. Should an establishment that happens to be privately owned be defined as a private place in terms of the physical property of who owns the place? And should this be considered no different as my home privately owned? In which case, is a council house owned by the government provided for some citizen to be considered a public place? Surely it is contradictory and therefore wrong, at least from a subjectivist point of view, to define private property purely in terms of physical ownership.
I think that what most people have in mind of a public place is one where the free association of different groups of people are to be allowed (even where service or entrance fees are charged, regardless of whether the place is run as a private businesses or subsidized). And what any individuals going to a public place do not want is to have discrimination working against them. To the extent that an establishment is expressly established for a specific class, such as a cigar lounge, all cigar smokers will be happy to go there as long as any particular group of cigar smokers does not feel discriminated against. Non-smokers are effectively discouraged from frequenting cigar lounges as proprietors lose out on revenues to the extent that non-smokers are occupying their premises (if too many non-smokers frequented the lounge, the proprietor would have to consider charging a type of ‘corkage’ fee for non-smokers in order to keep his business running, which would only further discourage the non-smokers from frequenting). Cigar lounges differ to other ‘open for all’ establishments (even if one adds – “at your own risk�) as cigar lounges have been expressly established for smoking, with snacks and drinks forming a subsidiary part of the atmosphere.
In the case of a restaurant soliciting business ‘from all’, however, why should the smoker be feeling discriminated against because he is not allowed to smoke, when for all intents and purposes of providing good food, both the smokers and non-smokers are receiving the same service and paying the same money? By allowing smoking you are only enhancing the enjoyment of the smokers and reducing the enjoyment of the non-smokers. To argue otherwise is to conflate the choices of ‘eating meal at restaurant’ or ‘enjoying public scenery’ with the choices of ‘smoking and eating’ and ‘smoking and enjoying the public view’; and to ignore the implications of discrimination on an ‘open’- truly liberal for all individuals - society.
Published: April 22, 2006 5:55 AM
W.E. Schetlick
Thanks for your thoughtful note.
Property law is the oldest corpus of Anglo-Saxon law. Rights that inure to people who "own" a fee simple absolute include the right to include or exclude anyone from the property they desire for any reason whatsoever. In a free society, discrimination for and against people in the use and disposal of one's property is part and parcel of what it means to be free.
The physical property itself (the corpus defined by metes and bounds) is not what you get when you purchase a business and a piece of property. Property law traditionally recognizes "property" to mean a bundle of rights that the owner has to peacefully use and dispose of at her sole discretion. These rights are good against claims of the whole world, including groups of people calling themselves "legislators". This "bundle of rights" is what we loosely call "property".
The idea of "public property" is actually the queer duck in the soup, not private property. Some of the same rights respecting use and disposal inure to "government" agencies when they acquire property, either by purchase, condemnation or regulation (inverse condemnation). But no matter how government acquires property (defined as a bundle of rights) it must pay for the property it so acquires for public use.
In practice, a bar owner opens her door to everyone who seeks to purchase her product at the agreed upon price and comport themselves according to the owner's rules while on the owner's property. In so doing, however, the owner reserves the right to refuse either entrance upon her property or purchase of her product.
It is not now and never has been the proper province of government to abrogate the peaceful exercise of private rights to property no matter the reason that legislators may think admirable to salubrious. This is the whole stinl about eminent domain and regulatory takings.
I would suggest that all those who wish to comment upon the legitimacy of "property" to find a good substantive book on the subject.
Published: April 22, 2006 8:07 AM
W.E. Schetlick
I neglected to mention:
There is no such indentifiable "thing" as a "class" of smokers and "class" of non-smokers with special, cognizable, social interests that justify some legal intervention on their behalf and against discriminating property owners.
This kind of quasi-sociological mumbo-jumbo is nothing more than hyperbole, hypostacy and reification and is the primary cause of confusion in respect of the rights to property and has falsely "legitimized" all manner of immoral interference with the rights that property owners may exercise in respect of their property.
No one, irrespective of their individual proclivities to be smokers nor non-smokers, have the right to dictate the terms of the use of the someone else's property. You go on to another's property at their invitation only, and subject to their rules and regulations. If you do not like their rules and regulations or you find the owner objectionable for any reason whatsoever, you have the right not to do business with that property owner.
Published: April 22, 2006 8:53 AM
M E Hoffer
"Do these really exist or are they just an excuse for lazy financial modelling in regard to pricing?
Or, are they the "backdoor" that allows State intervention to "cure" marketplace "inefficiencies"?"
banker, exactly. I think it's obvious that what is subsidized by the State becomes of/for the State, even the majority of what passes for Economics.
The following may be off-topic, but serves as an example that was the basis of my original Q's in regard to Negative Externalities.
A friend of mine is an Engineer that can(w/ IP) literally put Industrial Smokestacks out of business. Power plants are the largest single-point source of "pollution". Within that stream itself, there is enough energy(Heat,primarily) to allow the cryogenic fracturing into its constituents. Namely, CO2, CO, O2, O3, N, H, Ar, all the way to carbon-black(particulate-pollution)and Hg. The constituents listed, not exhaustively, are Industrial Gases and Chemicals, all. Do we find PPL Inc.(or, the Ute near you) leveraging their massive headstart into these fields? Right. "We comply with the EPA and are investing U$D MM's in "scrubbers" "Hey, give us a break, we were just recently de-regulated."
"APD is one of our largest electricity customers"(this one being a better Finance answer, but, still, poor Economics)
The problem may seem to be the Engineer's, but it's a problem for all of us. The State's effective verticalization of just about any segment of our Economy, you'd care to think about, leads to massive wastes(pollution, included, no extra charge)...
Back on topic, if we still have redress to the Constitution, Public Smoking bans are a violation of the 5th Amendment.
Published: April 22, 2006 8:56 AM
W. E. Schetlick
The 5th Amendment, to the extent that it recognizes a government power to take property for public use, is a queer duck, indeed, especially since the Bill of Rights was supposed to be about individual rights against the government, not the other way around. Strange locus for the enumeration of a power . . .
I presume you are refering to the regulatory taking that are the sum and substance of bans on smoking on private property.
Of course, an originalist understanding of the 5th Amendment applied to the issue at hand would require "just compensation" for a partial, regulatory taking" of the property rights that bar and restaurant owners to draw up the terms of their realtions with their customers and employees. However, as you well know, the Supreme Court's jurisprudence in this area is a horrible mess, and the prevailing doctrinal approach of the court would not lead to a "just compensation" for the "taking" for a "public use".
Published: April 22, 2006 9:27 AM
M E Hoffer
"an originalist understanding of the 5th Amendment applied to the issue at hand would require "just compensation" for a partial, regulatory taking" of the property rights that bar and restaurant owners to draw up the terms of their realtions with their customers and employees."-- yes, exactly.
And, as others have had the grace to note, W.E., you are an appreciated light that Diogenes, himself, would have been proud to wield.
Published: April 22, 2006 9:43 AM
BillG (not Gates)
banker wrote:
"How EXACTLY do you find the cost of a negative externatility? Use an example, please! REAL numbers, an actual example!"
BillG responds:
we know scientifically what the carbon concentrations where in the air in the past (pre-industrial - 280 ppm) with no externalities and what it is today (380 ppm) with externalities.
using the best science possible we determine what carbon concentrations will not produce externalities and sell permits for that amount of carbon to be released into the sky to use as a sink.
the economic rent raised in the purchase of those titles to pollute (actually titles to exclusive use of our common asset the sky as a sink) represents exactly the cost of what had previously been negative externalities - a tax on the wages of all those individuals being excluded from an equal access opportunity right to use the sky as a sink up to the sustainbale yield to derive their sustenance.
Published: April 22, 2006 9:46 AM
Robert Wutscher
Does Schetlick support Apartheid? In South Africa, the whites had ownership of the majority of the land and justified their position by retorting that the blacks had their own homelands and if they came to work in the white suburbs, they did so of their own choice (very much like non-smokers having to put up with secondary smoke for some other benefit). If they did not like to be discriminated against - for example, not being able to use beaches for whites only or not being able to go to private restaurants or use toilets designated whites only - let them choose to stay in their homelands!? (In fact let them open up their own restaurants!) The point I am making is not so much about the definition of property which seems to be Schetlick's fortei, but acts of discrimination that are part of human nature (if they can get away with it). In no way do I support government intervention in general, particularly if the ends of government intervention have the opposite effect of the intended consequences! But we should not become lazy to work out the consequences of the intervention because we simply believe in the 'holy creed' of any and all government intervention is bad. It is necessary to work out the consequences for each particular case. All I hear is lobbying for smokers against non-smokers and the only consequence is that smokers will lose out on some pleasure at nobody's expense, which I would define as nothing but a group interest. I read nothing about unintended consequences, such as banning smoking in public places creating more smoking in public places. There is something as due regard for your fellow man (even if he happens to be black or a non-smoker).
Or does Schetlick also not support the view that the state has a role to play in upholding the law, particularly with regard to theft and murder, even on private property, however you may wish to define it? If your answer is yes, but only in that role, then why only in that role? The true test of state intervention lies in the real consequences of that intervention, which in most economic cases, gets bungled because people, particularly legislators do not understand economics. And particularly because in most economic cases the market can sort itself out. But one must not become dogmatic about it. Smoking or not smoking is not, however, so much of an economic issue (just as being law-abiding is not economics). It is more an issue of self-interest and how to accomodate such self-interest amongst the interest-groups in a free society. And such accomodation necessitates a political process. Just as the interest groups of apartheid or in slavery have had to be negotiated with, so too I believe, decades from now, smoking in public will be looked down upon as barbaric, even though the aprtheid whites and the slave owners of the South did not consider themselves barbaric at the time.
If you go to Italy, a country not generally known for being law-abiding, and where a ban has recently been passed, all smoking at public places has practically stopped. And no one is complaining, instead people have become considerate of non-smokers.
Published: April 22, 2006 10:27 AM
Sione
Externalities? An arbitrary term designed to evade principle. There is a good article on the Mises site that deals with it. Check it.
People evaluate the factors necessary to come to their decisions. They determine the weighting of each factor and they make their decisions. The notion of externalities is a sly way of saying, "Hey! These people don't value what I value." That quickly leads to, "There needs to be a mechanism where I can make people value what I value." And that soon leads to a justification for force etc. etc.
"Sustainable" is another such term.
This smoking business is such an easy issue to deal with. We all have knowledge about smoking and the places where people smoke. We also know about property. We have preferences. And best of all we know how to make decisions. Stay or leave. How easy is that?
