Recently, this blog noted the repressive measure by the Irish government to outlaw smoking in pubs and restaurants, even though no-one is either forced to work, drink or eat in these privately owned establishments. When thinking, however, about how to frame the arguments against such bans, it is very easy to just rail against the latest nanny state outrage but not give examples of how the market can cater much more effectively for tobaccophobes instead.
Sticking with the issue of smoking in pubs, consider this. In a market order, different pubs will enforce different rules depending on whether the owners figure that they can get the most business by either banning smoking totally, banning it in part of the building, or by installing smoke extractor machines, or even creating American “cigar-bar” type establishments where smoking is positively encouraged as part of the whole pub experience. The point is, the more choice there is, the more opportunities for those who have different tastes to get along in congenial company without the need for unnecessary wrangling.
This also gives a great example of how private property can and does act as a solvent of potential conflicts, a point which collectivists rarely pause to consider.
It is uncertain how health and safety regulations have encouraged bars and restaurants to change the way they deal with this issue, apart from requiring owners of premises to enforce minimum standards. But the trouble with minimum standards is that businesses have no real incentive to raise standards much higher than such a level because the cost is unlikely to bring a commensurate reward. The paradox is that letting the market work could actually raise standards much higher overall.
As with all such issues, you can be sure that legislators rarely bother to consider the law of unintended consequences when it comes to things like this. plus ca change…
I think we should encourage a smoking license system similar to liquor licenses. Bars would be required to pay something like $5,000 a year if they want to allow smoking. That would allow a market system like the one you’re describing, but the nanny state supporters would at least be able to shift the balance in favor smoke-free bars. It’s not as good as keeping the government out altogether, but it’s better than an outright ban.
I say “open rebellion”: pub owners let people smoke, and refuse to pay the fines, and lose their licences, but keep selling booze anyway. So the police will come to arrest them.
Angry smokers pelt the police with rotten fruit, set fire to police cars, and hang the mayor of the town or whoever.
Then, when the Army gets called in to quell the riot, ask the soldiers: “So — are you going to shoot me over a cigarette?”
Okay, I can dream, can’t I?
I prefer to separate “smoking in public places” from “smoking in public.” People should not smoke in places where nonsmokers absolutely have no choice but to enter the establishment, such as a grocery store, a pharmacy, a doctor’s office, etc. However, people can choose not to enter a bar. If they enter and choose to inhale the smoke, that’s their problem. Government should only be involved where there is the possibility of involuntary health risks. It has no right to dictate culture, i.e. smoking in bars.
I have also observed in the news that bans do not succeed for very long. New Yorkers rang in the new year with champagne, despite a ban on consuming alcohol in public.
Also, government-mandated standards are driven by the bureaucratic theory of the problem and its solution. So those standards may not address the actual problem in an efficient way, or at all (indeed may make it worse), nor change in response to new discovery or change of circumstances.
Bureaucratic theories of the world are like theology: their adherents look only for confirmation and see the practice of doctrine as self-validating. If the problem subsequently vanishes it is the regulations what did it, so of course they still are not only valid but vital to maintain and augment. If some measure has not worked, or is counterproductive, it is only because it is not being done vigourously enough.
Meanwhhile, by forcing resources to be deployed in a particular manner they don’t only affect the experience of corporations and individuals in the area where the “standards” do apply, but inhibit their capacities to do other, unrelated things.
You might as well just rail against the nanny state. People who believe that they have not only the right, but the duty, to save other people from themselves are impervious to rational thoughts.
The idea of personal freedom has no place in the mind of those who believe that if enough laws and regulations are passed the world can be a perfect place. And when you add to the mix those people who believe that anything that annoys them should be removed from the world, there is precious little room left for discussion.
Alex’s comment -“People should not smoke in places where nonsmokers absolutely have no choice but to enter the establishment” – raises the subject of another approach to behavioral conflicts such as smoking vs non-smoking: Standards of courtesy.