Sione
Published: April 22, 2006 10:34 AM
Sione
Robert
Don't try to play the race card as an analogy unless you understand the principle behind what you are arguing.
I own a tavern. Should I decide that anyone called Robert who happens to have a European surname shall be prohibited from my tavern, that's my business and you have no right to enter the premises. Tough!
Of course should some other fellow decide Pacific peoples are not allowed on his property, then that's me banned. Fair enough. That's his place. Simple stuff.
Why do you tie yourselves up in such mental knots attempting to justify forcing other people to act as you want? It's a dishonest thing to do.
You have a choice when entering the premises of another person. You can stay or, if you don't like it there, you can leave.
Sione
Published: April 22, 2006 10:47 AM
BillG (not Gates)
Sione wrote:
"People evaluate the factors necessary to come to their decisions. They determine the weighting of each factor and they make their decisions. The notion of externalities is a sly way of saying, "Hey! These people don't value what I value." That quickly leads to, "There needs to be a mechanism where I can make people value what I value." And that soon leads to a justification for force etc. etc."
BillG responds:
in the case of externalities, the decision made between two parties subjects a third party to an economic obligation (force)...how can that ever by justified?
Published: April 22, 2006 10:51 AM
Sione Vatu
BTW if you do enter someone else's premises and they want you to leave, then you leave. It's their place and not yours.
Sione
Published: April 22, 2006 10:52 AM
BillG (not Gates)
Sione wrote:
"if you do enter someone else's premises and they want you to leave, then you leave. It's their place and not yours."
BillG responds:
the logical conclusion being that if all locations are legally owned then you have no right to be anywhere at all unless you part with some of your wages under threat of force...do you believe we are born with rights - meaning not having to be purchased or gifted?
Published: April 22, 2006 10:59 AM
Sione
BillG
Depends on context. Depends what arbitrary meaning you assign the term "externality." Depends on why you determine "economic obligation" and "force" to have the same meaning.
Sione
Published: April 22, 2006 10:59 AM
BillG (not Gates)
Sione wrote:
"Depends on context"
BillG responds:
can you please give me the context for the justification in obliging someone via the threat of force to be responsibile for the what transpires from two other independent party's contract?
Published: April 22, 2006 11:05 AM
Peter
The only real problem with apartheid is that it was enforced by the state. The answer, as always, is simply to get rid of the force in the equation, not to add more (e.g., forcing stupid racists to let black people use their toilets, or whatever).
Published: April 22, 2006 11:16 AM
Robert
Peter,
This completely ignores the fact that apartheid existed long before it became institutionalised and enforced by the state. People really did believe and dare I say some still believe that some races are inferior to others. Merely getting rid of the force in the equation would also not have been enough in the transformation that South Africa has undergone.
Published: April 22, 2006 11:43 AM
Robert Wutscher
Sione,
you seem to be in complete denial of the assymetry of the relation between smokers and non-smokers. Your logic also does not answer the question posed by this assymetry, i.e., that smokers are not bothered by the non-smokers, but the non-smokers are bothered (and, even if only possibly as you may wish to contend, harmed) by the smokers; resulting in less choice in this world for the non-smokers.
Your answer to me appears to be simply tough to the non-smokers. You can't help it that smokers can tolerate non-smokers, but the opposite does not hold. See, smokers are such tolerant people!
By the way, I am not forcing you to give up smoking, you are free to do so in your private space - if we could only agree on a definition of what a private and public space is - I am only forcing you to take non-smokers into consideration in your actions in just the same way as I would have the law force you not to steal from, harm or murder people in your tavern. For if smoking is harmful to non-smokers, does that not qualify as assault? You cannot get away with a sign outside your tavern saying, "you enter my tavern at your own risk of being assaulted by me" .
We are dealing with a social issue here, not economics and neither government intervention in economics. You seem to be hung up on 'can do with my property what I want without regard for others who may pass over it'. And on this issue only a political resolution will settle the matter. You may be disgruntled after the ban, but you will get over it. Non-smokers do not have that luxury. They have to stay at home for life.
Published: April 22, 2006 12:05 PM
Sione
BillG
Now you are starting to change your definitions and context somewhat. Here we have the introduction of a "threat of force" instead of an "economic obligation." They are different.
Returning to your original comment:- "in the case of externalities, the decision made between two parties subjects a third party to an economic obligation (force)...how can that ever by justified?"
How about this? I ask Siotu (the owner of the local telephone exchange) to refuse to handle your phone traffic. He agrees and informs you of the fact he will no longer switch your phone calls or handle your communications. Around here that would mean your business would be finished, especially once everyone else found out. I come to you and say I'll handle your phone traffic but for triple the tariff. I route your communications through Sione's exchange. Siotu and I split the fee.
Or what about this? You are an importer of gasoline and diesel to the islands. I approach the regional fuel wholesaler and sign an agreement with him. We start importing fuel into the islands. I know that we can sell the fuel well below your costs and keep doing it for long enough for you to go out of business. So now I come to you and inform you that one way or another you will be selling your facility at knock down prices. Either you sell it to me now or I shall wait until you go out of business and you'll only get cents on the dollar. Meanwhile I inform the supplier and the bank of your precarious business position (they'd already know). We start discussions about what is to happen as your business collapses. [a situation exactly like this actually occurred recently- No! I wasn't involved]
Or what about this? Instead of competing with you in fuel the importation business I start making fuel in an anerobic digester. My new technology allows me to do this for well under your price, especially as people are paying me to collect the feedstock for my process from their properties (so my new technology gets me two income streams for the one process). Your profits evaporate etc. etc.
Note there is no force involved. Economic obigation perhaps, but not IOF.
Anyway I think what you'd be best to do is define your terms and context. As with the term "rights", the term "externalities" can be used to mean many things. It is poorly defined.
My preference is to look to the situation, identify and evaluate the various factors and make a decision. There are factors which necessarily receive a higher weighting than others but that does not argue to the existnce of "externalities." All it means is that some factors were not as imporant as others.
Sione
Published: April 22, 2006 12:08 PM
Sione Vatu
BillG
I do not accept that anyone is born with "rights" in the sense that they are something that you can possess or own.
Should all property be privately owned that does not mean you can't legally be on or at a certain property. In each particular case it would depend on what the owner determined. Whether the owner wants you to pay a fee for being there or not is up to the owner of that particular property. I note that none of my friends, business colleagues or associates charge me for visiting. Nor do any of the local shop-keepers or store owners. The local movie theatre does charge, the boundahs!
You do not have a "right to tresspass."
Sione
Published: April 22, 2006 12:20 PM
Sione Vatu
Robert
Just because I allow people access to my property that does not make it become their property. It is and remains MINE. All of it. So I determine whether smoking is allowed or not on MY property.
Of course the same applies for you and your property. There, you make the decisions.
Perfect symmetry!
Sione
Published: April 22, 2006 12:26 PM
BillG (not Gates)
Sione wrote:
"Now you are starting to change your definitions and context somewhat. Here we have the introduction of a "threat of force" instead of an "economic obligation." They are different."
BillG responds:
an economic obligation is either backed by force, as in the case of land where you either pay the owner the economic rent or be thrown off or it is imposed without any choice as in the case of negative externalities.
Published: April 22, 2006 12:41 PM
BillG (not Gates)
Sione wrote;
"I do not accept that anyone is born with "rights" in the sense that they are something that you can possess or own."
BillG responds:
well therein lies the problem...
Sione wrote:
"Should all property be privately owned that does not mean you can't legally be on or at a certain property."
BillG responds:
not without that permission being gifted or purchased - hence no right of self-ownership is possible as I don't believe a right needs to be purchased or gifted.
Published: April 22, 2006 12:51 PM
BillG (not Gates)
Sione wrote;
"I do not accept that anyone is born with "rights" in the sense that they are something that you can possess or own."
BillG responds:
well therein lies the problem...
Sione wrote:
"Should all property be privately owned that does not mean you can't legally be on or at a certain property."
BillG responds:
not without that permission being gifted or purchased - hence no right of self-ownership is possible as I don't believe a right needs to be purchased or gifted.
Published: April 22, 2006 12:52 PM
W.E. Schetlick
Whole libraries have been written on the idea of property and what it necessarily entails.
I do not support state-sponsored (forced) segregation or descrimination. No state should force anyone to association with anyone else, nor should it prohibit people from peaceably associating with anyone on one's own property for any reason whasoever. Government-ordered and sponsored aparthied is a violation of property right. As for the government itself in iths dealings with citizens: to the extent that government exists, it must treat everyone the same (similarly situated, no invidious discrimination) in public matters before the law.
Private descrimination, of course, as an extention of one's right to property (one of the sticks in the bundle) is not to be banned or interfered with by government.
Again, I would urge all of you to read a good comprehensive, legal text on the issue of property law and rights. Properly understood and applied, property rights define and delimit legitimate, arms-length human relationships and virtually eliminate conflict and its related resolution costs. When reading this book, pay particular attention to the law as it defines a trespass to property.
The problem with the law today is its intrusive positivism: the idea that some disembodied group like a "class" or a "society" has rights superior to those of property owners with respect to the peaceful use and disposal of the owners' property. No such group rights exist with respect to the property of others.
For the umteenth time: this is not about smoking. It's about the right of a property owner to maintain an alleged hazardous condition on his own property. The rest of the commentary I read in here is simply a [pardon] smokescreen.
Published: April 22, 2006 1:18 PM
banker
A person just does not materialize into this world out of thin air. The parents (or one of them) who bares the child must own some sort of property or at least rent some. And I doubt most people would leave a child to simply die if the parents of the child abandoned him/her.
I think that deals with the crutch of your argument.
Published: April 22, 2006 1:26 PM
BillG (not Gates)
person wrote:
"A person just does not materialize into this world out of thin air. The parents (or one of them) who bares the child must own some sort of property or at least rent some. And I doubt most people would leave a child to simply die if the parents of the child abandoned him/her."
BillG responds:
yes a parent has custodial rights that require positive legal obligations until emancipation.
it still begs the question though...when do persons get the opportunity to excercise their right of self-ownership that does not need to be gifted or purchased?
Published: April 22, 2006 2:06 PM
banker
"it still begs the question though...when do persons get the opportunity to excercise their right of self-ownership that does not need to be gifted or purchased?"--B
Um, the same way you are exercising your right right now. Land ownership has worked since the beginning of time. A person cannot exist without someone "gifting" them with life. I think this point is obvious. So if a person is to be born, someone would have had to have birthed them. Thus, a baby is given the gift of life and some piece of property to exist. You cannot be born and not be given the gift of property. Impossible, unless babies are left to die in street or are incinerated.
Published: April 22, 2006 4:03 PM
W.E. Schetlick
You all must read professor and economist Walter Block's treatment of the the issues you have raised respecting the origins of self-ownership; the rights of parents and others respecting children; and the overall impact that these relationships have on the ultimate nature of all legtimate property rights.
To locate the relevant material, go to WalterBlock.com and select his article entitled, "Libertarianism, positive obligations and property abandomnment: childrens' rights".
While you're at it read his article entitled, Compromising the Uncompromisable: Speed Limits, Parades & Cigarettes".
Most telling is his footnote in the "cigarette" answering the charge that cigarette smoking in a closed space is per se invasive (answering the "kick" scenario offeded by a some of you). Essentially, his simple argument is that even if second-hand smoke is per se invasive, one cannot complain of being invaded by it after having been warned of its existence on another's private property any more than a boxer, having voluntarily gone in the ring, can complain of being punched".
Yep. If you can't take the heat in someone else's kitchen, you needn't go in the kitchen. But having gone in there, you can't thereafter demand that the chef turn off the stove.
Published: April 22, 2006 4:30 PM
BillG (not Gates)
banker wrote:
"Land ownership has worked since the beginning of time"
BillG responds:
maybe for some (the entitled) but not for all as is my claim and the difficulties of your position soon to be discussed...
banker wrote:
"A person cannot exist without someone "gifting" them with life. I think this point is obvious. So if a person is to be born, someone would have had to have birthed them. Thus, a baby is given the gift of life and some piece of property to exist. You cannot be born and not be given the gift of property. Impossible, unless babies are left to die in street or are incinerated."
BillG responds:
generally I agree that parents create a baby via their effort and that in utero the parents gift the life as the fetus begins the process of asserts their independence...that they can take that potential life up to a certain point in utero but not beyond as the child is recognized as having rights independent of their parents.
at birth we generally say that we are "born with certain rights" as a human being (although as I have shown it happens earlier) which has to mean that they do not have to be purchased or otherwise aquired like gifted...but because parents have custodial rights over the child and thus a positive obligation they are required to provide a legal place to *be* and the necessities of life (food, clothing, shelter, etc) up until emancipation.
but the question still remains...
how can you have a right to self-ownership at birth that does not require a purchase or gift yet no place legally to stand at emancipation free from tribute to another (either gifted from parents or purchased from a landowner)?
it is logically inconsistent...
Published: April 22, 2006 4:33 PM
Sione
BillG
So where do your cryptic references get us? Not very far unfortunately.
So far you've asserted the existence of "externalities." These seem to occur when a "decision made between two parties subjects a third party to an economic obligation (force)."
You appear to consider this unjustifiable. I do not necessarily agree. In the examples I wrote about a justification is possible.
You assert economic obligation is force.
Subsequently you assert an economic obligation is "backed by force" or is an "externality" which is imposed without your choice. This is a somewhat different idea.
Context changes. Entities alter. Definitions remain vague.
This is getting to be circular discussion unfortunately. I suspect the "rights" discussion is headed down the same path.
It is difficult to come to a conclusion in the absence of your definitions and validations. Please do a small favour and explain your argument.
Sione
Published: April 22, 2006 5:18 PM
BillG (not Gates)
Sione wrote:
"Please do a small favour and explain your argument."
BillG responds:
beyond Locke's proviso, you can't logically claim to have an absolute property right to ownership of land and simultaneously have an absolute property right to ownership of your labor as the natural extension of self-ownership.
they are mutually exclusive.
you either have to accept this or deny that there is a right to self-ownership that does not need to be purchased or otherwise acquired (gifted).
Published: April 22, 2006 5:26 PM
banker
"you either have to accept this or deny that there is a right to self-ownership that does not need to be purchased or otherwise acquired (gifted)."--B
"right to self ownership", this does not exist. Two people cannot occupy the same spot at the same time. Both exercise their right to self ownership, yet it is physically impossible for two people to occupy the same space at the same time.
Published: April 22, 2006 7:02 PM
BillG (not Gates)
correct - one will literally have to force the other one off the spot or be required to pay a tribute to them backed by force...
there is a way to do it though...require the economic rent be shared equally and directly between neighbors in a community so no matter where anyone else locates - no one is economically harmed.
this is the closest ystem humanly possible to be born into a "state of nature" or in other words - simple justice via equal liberty.
Published: April 22, 2006 8:01 PM
banker
Economic rent? This is a subjective valuation by the two individuals in question. What if they both say they would rather die than not be able to occupy this specific spot? One person has to die. How is economic rent calculated then?
Published: April 22, 2006 9:19 PM
BillG (not Gates)
no competition - no economic rent - no violation of property rights to labor - no problems
Published: April 22, 2006 9:31 PM
W.E. Schetlick
As you all have so clearly illustrated, the idea of rights to property can be obfuscated and trivialized by "going metaphysical". "Rights in things" is deontological, not metaphysical.
The proper thrust and purview of the law is not based wholly upon pure logic, but rather experience and tradition.
Without the construct of mutually recognized and enforceable just entitlements, organized society as we know it would be impossible for any number of reasons. And a perfect system for defining just entitlements, to the best of my knowledge, has never been discovered and implemented.
Currently, we enjoy a theoretically satisfying (not perfect!) system of defining entitlements. A "first in time, first in right" rule is arbitrary, to be sure, but there is no valid reason (more logical, less arbitrary or utile) for using any other rule that I have seen thus far. (See Rothbard) This rule certainly easily resolves the problem of two people claiming the right to occupy the same space at the same time, for example. (BTW: That two people cannot occupy the same space is a metaphysical truth which has no bearing whatsoever upon deontological rights, including the right to self-ownership, which itself is not metaphysical derived and defined, but deontological.)
Reality imposes scarcity upon us. We must define property rules in order to sort out claims to the use of scarce resources accoording to some formula.
The argument set forth by those advocating the application of traditional property rules to the instant issue is simple: the conflicts related to second hand smoke (irrespective of whether it is deemed/considered per se invasive or de minimis)can and should be resolved by the simple application of traditional property rules.
Clearly, there is no special reason to depart from these rules or to make any kind of exception to the rule.
The only reason there is any debate over this question is because governments have passed inconsistent arbitrary rules that have abrogated traditional property rules by making "public" or quasi-public that which was always considered private. Governments have blurred whatever clear lines of right have been recognized by and through the application of property rules; thus, the issue of whether smoking is "permitted" in closed rooms has become one of warring political factions in a public arena.
Hobbes trumps Locke. Very bad. No holds barred, and the transient majority with the most political clout wins (for now). Whoever can wrest control of the political majority tomorrow can make another rule, this time ordering the death of anyone thinking about smoking, even in their own home.
Published: April 23, 2006 5:28 AM
W.E. Schetlick
I am going to assume (without more) that most of those commenting in here were not "of age" in or around the time when the original "public accomodation" laws were passed. (If I am assuming incorrectly, ignore the rest of this.)
The original "public accomodation" laws were promulgated and sold on the basis that they were a limited exception to established property rules in order to remedy past and prevent future racial discrimination against a persecuted minority.
Those who argued for these exceptions (not changes!) in the established property rules promised that the exceptions set forth in the law would be LIMITED to preventing racial discrimination.
Skeptics and experienced public policy analysts aregued that future generations of interventionists and statists would use this "exception" to eat up the rule, and that even if you could justify the exception (which you can't), the law would have set its feet on a completely new and slippery slope which would lead to an ever-shinking area of private ownership and the ever-decreasing application of traditional property rules.
The smoking ban represents the realization of the simple predictions of the skeptics and anti-statists. Exceptions upon exceptions were offered to the property rules until the rules were no longer the rules but the exception. The exceptions have, in fact, eaten up the traditional rules.
What is interesting is that some people in Texas who have been arrested for "public drunkenness" while sitting in a bar (not driving or threatening anyone) have interposed the defense that the bar was "private property"; therefore, the law against "public drunkenness" could not be enforced there. The police and law enforcement officials, of course, understand the bar to be a place of "public accomodation" FOR ALL PURPOSES now.
Of course, what none of the parties in that controversy understand is that the law against "public drunkenness" is very old and was passed when the idea of "public property" was limited in scope to very few places, and certainly not to bars and liquor establishments which were clearly identified as "private" when the prohibition was passed.
So the exception has become the rule. How do we know this? Well, town legislative bodies in Texas which have laws prohibiting "public drunkenness" and that have been enforcing same in bars are now suggesting EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE OF PUBLIC ACCOMODATION so that people can be drunk in bars!!!!!!!!!!
So there we have it. The original property rule has changed, having been eaten up the numerous exceptions. No where is there any such thing as private property anymore. The "public" owns all property and permits some private exceptions . . . at least for now.
Published: April 23, 2006 8:03 AM
BillG (not Gates)
WE Schetlick wrote:
"The "public" owns all property and permits some private exceptions . . . "
BillG responds:
the word "public" has more than a few different meanings...
for instance some people use it to mean collective property while others use it to mean property owned in common.
yet these two meanings are actually quite different as one constitutes a group right and the other an individual right.
how are you using the term?
Published: April 23, 2006 8:44 AM
W.E. Schetlick
Private property has several forms or tenancy and you will have to take a law course in property to understand them all. You are simply confounded and confused.
I will simply and always use the "property" to mean exclusive dominion, use, control of anything, any piece of real property, inchoate claim, chose in action, etc.
Published: April 23, 2006 9:17 AM
W.W. Schetlick
Group ownership tenancies of property are still "private" ownership. "Public ownership" is anything that the government exercises sole dominion, use and control over.
Thus, in the case of the air in the bar, government's banning smoking in a bar is the government claiming the air as its property, able to exclude the bar owner from the use and control of it. By passing laws regulating the non invasive use of anything previously privately owned . . . like the act of selling or trading that which one owns (a property right), the government or "public" basically is "taking" that "property" for itself.
Published: April 23, 2006 9:41 AM
BillG (not Gates)
the questions was: how are you using the term "public" not "property"
in NH I have an individual equal access opportunity right to use all bodies of water over 20 acres so long as my access/use does not infringe on any other individual's right to the same.
all surface bodies of water over 20 acres and all ground water is therefore owned in common with the state as the trustee charged with a fiduciary duty to protect it as an integrated common asset for today's use/access and future generations and to insure individual rights are upheld.
if instead it were owned collectively by the state as the delegated authority my rights would be very different.
Published: April 23, 2006 9:49 AM
BillG (not Gates)
WE Schetlick wrote:
"Thus, in the case of the air in the bar, government's banning smoking in a bar is the government claiming the air as its property, able to exclude the bar owner from the use and control of it."