It is interesting that customs of voluntary considerate behavior seem to be mutually exclusive with government regulation.
Society gets along fine with voluntary polite behavior until some excessively sensitive people decide the consensus standards aren’t good enough for THEM. The call then goes out for the government to ‘do something’. Which it, of course, is only too happy to do.
The result is usually some uncomfortably restrictive regulation (after all, if it isn’t uncomfortable for someone, then the government isn’t really ‘doing something’.) Accompanying this is a complete cessation of any other voluntary restraint. The minimum restraint necessary to satisfy the regulation is about all the restraint you are going to find.
End result: a coarse and antagonistic society in which there is little concern for the welfare of our fellows and only the minimum moderation of our desires necessary to escape the sanctions of those who have gained control of the levers of power. A Hobbsian approach to social problems has changed a felicitous part of society into a nasty and brutish one.
Doug Collins – Theodore Dalrymple makes your identical points in this week’s Spectator. http://www.spectator.co.uk
He says, along with you, that excessive behavioural regulation coarsens society. It’s a very good piece.
Yes, that is a good piece. It also seems to explain precisely why the U.S. is knee-deep in lawsuits. Too many people think every one of their desires is a “right,” and feel the need to hire a lawyer to tell someone else to mind his/her manners.
I also find it interesting that, while nonsmokers believe that secondhand smoke is to blame for cancer problems, I have yet to see one of these people speaking out against the much greater problem of air pollution, which could be another potential source. There seems to be a double standard.
Free markets do sort this sort of thing out. In the centre of Bath a pub , ” The Old Green Tree ” , has had a non smoking room with good extraction for 20 years to my certain knowledge. It brings the pub extra business which is why it was done of course.
Also, try going into a pub more than a century old, which still has the old partitions ( ie was not modernised and turned ” open plan ” ). One of the rooms will be the ” smoker ” or ” smoking room “. Or try reading a book or watching a film about, say, the late Victorian period. Gents stayed at the dinner table to smoke their cigars, and did not, under any circumstances, smoke in the Drawing Room. Sure, that was also sexist.
And yet it would appear that over a century ago we had a perfectly good system for dividing smokers and non : we just used to call it being polite.
One might even go so far as to suggest that it is the breakdown in personal willingness to take responsibility for one’s politeness or lack thereof that has led to this. My experience suggests that no small number of those who support smoking bans in pubs and the like do so so as not to have to assert their non-smoking preference when attending business and other quasi-social affairs with a mixed group of smokers and non-smokers. No one wants to be the ‘wet blanket’ who is perceived to be personally responsible for making the smokers miserable. Sadly, their solution is to abdicate to the state so that they can hide behind the claim of “Well, it doesn’t matter how I feel about it, the government has forbidden it; doesn’t bother me…”.
sigh.
Shirley Knott
Contrary to alex’ belief, in my experience many anti-smoking nits are also the tree huggers who are all about ‘pollution free’ electric vehicles. Never mind that the source of the electricity at the plug is a coal (or worse, NUKE) electric plant – the CAR isn’t producing the air pollution. Typical wonkishness. I recently got into this very debate (smoking in bars, not electric vehicles) w/ a buddy – normallly a conservative type guy, he was all about banning tobacco in bars so that he could better enjoy the beer. I pointed out that there ARE places he can go that don’t allow smoking. He was surprised to hear that one of his favorite brewpubs was on my list – he wasn’t even aware of the options he was already exercising.
Twit.
End result: a coarse and antagonistic society in which there is little concern for the welfare of our fellows and only the minimum moderation of our desires necessary to escape the sanctions of those who have gained control of the levers of power. A Hobbsian approach to social problems has changed a felicitous part of society into a nasty and brutish one.
My sentiments exactly.