BillG responds:
no, maybe it is excercising it's rightful role of protecting the equal access opportunity rights of other individuals to use the air as a sink up until the sustainable yield (Locke's proviso) which is being infringed upon by the smokers resulting in them being subject to negative externalities.
Published: April 23, 2006 9:55 AM
Banker
Economic rent? This is a subjective valuation by the two individuals in question. What if they both say they would rather die than not be able to occupy this specific spot? One person has to die. How is economic rent calculated then?
Posted by: banker at April 22, 2006 09:19 PM
no competition - no economic rent - no violation of property rights to labor - no problems
Posted by: BillG (not Gates) at April 22, 2006 09:31 PM
If your idea of "social justice" is two people trying to kill each other for the right to occupy a single space, then there is no further reason for me to post on this matter.
Published: April 23, 2006 11:26 AM
BillG (not Gates)
Banker wrote:
"If your idea of "social justice" is two people trying to kill each other for the right to occupy a single space, then there is no further reason for me to post on this matter."
BillG responds:
my idea of social justice based on equal liberty is for the economic rent that attaches to all locations as people compete for access to be returned directly in equal amounts to all those within the community who are being excluded.
in essence, no matter where any one else chooses to locate no one is economically harmed.
then people will naturally refrain from killing each other over any specific location...
Published: April 23, 2006 11:35 AM
W.E. Schetlick
Like I said, you need to read a book on property law. You're way, way off. Whatever you think the government SHOULD DO has absolutely nothing to do with traditional property rules, which by the way, are supposed to constrain government as well (which is why you have the 5th Amendment and every state has a state constitution corelative).
I suppose you can misconstrue this issue any which way you want to arrive at any particular interpretation of "social justice". But . . .
Ownership is the right to exercise sole dominion and control over any scarce resource. Public ownership of a resource is where the government exercises sole dominion and control over a scarce resource.
Ultimately this means that government can dictate the use of the resource; whatever it ultimately does with it (no matter the ends for which it is used), the resource is publicly owned. In so doing, and unless the resource is severable and sold by the owner to the government, the exercise by the government of dominion and control (meaning the right/power to exclude all others) is a "taking" which is otherwise prosecutable/actionable at law behavior if done by private individuals for theft and/conversion or trespass.
In the case of the air inside the bar, the government has taken the power of sole dominion and control away from the previous rightful owner. Given that air is not really severable as a separate resource, one should argue that the government has effectively taken the entire property through regulation.
Taking is legal, especially regulatory taking (but of course immoral and wholly unjustifiable under traditional proeprty rules), and the law generally provides that the bar air made "public" through inverse condemnation/regulation has to be taken for a "public use" and for which "just compensation" must be paid. Naturally, and in order to make room for the Regulatory State, the courts have simply ruled that the "taking" is not a taking. [Poof] There goes your property. Was that good for you?
So you can purchase a fee simple absolute in a bar or other place of "public accomodation" and the state can literally and legally take complete dominion and control of your premises via various regulation without paying you a penny, leaving you with a mere naked title (a deed to nothing) with no rights to use, sell or dispose of the actual corpus of the property at all. But of course, you still get the property tax bill . . .
This is what now passes for "social justice". Yep. Sure does sound like justice to me.
As far as I'm concerned, there's little more that can be said of any substance on this particular issue. The smoking bans in bars are unjustified and unjustifiable under any understanding of traditional property rules. Whatever other rules anyone else thinks SHOULD apply based upon some other fanciful idea is interesting, but not dispositive.
Published: April 23, 2006 6:22 PM
W.E. Schetlick
You can seach any reporter anywhere on the palnet and you will not find one citation to the "Locke Proviso" as a basis for deciding any property las dispute. The Locke Proviso is a theoretical constuct, not a part of traditional property law.
Traditional property law provides that a person who either claims previously unowned property or purchases previosly owned property has sole dominion and control of the space, air etc. within the confines of that property. (For open property, the "ad coelum" doctrine is the old law. Thus, with your deed of purchase and the interest conveyed, you had sole dominion over the air inside the confines of the property and any structures erected thereon. There is no proviso in the deed of purchase or exceptions for government regulation.
Published: April 23, 2006 6:35 PM
BillG (not Gates)
W.E. Schetlick wrote:
"Ownership is the right to exercise sole dominion and control over any scarce resource. Public ownership of a resource is where the government exercises sole dominion and control over a scarce resource."
BillG responds:
and I understand why someone posting on an Austrian blog would completely miss the fact that common ownership is a synthesis between individual and collective ownership because it was the neo-classical paradigm that the Austrian school is thoroughly entrenched in that purposely conflated the natural commons for private capital.
by treating the natural commons as an individual equal access right so long as one does not infringe on the equal access rights of any other individual we can address social justice (the opposite of government granted privilege allowing enclosure of the commons) from a logically consistent philosophical basis (self-ownership) where the inevitable negative externalities from private enclosure beyond the sustinable yield (Locke's proviso) forces a cost onto individuals excluded from the enclosure that violate their absolute rights to their labor.
W.E. Schetlick wrote:
"Whatever you think the government SHOULD DO has absolutely nothing to do with traditional property rules"
BillG responds:
and I am once again telling you that constitutionally in the state of NH all the ground water and all surface water over 20 acres is owned in common with the state acting as the public trustee.
I have the individual right backed by the state to access/use any of the lakes here or the groundwater so long as my access/use does not infringe on any other...it is a just use of state force to insure my right of access is protected.
why couldn't the air within the bar be treated the exact same way as the water - owned in common??
Published: April 23, 2006 7:10 PM
Bob S
I agree with property rights of the owner but the problem with not restricting where smoking can occur is that smokers are drug addicts and will smoke whenever their urges compell them. Tobacco smoke is a hazardouse substance and should be avoided if you want to maintain good health. If laws restricting smoking are not established smokers will smoke everywhere. This would restrict people who choose not to breath second hand smoke from visiting any public or privately owned establishment.
Published: April 24, 2006 12:31 AM
Bruno Bondarovsky
Hi everyone.
What an interesting (and big) discussion.
I understand this is a really asymetrical issue and I also understand this is a very unique situation: not like a kick, spray or any other agression.
In Brazil, we have a law that obligate us to have our sitten belt fasten while driving, although the only person risked to be harmed is the infractor himself. It was considered that warning was not enought. Do you have something like that in USA?
Also, our constitution has many articles concerning racism issues and no one is allowed to ban or prohibit any person from entering or being at his business. The motivation for the creations of these laws were the existance of old laws in slavery time that prohibits black people from entering in some places. There's also some influence from what happened to the jews in Germany before World War II. I understand in the States you can prohibit anyone from entering in your own bar for any reason you may have (eg: You may not like latins), right? In Brazil, you would be arrested for crime of racism.
About the second-hand smoke issues, my town Rio de Janeiro has a law that every restaurant must have non-smoking area or be a non-smoking restaurant. Since it is very bad for business to deny smokers, the only non-smokers restaurant I ever knew just change its politics and his central air conditionair system (he had to have two separate units). Actually, most restaurants have a small smoking area. About ten years ago, politicians made a law that used to prohibit smoking in any closed crowded place like clubs and bars. The police tried to work on that but it was just impossible since nobody respected the law. Maybe the law still exists but nobody cares (this hapens a lot around here): clubs and bars are definitely smoking places. And, as I pointed, restaurants happened to be more democratic places.
Best Regards,
Bruno.
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
Published: April 24, 2006 1:25 AM
banker
"Tobacco smoke is a hazardouse substance and should be avoided if you want to maintain good health."--quote
If you live in a city like New York or LA, then you are already inhaling a six pack a day. Your lungs are probably already black.
Published: April 24, 2006 1:55 AM
Sione Vatu
Bruno wrote:- "The police tried to work on that but it was just impossible since nobody respected the law. Maybe the law still exists but nobody cares (this hapens a lot around here).."
Good job! Wish that would happen more around here! I can think of lots of silly legislation that cries out to be ignored.
Sione
PS. Anyone noticed the drug users and their suppliers seem to be ignoring the law? Hmmmmm.
Published: April 24, 2006 3:09 AM
Paul Marks
I will not get into the medical argument about "passive smoking" (although I do trust the people who say it is vastly exagerated more than I trust the people who say it is not).
The basic fact of the article remains: A place of business is a PRIVATE place not a "public" place.
If you do not want to go to, or work in, a bar where there is smoking - then do not. Do not use the threat of violence (the government) to enforce your desires on other people.
This campaign to see business as a "public" thing (i.e. open to government control) goes back a very long way.
For example, John Stuart Mill (perhaps the most over rated "friend of liberty" who ever lived) claimed (in "On Liberty" 1859)that trading was somehow in a different catagory from non economic activities. So whilst he was a free trader (at least in the sense of being against taxes on imports) he denied that the principle of liberty demanded free trade (it was a matter of economic calculation).
In domestic affairs J.S. Mill held (for example) that freedom to sell was quite different from freedom to buy, and that the government could regulate the former (I know, it does not make sense to me either).
Of course, J.S. Mill (like his father James Mill, and David Ricardo and even Herbert Spencer in his youth)had strong doubts about private land ownership - so it is hardly a great surprise that a person who doubts the ownership of land (believing that it had to be "justified" on utilitarian grounds, and even going alone with his father's idea of getting rid of it in India)is not very keen on regarding a place of business (whether this be a shop or a club, a train or a bus) as the property of the owner - and nothing to do with government.
Back in 1848 (in Principles of Political Economy) J.S. Mill had already supported (and falsely claimed that "everyone") supported a wide range of government intervention (public health was one of the excuses given).
So, sadly, the liberals are just being consistant. Freedom to do various things in the bedroom is one thing - but the principle of liberty is not about economic life as far as they are concerned.
I will not go into J.S. Mill's principle of liberty here, other than to say that to base it on the "harm" principle (rather than a non aggression principle) is a terrible mistake.
Published: April 24, 2006 3:28 AM
W.E. Schetlick
Let's try it one more time, shall we?
Again, I will stick to traditional property rules which predate John Locke (although to the extent that he undersood the rudimesnts, he incorporated some of those rules in his first treatise) and the arbitrary decisons of the NH Courts in interpreting and applying their own constitution and takings clauses. (Even the U.S. Supreme Court has wrongly treated "mere economic rights" as damnum absque iniuria!)
Riparian rights and other kinds of rights that are difficult (not impossible!) to assign constitutte the outer fringes of the traditional property law. But people can "own" air and "water" without touching upon any of those questions at all. And context matters . . . a lot.
Traditional property would permit the owner of the building to sever the use unity of air in a building from the building itself for specific purposes. The cases show that while the owner of the property would always maintain reversionary rights in air inside a building, the owner could assign the right to one or more people to use the air for a limited purpose . . . i.e. for smoking tobacco. Literally, the owner could allow lessees or licensees of the air to smoke tobacco while prohibiting other invitees to perform the same act. He could do this either gratis or for a fee under a bilateral contract or limited license.
What must be understood is that no one really "owns" the outside air as such even though a certain amount of homesteading can ripen into legiimate limited ownership, such ownership limited in size and scope to traditional, peaceful, non-invasive use (discounting de minimis invasions not actionable for hypersensitive people).
The regulation banning smoking in bars and other privately owned structures is a government taking of a right inuring solely to the owner and apputenant to his fee simple absolute property rights.
For those of you who are interested in a neo-or quasi-Lockean treatment of this issue, I would recommend Professor Richard A. Epstein's works entitled "Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain"; and, "Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism". (N.B. Epstein's second book is a bit of a "revision" or "take back" of many of his original contentions, but none that would affect the outcome of the instant issue).
[In the interest of full disclosure: I do not hold to all of Epstein's analyses and conclusions, particularly his cramped view of the entire inherent workings of markets and the process' inherent ability to solve or resolve conflicts of rights and entitlements. I find Rothbard, Hoppe and Block far more satisfying in this and many other respects.] Pareto is farther from his own ideas than he knows and his analysis of "market failure" is really his own analytic failure.
Epstein does mostly treat the regulatory state with the contempt it so righly deserves, though, and reliably relates the courts' failure to fashion a reliable, consistent doctrine which recognizes and propects property rights from state infringement (partial regulatory takings) through proper interpretation and application of eminent domain.
Published: April 24, 2006 9:08 AM
Doug Rees
I have been a smoker since I was about 12 years old. I thoroughly enjoy the practice and have no intention of giving it up. I suppose that makes me a "drug addict"--but, what the Hell, we all have our addictions, and this is one of mine. I have always tried to be considerate of people who are bothered by cigarette smoke, so it really makes me mad when I am lumped together with other smokers and condemned for "rudeness" as part of a group of social outcasts. Talk about collectivist thinking!!
I'm not sure, however, that I agree with the general proposition that property owners should have absolute control over who they serve. I am old enough to remember when blacks were unable to stay in most hotels/motels and eat at most restaurants, simply because of the colour of their skins. And it wasn't just blacks. My father loved to take our family on long trips; and on one such excursion, we were denied access to a resort because our name "sounded Jewish" (actually, the name "Rees" is one of the most common surnames in Wales, and my father was about as Jewish as Mao tse-Tung). This private discrimination was accompanied by laws in several states that required racial segregation, which were themselves an infringement on private property rights. It all went under the heading of "Jim Crow". The net result was to impose a considerable burden on a large group of people; and this unhealthy situation was largely corrected by the "public accommodations" provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Perhaps that infringement on private property rights was needed to overcome a greater evil. I believe there are times when private rights must yield to the public good--although I question whether banning smoking in bars and restaurants is a legitimate application of that principle.
Published: April 24, 2006 9:31 AM
W.E. Schetlick
State-sponsored and enforced segregation most certainly divorces the use and disposal unity of ownership that is an indispensable part of and consequently protected by traditional property rules.
State-sponsored and enforced association (the so-called "Civil Rights Act" most certainly divorces the use and disposal unity of ownership that is an indispensable part of and consequently protected by traditional property rules.
There is principled distinction that can be employed to justify alienating the use and disposal unity of property in one case and not the other, being as it is that property of this kind, by its very nature is immune from such exogenous value judgments.
Concepts like "coercion", "harm" and "initiated force" have actual, distinct utile meanings that thus far have survived the many attempts to cloud them in service of the idea that "property" as a legal concept is essentially empty, and therefore unusable.
Published: April 24, 2006 10:13 AM
david chaplin
we in South Africa have similar draconian smoking legislation, that has steadily got meaner and more inflexible over the last 8 years or so. One particular absurdity bears highlighting:
I accept that a non-smoking diner wants to eat in a clear atmosphere without breathing another person's fug. .
I equally accept that a smoking diner wants to be able to enjoy his meal and be able to smoke between courses. And why shouldn't he if he's in like-minded company, and can find an obliging restauranteur?
Absent any state interference on behalf of either side, given the strong but undeniable division in public opinion on smoking, any restauranteur who wants to maximise his custom is a fool if he panders to either one lobby at the expense of the other (except perhaps dedicated cigar lounges), and his own business sense should prompt him to offer a smoking-section or a non-smoking section and thereby keep both pools of potential customers happy, and hence coming back. This self-generated segregation worked very well in most restaurants, having emerged spontaneously long before the state's legislative diharrea started spewing all over the hospitality industry.
So far so good. Thewn the State unilaterally, and inexplicably, decreed that restaurants may not devote more than 25% of restaurant floor space to a smoking section. And believe it or not, the clientele split between smokers and non-smokers varies wildly with area and restaurant, and income group targeted. SO some have largely unused smoking sections in the corner, while others have huge areas of empty tables, and a queue waiting at the bar for a table in the overcrowded smoking section.
That's really stupid, whichever way you look at it. Let the restauranteur respond to his own market demographics in the most optimal way - keep everybody happy except those brimming with venomous hatred for smokers(some represented above, it seems from the language used), who would happily lynch smokers even when they are hermetically sealed off from their emissions. Theres no hope for redemption from such meanness, which is completely antithetical to the principles of liberty.
Published: April 24, 2006 10:24 AM
Paul Edwards
Doug,
"I believe there are times when private rights must yield to the public good--although I question whether banning smoking in bars and restaurants is a legitimate application of that principle."
What is it specifically about a state imposed smoking ban that seems dubious to you if the principle of the "public good" trumps private property rights in your mind? Tell me it isn't just because the ban swings against you in this particular instance because you enjoy a cigarette with your meal.
Published: April 24, 2006 10:45 AM
W.E. Schetlick
Mr. Chaplin:
Your analysis is simple and correct, but presupposes the validity of property rules that allow for the owner's use and disposal of the property. It further presupposes that the owner will act to maximize the use of his space so as to provide inducements to sup, including partitioning of smoking/non-smoking, scrubbers, etc..
Many do not accept the prior legitimacy of property rules recognizing the bundle of rights that make up property, nor do they recognize the obligation of the State to direct human affairs in such a way as to allow for the maximal use of liberty and voluntarism in ordering human affairs.
Some believe that there exists (apart from all of the expressed, existing "individual goods") such a thing as the "public good" which somehow mysteriously and miraclulously can be clearly and unerringly exressed only by some people who are deemed "government". This ability to define and articulate the "public interest" of course inures to the government official at the nanosecond she is elected by a majority of benighted people who themselves can only know their individual interests and cannot know the public interest.
Right? Makes sense to me . . .
Published: April 24, 2006 1:02 PM
Tim M
Like most issues, semantics are problematic. One of the difficulties with this discussion is that the terms “public� and “private� commonly have different meaning depending on the perspective. The two primary perspectives for these terms are first – ownership, and second – use. When only using one perspective at a time, things are pretty clear, having a lack of distinction between the two is what muddies the conversational waters. With ownership, the distinction is between government and non-governmental ownership. Please note that either way the property is still owned and the owner has the authority to restrict its use. Regarding use, the distinction is between selected (members, family, etc.) and not selected (the general population). Please note that no matter who the intended users are there are still conditions of use (members only, you may not burn the park bench, etc.).
The tennis courts at the local park are both owned by the government (public) and anybody can use them (public). The tennis courts at the local Racquet Club are both owned by the club (private) and can only be used by members (private). It is not always that simple. The local grocery store is owned by Joe Albertson (private) but is available to be used by anybody with shoes and shirts (public). The local military base is owned by the government (public) but only those with military security clearance can enter the gates (private).
So regardless of ownership, the intended users of something can be either public or private.
This is of course confusing and causes lack of clarity in both discussion and policy.
I would suggest that we all try to stop using the word “public� in regards to ownership. It is either owned by the government or it is not – why not just say it as it really is. It is not really the “Public Library,� it’s the City Library, it’s not a public park it is really owned by the county, they are not public schools they are government schools.
The general population (we the people) have no authority over any of these places because we are not the owners – the government is. Despite the common misconception, the government is not the “public�.
Published: April 24, 2006 3:25 PM
Sione Vatu
Doug
There is a class of people I do not want in my tavern. I dislike them. I figure the patrons do not like them much either. Since it's my tavern I determine who is admitted. It's my business who I admit, surely?
Whether I make the distinction according to race, religion, politics, tribe, behaviour or on the basis of affiliations, is completely up to me. It has no bearing at all whether or not other people disagree with me or dislike my decisions. They may complain but I do not have to even listen, let alone obey them. I determine who may enter. The rest must stay out.
Of course you may determine who attends your property. Same principle applies.
Our choices may annoy other people. That is not a reason to overturn those choices.
Sione
Published: April 24, 2006 3:31 PM
W.E. Schetlick
Tim:
"Ownership", when applied to government is called (in common parlance) as "public ownership". That is the professional vernacular.
Private ownership of any fee or interest in property (real or otherwise known as "tenancies") can be "common" or "joint" or "individual" or "by the entirety".
"Public use" is any use for any interest in property directed by government where the government exercise sole dominion and control over the property.
Simple.
Published: April 24, 2006 4:28 PM
SC Jones MD
Your comments are the most salient points for opposing restrictive smoking ordinances. Government intrusion into the "public" domain should be undertaken with caution and relatively rarely. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, previous case law has determined that access to a "private" business cannot be barred to an individual based on a disability. I have to provide wheelchair access to my business under the Americans with Disabilities Act. If an individual has asthma or severe COPD, for example, they are barred access to my establishment, if smoking is allowed, just as surely as if they were a quadriplegic and no ramp was available. Courts have already established this precedent.
Additionally there is arguably no greater charge for a government that to protect the health, safety and welfare of its citizens. Tobacco kills more Americans every year than AIDS, alcohol, drugs, murder, suicide and car wrecks combined! A multifaced effort at helping rid our society of its greatest public health scourge includes increased taxes on tobacco products, educational awareness, restricting smoking in "public" places, and cessation services amongst other efforts. These have all been proven to either decrease utilization and/or increase cessation. These approaches are much preferred to making an addict population criminal by outlawing the product outright. I doubt however that anyone believes tobacco would be approved for use today were it to enter the market as a new product.