Yesterday, David Carr (I think) posed the question why we in the US are more apt to use violence instead of genteel debate. I think it has everything to do with the breakdown of interpersonal skills here in the US. We are now so accustomed to let ‘them’ handle it. “I don’t like THAT!” I must get a bureaucrat on the case pronto. Anyone actually politely ask someone to stop smoking? Or a person refrain from smoking in certain circumstances based on cultural paradigms? Never! We must make it a RULE and file complaints in triplicate. Meanwhile road rage blossoms and bird-flipping are the norm. Smile at someone at your own risk.
Ironically of course, most Statism evolves from warm fuzzies for the proponents, but when put into place, has a chilling effect on interpersonal relationships as Good becomes a commodity of a bureaucracy versus common sense of the culture.
I shan’t be going to Ireland soon that is for sure. What the hell is the point of going to a dark grotty pub in Dublin if there is a cloud of smoke at the level of the eves? Don’t these politicians understand ambiance? Do they all hate pubs?
I have always thought that smoking should be handled the way that drinking in dry areas of the US is handled. If, say a restaurant wants to allow drinking, they can declare themselves a club and “sell” drinking memberships (BTW I have never actually been charged to join. I think the meal’s cost is considered the membership fee.) The idea is that the people who go to that restaurant are well aware that it is a private drinking “club” which happens to also serve food to its guests. The same goes for cigar bars which I think has already been mentioned. Why not allow private smoking clubs which also have food, drink and dancing etc. Those who frequent the place have all signed a membership document testifying to their voluntary presence in a place that they know will be full of smoke and drink (aka fun). Other pubs in the area could be smoke free and it would attract all those who wish to avoid smoke and everyone is able to make their choice between the two.
However it is as unlikely to happen in Ireland as it is in the US because it would take imagination from our leadership as well as their steadfast dedication to the notion of individual liberties for it to actually happen. It is just so much easier to pass a draconian law which applies to everyone the same like it or not.
Andrew,
I couldn’t agree more about the ambience of Irish pubs. I and several friends of mine lived in Ireland for quite sometime, pre-smoking ban, and we are all somewhat heartbroken. What is the world coming to if you can’t go into some dark, hellishly hot, smelly, sticky-floored smokefilled den to lift a pint wit yur mates. Frankly its world none of us wants to live in.
Ireland for us was the last refuge from the sanitary and plastic environments that our home countries have become where everyplace is neat, tidy, perfect and depressingly the same everywhere that you go.
These nanny-staters want to ruin one of the great places in the world. I am pinning my hopes on the Irish people to resist their assimilation into the worldwide Borg unit. They resisted the English for 700 years, they can fight this if they really want to.
*Peggy crosses her fingers, prays and goes out to buys a voodoo doll of the Irish Health Minister*
While I agree with the points raised, I am one in favor of banning smoking in public place (but not in public, i.e. walking down the sidewalk). The term “nanny state” is being used, but when you have tax supported health care institutions, then my tax dollars go to pay for someone who decided to smoke all their life. It’s thier right to smoke all their life, but please don’t make me pay for it later.
If you eliminated tax money support for health care for smoking related diseases, then I wouldn’t have a problem with people smoking in public.
Small aside.
Last week I wondered past a rather nice Irish owned restaraunt, Drifters, gere in Euroville. It was 7 o’clock on a balmy spring evening. Looking inside there was nary a customer. Funny thinks I. Then I spotted it. Pasted in the window was a sheet of A4 saying something along the lines of, “In the spirit of the new legislation in Ireland, from now on Drifters will be a no-smoking restauraunt. Smoking will be permitted on the outside tables on the terrace”.
This is the action of a private individual, acting in what he thinks are his own interests, so that is splendid. However, I suspect that financially he is heading for a fall.
Voluntary or not, it sure makes it clear what the anti-smoking laws could do to the economy as a whole if they’re passed.
.
Sorry to disagree, tachyon, but the “2nd hand is killing babies” crowd would REALLY nutt off in that case. Also, it’s long been my understanding that lifetime smokers die younger and quicker (ie CHEAPER) than non-smokers.
As far as 2nd hand smoking goes, I have to believe there are real consequences – I’ve had some good seats at concerts, ya know?