I think we have to be real and recognize that this is a limitation of some personal liberty. That is not always bad. My liberty to take my neighbor's car is restricted ....so should my ability to adversely affect his health.
Published: April 24, 2006 5:37 PM
Tim M
W.E., your legal definitions illustrate my point precisely. It is interesting that the “professional vernacular� propagates the myth that the government represents the public. The government only represents itself. We feel better when the government makes rules about or spends our money on “public� items in part because we delude ourselves into thinking we have some control over “public� things – and after all we are part of the public, right? It is very convenient that when “the government exercise sole dominion and control over the property� by definition (ever wonder who made the definition?) regardless of how it is used it is in “Public Use.�
Published: April 24, 2006 5:47 PM
Paul Edwards
SC Jones,
“…previous case law has determined that access to a "private" business cannot be barred to an individual… Courts have already established this precedent.�
Thankfully, we are more interested in determining true ethical justice, than specifically what judgments our nasty state courts have handed out on any particular case. It turns out you really are within your ethical right to make your premises not wheelchair accessible. No one is justified in coercing you to do otherwise. And if you loose business because you are not wheelchair friendly, then that too is good and someone should be able to take business from you by competing in this way.
Next, “Additionally there is arguably no greater charge for a government that to protect the health, safety and welfare of its citizens.�
It was once argued that the only legitimate charge for a government was that of protecting life liberty and the pursuit of happiness (property), but I guess I should get with the times. On a side note, how do you feel about banning McDonald’s and Wendy’s restaurants? I hear they can serve up food quite detrimental to one’s health and yet are at the same time very popular. How about the obese, should the state force them to trim down? It’s for their own good after all. Should the lazy be forced to exercise? Should the ignorant be forced to study?
Where does it all end? It ends when people stand up and pay attention to ethical principles and learn to apply them consistently and say no to the state. Then it ends before it starts. Outside of that, nobody knows where it ends.
Published: April 24, 2006 6:41 PM
leek
Good article. I wrote about something similar here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=52169&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=134&mode=nested&pid=5177923
Published: April 25, 2006 5:21 AM
W.E. Schetlick
For the record: I understand that there should be no such thing as "public property" or government-owned/operated property. I wrote those definitions so that the poor folks who have been duped by government into thinking that government can own or operate anything "in the public interest" would have some way of distinguishing how the common law may have dealt with this "smoking on private property" issue.
For the purposes of that conversation, I equated government-owned and/or operated/controlled property as "public property" . . . any interest in property (real or charttel or choses in action, etc.) that is wholly owned and operated by private individuals or groups of voluntarily-organized individuals is "private property". Any other potential interests real proeprty, personalty or choses in action not obtained by either government or private interests is simply "unowned".
For the further record: I am not a constitutionalist; I am more or less a Rothbardian/Blockean; that aside, however, I understand the law of "takings" and how it should have been used/construed by courts to protect private property interest from wrongful, non-public use, uncompensated takings by government.
Regulatory takings (which is what the instant issue is about) should recognize that the smoking ban "takes" a legitimate, privately-owned use of air inside of a closed space for which compensation should be paid, but will not be paid for because of the ongoing misconstruction of the courts and their failure to protect private property rights from government rule-making.
On the other hand, and even if the courts opted not to treat this like a real property right, but rather opted to treat this issue as a matter of proper "police power" regulation for purposes of allegedly protecting the "health, safety, and morals" of "the public", then the courts should limit the legislature to a remedy that would require a minimally intrusive sign on the outside of the bulding indicating that smoking was permitted therein. The potential customer/employee would then be able to choose whether or not to take the risk of being exposed to an alleged health risk. The sign requirement, like the warning on a cigarette pack, is a minimal intrusion narrowly tailored to protect the individual's right to choose one way or the other.
If the government ruled tobacco was a "controlled substance" then under federal law, the federal government could ban the use of it entirely, whether within or without bars or restaurants, private homes or anywhere else. After the Raisch case, states would not bother trying to make state-law based exceptions.
In my origninal comment, I indicated that the original "public accomodation" laws, the promulgators of which UNEQUIVOCALLY PROMISED to treat private property as private (sole private dominion, use and control) EXCEPT for the purposes of remedying past and preventing future racial discrimination, set the slippery slope stage for our ongoing descent into fascism.
At the time the law was passed (1964) those of us trained in the classical liberal heritage (now "libertarian") understood this incursion for what it actually was . . . the camel's nose under the tent. We understood that the notion of "public accomodation" was loaded with trouble for the future of private property rights. We opposed the laws NOT BECAUSE WE LIKED RACIAL DICRIMINATION (which is an abomination, in my view), but because we realized that the proposed remedy was far, far worse than the disease.
We were right. The promises of the Congress were as empty as their heads. Soon the rationale behind the "public accomodation" law was extended to justify every kind of government employment rule/restriction, license, etc. and every conceivable manner of private property rights destruction.
Now there is actually no such thing as a "private property right" in any business "public accomodation" as it was once defined (exclusive dominion and control).
The only thing that permits the existence of business entities now is "public opinion". If the "public" (really well-financed, ideologically-motivated interest groups) lobby the government hard enough, kick up enough pseudo-scientific dust allegeding some spurious "harm", and otherwise camp out at legislators' offices, they can bring down McDonalds and Exxon and anyone else they want. After all, McDonalds "causes" people to be fat (people simply MUST eat that super-sized fries every day, twice a day, because they are "addicted"), and Exxon causes us to use oil (and we are "addicted" to that as well, so sayeth the President).
The only political/legal idea that once stood as a bulwark between these morality marauders and private business was the idea of legally-enforceable private property rights. But that's all over now . . . just an old idea, treated like some embarassing part of Americana. The old paradigm. Between legislators and the courts, those enforceable rights are just a memory.
According to an article appearing in today's Newark Star Ledger, statist columnist E.J. Dionne favorably cites Michael Tomasky's piece from the American Prospect magagazine: " . . . Democrats and their allies ["progressives/statists] must destroy the current political 'paradigm' based upon 'radical idividualism' [the regime of private rights to property] and replace it with a politics of the 'common good' [the regime of total state ownership and control of everything]". Right on, brother. Peace, love . . . theft.
There it is in black and white, ladies and gentlemen. Hayek was right . . .
Published: April 25, 2006 7:41 AM
cigeasy
Since the secondhand smoke statistics are questionable the real (occasionally) admitted reason for anti-smoking hysteria is that it has been whipped up to address the health care costs public and now private (in the case of insured employees) of smokers as opposed to non smokers. A small debate has occurred regarding the level of benefit since non-smokers also die from a variety of diseases and the real relative cost would have to take into account the full stats.
The second hand smoke hysterics are thus merely raving unknowing patsies of state propaganda, or more dangerously, sensing that their freedoms are being encroached on in a multitude of areas by the state (and interest groups behind its policies) are seeking psychological relief by exacting revenge on a "weak" group which appears to have "more freedom" the "social free riders" than they themselves.
It should be seen therefore as a symptom of increasingly oppressive (at minimum at the psychological level) state direction and control. The rational individual reaction in this type of competitive free-riding society is all costs to maximise one's own free riding opportunities while engaging in seeking by all means possible to limit the free-riding or others a process that will spiral out of control into open warfare or total control.
Published: April 25, 2006 10:02 AM
W.E. Schetlick
Poor Doctor Jones. Maybe you should have taken the LSATS instead of the MCATS.
No one has the presumptive liberty to run over anyone else with their car; thus, a limitation on the non-voluntary running over of anyone with your car.
On the other hand, what of boxing matches and shows where "stuntmen" voluntarily submit themselves to being run over by big trucks? Never mind that . . . what about sexual intercourse? What's the difference between sex and rape?
In both cases, (the boxer and the stuntman), the boxer gets punched by someone and the stuntman gets run over by someone. The offenders clearly have inherent right to do either of those things to the objects.
So what's the difference? Why was one activity considered legitimate in the and the other not?
The difference is the existence of VOLUNTARY CONSENT. Voluntary consent of the punchee changes an ordinary victim into a willing sports participant. Same with football, soccer, baseball and any other form of personal distraction.
So too with drinking in a bar. The bar owner has no right to blow smoke in your face without your consent. You don't have to go into his bar. You can stay home, go elsewhere, open your own, etc. But a bar owner who decides to allow smoking on his premises (absent the idiot law), is saying to you: "you are hereby granted a limited license to come upon my premises for the limited purpose of purchasing and being served and consuming beverages be served so long as you do not object to the existence of tobacco smoke on my premises. Your entry thereon represents your constructive consent to being subject to exposeure to tobacco smoke".
By enacting a state law that bans smoking on anyone's premises, you are in fact interfering with a prospective business advantage on the part of the owner (a tort cause of action under the common law); you are taking away the right of a person to contract with the owner, (basically violating an existing right of the owner and the potential customer, a right that both would have in their own homes (private property).
This is not about health or smoking. It's about abrogating existing rights.
The mere fact that the law already these individual rights under other circumstances (like the ADA or LAD, for examples) does in no justify or even explain why the right should be further impinged upon.
If I punch you in the nose without your permission, I have assaulted you; I have violated your right to be left alone in your bodily integrity. I cannot justify hitting you a second time just because I have already punched you once before. But basically, that's the argument you made . . . stating that you already had to change your property to comport with bad government rules; therefore, new violations of your property rights cannot be complained of.
Wha?????????????
Published: April 25, 2006 10:30 AM
Doug Rees
The reason I make the distinction between government intervention to prohibit racial discrimination and government intervention to prohibit smoking in bars, restaurants, etc. is this:
In the first case, there was a widespread and systematic discrimination against a whole race of people, which made it difficult or impossible for people of that race to travel freely around the country and enjoy the kind of amenities that nearly everyone else takes for granted. Black children could not enjoy swimming pools, amusement parks, etc. If it was just a matter of private property owners deciding, on their own, to exclude people they didn't like (eg. redheads, left-handed people, etc.), I think I might agree with your analysis. But, in fact, the private discrimination was part of an overall pattern of racial segregation ("Jim Crow") that included state-sponsored and state-mandated segregation as well. It contributed to the kind of frustration and resentment that exploded in the race riots of the late 1960s; and I think it was legitimate for government to take steps to prevent the problem from becoming even worse.
In the case of smoking bans, the situation is quite different. Absent a state ban on smoking in bars, restaurants, etc., those who objected to cigarette smoke could simply frequent (or obtain employment in) non-smoking establishments, while those of us who enjoy smoking could patronise (or work for) establishments that allow smoking. Neither side would be seriously disadvantaged; and, given the fact that we smokers are only about 25-30% of the overall population, I think we would be the ones having a harder time finding accommodations to our liking.
Published: April 25, 2006 10:42 AM
W.E. Schetlick
I hope you din't write all that for my sake. I already understood all of that and far, far more.
Legally mandated racial segregation is a violation of rights to property; private segregation is morally reprehensible, but recognizes rights to property. Simple.
I don't smoke, and I don't privately descriminate, nor do I advocate that anyone should do either. But I am not presumptuous enough to think that I have the right to dictate my preferences for a smoke and descrimination free world to anyone else against their will on and with their own property . . .
No one else has that right either, and no group of people calling themselves "government" could possibly have more rights as a group than they could as the individuals they fraudulently claim to represent (law of agency: the agent can have no more power than the principal). Thus, government can have no legitimate power to either prohibit private descrimination or to force public segregation. Nor can it have the power to force people to smoke on their closes property or prevent them from doing so.
Published: April 25, 2006 11:04 AM
Paul Edwards
Doug,
"…that included state-sponsored and state-mandated segregation as well."
OK, i'm with you all the way then. Yes, the state has this little quirk: It forces everybody to conform to some kind of nasty behavior, where perhaps only a small subset of the population would willingly participate otherwise. THEN, the government decides that "we" are immoral (when in fact it is their immoral legislation), and that the very OPPOSITE policy must now be inflicted on us so that now that previously happy minority is now unhappy.
What is the consistent thread: It is not some benevolent state imposed morality at all, but rather often immoral state coercion, plain and simple. The state just cannot resist meddling, dictating, and compelling us to do one thing, and then on a whim, compelling us to do the opposite thing. Jokers and clowns the lot of them. The solution is simple, and will succeed universally. Allow the individual his right to do with his property what he wishes as long as it does not aggress against another’s property. And allowing smokers in your home or bar does not aggress against another’s property. Nor does excluding white males who graduated from Harvard from your bar aggress against another’s property either.
Published: April 25, 2006 11:15 AM
W.E. Schetlick
Making distinctions based upon pricipled differnces is crucial in the formulation of public policy.
As I mentioned before (at least twice, now) those in government will ALWAYS expand upon a principle to make new and impproved impositions.
Government policy-makers always insist that a new law does not represent a new policy, but an exception to the existing regime. But after a time, they will see a new "necessity" to make an "exception" to the existing regime. After a while, and after a bazillion exceptions based upon the abrogation of the original principle, everyone is used to thinking of the old regime AS THE EXCEPTION!
This pattern has been in existence since the time of the Founding. You simply cannot explain the current regime of law (no property rights, just government tolerance of a certain, ever-shrinking range of freely-chosen behavior) without pointing to and understanding the "public accomodation" law.
Try this: what do you think would be the result of a 1963 legislature anywhere in the US attampting to pass or even suggesting a statute or regulation aimed at limiting a bar owners' right to contract with her customers or employees because of dirty or even "unhealthy" air?
Let me suggest that no such law would or even could be proposed. No one would even think about bringing such a law. Those old-fashioned crazy people had the bizarre notion that government couldn't do such things at all.
Yeah, those same people might accede to the idea that no smoking was permitted on (government)publicly-owned/operated busses and trains; after all, givernment could control the conditions under which anyone could use its property.
After 1964, all that changed . . . slowly, imperceptibly at first . . . but over time, and based upon the principle of "public accomodation" all manner of regulation for any reason whatsoever was automatically covered in a mantel of legitimacy.
The principle is what matters. Not the individual justification for violating the principle.
Published: April 25, 2006 11:25 AM
Yancey Ward
I know it was a typo, but "givernment" made me laugh my butt off.
Published: April 25, 2006 12:03 PM
BillG
If you take the view that rather than all air being "unowned" it starts out as all owned in common then it adds a different wrinkle to the discussion...although maybe not for the specific case of the bar owner and smoking (as I think a pretty compelling case has been made by Mr. Schetlick).
So the way Mr. Schetlick lays out property types to summarize is:
1. unowned
2. collective (state)
3. private
- individual
- common
- joint
- by entirety
I would like to suggest a different way to look at property types:
1. in common (individual right)
2. collective
- delegated to an authority (state)
- by entirety as a group right (consensus)
3. private
- individual
- joint
if all of the material world starts out as owned in common as it pre-exists human labor it is only just for individuals to enclose for private use so long as they leave "enough and as good left in common for others" (Locke's proviso)
inorder to uphold the absolute property rights to labor of all individuals being excluded from the private enclosure, the economic rent must be shared directly and equally between neighbors in a community.
so individuals private own the bundled rights to:
1. use
2. possession
3. exclusion
4. transferability
but the economic rent which naturally attaches to all locations beyond Locke's proviso (even in an anarchy) is retained as an individual right held in common.
regarding negative externalities as it relates to general air pollution (with the specifics being smoking in an enclosed building) everyone has an individual equal access opportunity right to use the sky as both a source and a sink upto the sustainable yield (Locke's proviso) to derive their sustenance.
the negative externalities which results from the use of the sky as a sink beyond the sustainable yield represents the amount of infringement (economic disadvantage) individuals are subjected to (a tax) that can only be satisfied at the expense of their absolute right to their wages and hence self-ownership.
the state then is justified in protecting those property rights by requiring a permit to pollute up to the sustainable yield and returning the resulting ecomnomic rent to all the owners directly.
in the case of the bar...the owner encloses a certain amount of air as a source but leaves enough and as good left in common for others so this is a just enclosure.
he then has a sepearate contract for the use of that air within his premises as described by Mr. Schetlick which people accept by voluntarily agreeing upon entrance - includes the infringement by smokers.
Published: April 25, 2006 12:31 PM
Doug Rees
W.E. Schetlick: "I hope you didn't write all that for my sake. I already understood all of that and far, far more."
Actually, I wrote it more for Mr Edwards' benefit (and hopefully the benefit of others in this forum). I am sure you understand "far, far more" than what I wrote; but please give me credit for understanding more as well.
The question is not whether private racial discrimination is "morally reprehensible" (you and I would probably agree on that), but rather whether government can legitimately prohibit it--as governments have in fact done, not merely in the U.S. but in nearly all other Western countries. The answer to that question rests upon the fundamental nature of government itself.
Government (consisting of an organised body within human society, empowered by general consent to employ coercive force) is not mere agency. Governments were around long before before the rules of agency developed, and have always done things that individuals could not legitimately do in the absence of government.
Government's justification is not a principle of "agency", but rather a generally-recognised pragmatic necessity for coercion to be employed on behalf of the interests of the members of society as a whole. Human beings are not merely a collection of rights. Governments do not exist simply to enforce such rights; but rather have a broader scope, relating to human interests and human needs as well as human rights.
The coercive power embodied in government is obviously quite dangerous, however it is employed. Government can easily become a menace to the very people whose rights, interests, and needs it ought to promote. But that is an argument for thoughtfully designing the structure of government, and intelligently selecting those who occupy positions of authority. It is not a refutation of the fundamental principle of government itself.
Published: April 25, 2006 1:02 PM
W.E. Schetlick
What general consent are you referring to?
Locke's proviso is not part of the law or any understanding of property law as it currently exists . . . even the US constitution is not based upon that idea, and the US constitution purports to create the government which is supposed to protect the very rights we have been discussing.
The property rules I have described are not MY rules; they are traditional, common law property rules that to one degree or another have been adopted in American Law. There is no place for any such "proviso" there.
Read Chapter One of Prof. Randy Barnett's recent book entitled, "Restoring the Lost Constitution: the Presumption of Liberty". There is no "general consent" to any government that I know of. No one has ever shown me proof of the existence of any national government that has been cosntituted from signed documents that have any binding effect on anyone alive today. And, as Barnett shows, there is no substitute for actual consent (no legitmate assumed constructive consent is possible). Consent is only legitimate when refusal of consent is a real option and possibility. Otherwise consent is just a contrivance . . . a fiction.
Many believe in ghosts and artificial property constructs and constructive consent. So be it.
There are, to my knowledge, communities where the purchase of property is made contingent upon the recognition and acceptance of certain rules (covenants that run with the land). These are sometimes gated, proprietary communities. The people who live in them give up certain rights that others outside the community enjoy in exchange for the right to purchase real proeperty owned by others (like the right to choose the color of your house and the company who collects your garbage). They actually consent in writing.
If any claims legitimacy by consent it must be actual consent . . . otherwise it must divine another form of legitimacy to qualify it dictates as worthy of obedience.
In our day, no one believes in the unprovable and untenable notion of an involuntarily constructed "social compact" anymore. Strictly a 17th and 18th century construct. Smoke and mirrors does not a legitimate government make.
Published: April 25, 2006 2:08 PM
W.E. Schetlick
There should be no ban on people wanting to live in a "Land-Locked" area where this "Locke-Land" provisio with different property rules are created and abided and made a part of the covenants that run with the land. People who live there could actually consent to being told what to do and such agreements could be incorporated into the deeds. Everyone would be happy or at least consensually unhappy.
But let there be no misunderstanding: to the best of my knowledge, no private community currently exists living under the Locke Proviso.
Published: April 25, 2006 2:21 PM
W.E. Schetlick
If Barnett doesn't convince you, then read Lysander Spooner's "No Treason: the Constiutiton of No Authority" where the argument was first made that the US Constitution is illegitimate and binding on no one as it was agreed to by no one living today, and couldn't even bind anyone other than those who signed it, an ratified it.
Published: April 25, 2006 2:59 PM
W.E. Schetlick
The law of agency predates our currently constituted government which supposedly derives its JUST powers from the consent of the governed.
The law of agency was on the minds of the Framers as the Convention notes (Max Farrand) and Ratifying Convention Notes clearly indicate.
The "consenting" people (the Principals) empower the government (the Agents) to exercise the otherwise legitimate principals' right to self-defense. Notice the right is not waived or given up . . . rather the power to exercise it on behalf of the principles is delegated to its agent. The agent may do this and no more.
To the extent that the agent exercises powers not specifically assigned and assignable, it acts "ultra vires" and ordinarily can be held liable for any damage caused by such unauthorized acts.
Methodological individualism instructs that all such complex social interactions can ultimate be reduced to a one-on-one analysis. In the case of government power and applying methodological individualism, no principal could give the government power over something he could not own; spefically the power to exclude others using air in a bar not his own; therefore, the government cannot have such a power.
Simple.
Constitutionally, if you wish to take that route, the power to prohibit discrimination is nowhere to be found in the US Constitution; thus, to the extent that the statutory laws were federal, they were unconstitutional. A state passing such a law should come up against a 5th Amendment defense (that a state cannot take property; so the regulation would constitute a taking of a right of association for "public use" which would require "just compensation".
Published: April 25, 2006 3:43 PM
Paul Edwards
Hey! Another Spooner fan. It seemed i was agreeing with Mr. Schetlick's comments with great enthusiasm. Now i know why.
Published: April 25, 2006 3:59 PM
M E Hoffer
"A state passing such a law should come up against a 5th Amendment defense (that a state cannot take property; so the regulation would constitute a taking of a right of association for "public use" which would require "just compensation".
W.E. your indefatigable perserverance in the face of so much from so many unwilling to see is truly awe-inspiring.
As an aside, I was wondering your take on Erie v. Thompkins (1938) -- is it correct to understand that ruling as setting aside "Common Law" in favor of "Public Law" ? In other words, within Statute is our only remaining redress?
Curiously...
Published: April 25, 2006 4:11 PM
W.E. Schetlick
Erie v. Thompkins really just stands for the proposition that there really is no "federal common law" as such. A close reading and understanding of Article III (federal courts limited juridiction to cases/controversies "arising under" the laws and constitution of the United States)pretty much dictates that result. Federal Courts hearing state-based claims under pendant or ancillary jurisdiction essentially apply state decisional law to decide the state-based claims. State common law remains unaffected by that ruling.
Respecting the "takings" issue: the 5th Amendment obliquely refers to a presumptive federal taking power; however, there is no distinct and specifically enumerated federal power to take private property. You have to look up the Annals of Congress during the debates over the Bill of Rights to get the full flavor of the structural controversy.
But remember that that original Bill of Rights were written to be applied ONLY against the federal government and not the states; presumably, if a state agency (not federal) took private property prior to the incorporation idea (14th Amendment) it could do so absent a state prohibition against a taking.
"Regulatory taking" is a whole 'nother ball of wax. The federal law is very confused and pretty much anarchic . . . a standardless standard, if you will (see Penn Central and Pallazollo). The instant bar case would be considered a regulatory taking; that is, the government does not actually take the real property itself (in this case, a bar or restaurant), but merely passes a regulation that "takes" away one of the property rights that the owner has with respect to the physical property itself (specifcally, a "use" limitation). State decisional law is just as bad as federal decisional law in the area of regulatory takings if not worse . . . New jersey is no exception. State legislators have no respect for state constitutional limitations; state courts have less, and We The Sheeple are, well . . . sheep.
Published: April 25, 2006 5:13 PM
BillG (not Gates)
W.E. Schetlick wrote:
"But let there be no misunderstanding: to the best of my knowledge, no private community currently exists living under the Locke Proviso."
BillG responds:
all land trust are set-up under this principle...
http://www.schoolofliving.org/landtrust.htm
Published: April 25, 2006 5:17 PM
W.E. Schetlick
Land trusts are set up by those who own a fee simple absolute ab initio. As owners of the fee and under property rules, they can place whatever conditions they so wish upon the land in an testamentary devise, gift or bargain and sale. Thosse who purchase land with such covenants purchase subject to those limitations. Such covenants are enforceable at law.
Philanthropists often gift-deed land to be preserved for special purposes, reserving in their families, and heirs a reversionary interest in the land should the covenant be broken. New Jersey has many farm and environmental trusts (most counties sponsor them) where the lands can be preserved in perpetuity by the government entity so long as it maintained as a farm, etc.
None of this has anything to do with any proviso of any kind. It is simply yet another example of a property owner exercising their rights to alienate their own property with reservations, conveying to the buyer less thana fee simple absolute (subject to reverter).
Published: April 25, 2006 5:31 PM
BillG (not Gates)
W.E. Schetlick wrote:
"In the case of government power and applying methodological individualism, no principal could give the government power over something he could not own; spefically the power to exclude others using air in a bar not his own; therefore, the government cannot have such a power."
BillG responds:
as I said, in NH all surface water and all groundwater is constitutionally recognized as being owned in common as an individual equal access opportunity right with the state as the public trustee...so I DO own the water as an individual right in common with all other individuals in the state.
if someone encloses the water for private use that denies me equal access the state has a positive duty to protect my individual rights which are being infringed upon.
what is the difference with air?
if the bar owner enclosed the air in such a way that it did not leave enough and as good left for others thus imposed a cost, infringing on the equal access rights of other individuals via a tax on their wages - I would be on the other side of the issue.
property rights not subject to labor of the owner are conditional as they can always at some point (Locke's proviso) violate absolute rights to labor products.
Published: April 25, 2006 5:39 PM
W. E. Schetlick
Governments often pass statutes in derogation of common property rules. What's your point? That traditional riparian rights and other property rules are abrogated by the government of the State of New Hampshire? Gee, that's news!
Not.
Published: April 25, 2006 5:44 PM
W.E. Schetlick
You do not the water; under traditional property rules, you have the same limited license that everyone is granted by the owner . . . the State. You cannot exclude anyone from the equal use of the water; thus, you are a licencee and not a fee owner.
You can twist and turn yourself into semantic pretzels if that is your wish, but you can't change the property rules . . . they were here nad adopted and applied way before the State of New Hampshire decided to enage in wholesale "nationalization" of an ownable resource.
In all socialist countries, all the property is nominally owned in common; the government makes all the rules and regulations and can change them whenever it suits them; can grant special dispensations and licenses to use it to favored interests . . . in other words, the government owns the resource.
Published: April 25, 2006 5:52 PM
M E Hoffer
W.E.
I hope your are taking full and appropriate
write-offs vis a vis your 1040 for the valuable edification you are so freely proffering.
If only the majority here, that keep "arguing" in the face of the voluminous and substantial facts that you posit, would close their "keyboards" and pay attention, this thread may finally rest in the peace it has so long been denied.
Published: April 25, 2006 6:20 PM
BillG (not Gates)
W.E. Schetlik wrote:
"In all socialist countries, all the property is nominally owned in common; the government makes all the rules and regulations and can change them whenever it suits them; can grant special dispensations and licenses to use it to favored interests . . . in other words, the government owns the resource."
BillG responds:
so it is quite obvious to me that you do not recognize the difference between collectively owned property - a group right that requires consent from all the other owners or delegated authority prior to access/use and ownership in common - an individual right that only requires that the individual does not infringe on anyone else's equal access/use right...they are actually opposite.
Gee that's news
not!
http://geolib.com/sullivan.dan/commonrights.html
Published: April 25, 2006 6:23 PM
W.E. Schetlick
No problem. I write this stuff quickly, without much thought, and off the top of my head. I write briefs and positions papers in between. Good mental excercise . . . now if I could only learn to type.
You have to have legitimate authority before you can delegate it. Cooperative and group rights are no more and no less than the sum total of all individual rights in the group. If no one in the group has the right to exclude anyone else from the use of a resource without first owning it, then the group cannot delegate a power or authority to do so to any other institution as its agent. Since no collective exists in reality, (hypostacy and reification notwithstanding), no independent, collective rights can exist.
Simple. The rest of what you are discussing is a form of strange social metaphysics applied to property. Fine. No problem. Sounds vaguely like Georgeist fantasy or something. And it has no bearing whatsoever in any way, shape or form to the question of the validity of smoking bans.
I don't smoke. I don't even much care for it in others. So I don't hang out with smokers, and prefer bars and restaurants that have a non-smoking section. I never represented the tobacco companies in court or before the legislature, either. None of this has anything to do with the smoking ban, either, but I thought I'd make the appropriate representations.
Published: April 25, 2006 6:54 PM
BillG (not Gates)
W.E. Schetlick wrote:
"no independent, collective rights can exist"
BillG responds:
agreed
W.E. Schetlick wrote:
"The rest of what you are discussing is a form of strange social metaphysics applied to property"
BillG responds:
I disagree...
do you or do you not recognize the legitimacy of individual property rights held in common?
do you recognize and acknowledge the distinction between collective property and property held in common?
Published: April 25, 2006 7:21 PM
M E Hoffer
Paging BillG to the White courtesy phone.....
Published: April 25, 2006 7:24 PM
steve
Not only is a liberty that government interferes with the lawful habits that a property owner allows in his/her premises; but how can the government justify the fact that it can legislate to provide entertainment for non-smokers by banning smoking in bars?
No-one is forced to enter a bar and no interest group should have the power of legislation to provide the entertainment that they prefer.
If the government truly believes the mass of misinformation about the effects of smoking shouldn't they ban it completely? Or if they continue along the track of 'it's ok to harm yourself' why not license some bars for smokers only and ban non smokers from entering them for their own safety.
Published: April 29, 2006 5:24 PM
Paolo B.
Two years ago, smoking was banned in my Country, from restaurant, bars, pubs, airports etc, unless they had a separated air conditioned area.
I am a smoker myself, I now got used to going outside for a smoke and enjoy stink-free clothes when coming home from a club.
There has been significant debate here about this smoke-free enforcement law, but in the end, after two years, all the people I knew (mostly smokers) who were against it, they are now happy about it: they seem to have prefered freedom not to have burning red eyes, ashtray clothes and horrible smelling hair over that of smoking.
It took a law to do this, you might call my fellow Countrymates brainwashed, but at this point, nobody would go back to how it was before, not because of fear, but because everybody, (even smokers) recognize the benefits.
Published: July 17, 2006 10:49 AM
Cody S.
great points sir!!
Published: April 2, 2008 10:12 AM
Justice
i think that smoking 4 teens is bad b-cuz it gives u alot of bad things that arn't kool example bad fingernails breath and dirty smelling clothes so ypu
Published: May 21, 2008 3:23 PM
Cigar
The simple truth still remains, smoking is bad for people’s health, a government that allows it’s people to expose others to this is a bad government. Although I am a smoker myself I have always felt bad smoking around other people because I am conscious that I am creating passive smoke which damages them, especially when they are not smokers. I am on the stance where I enjoy smoking but deep down wish to quit because I know it is bad and I am starting to feel its effects. I have recently switched from cigarettes to cigars in an attempt to limit my consumption each day. I look forward to an environment that forces me to be healthy and quit. Anyone who is in support of smoking and declares the ban an invasion of their privacy needs to wake up and face the facts, smoking kills.
Published: October 23, 2008 6:53 AM
newson
to "cigar":
i too hope you are forcibly made more healthy. maybe they'll tie you to the stairwalker, for good measure. can't do your heart any harm.
Published: October 23, 2008 9:41 AM