How to win an argument with Liberals-Progressives-Socialists-etc...
POSTED BY: Wulfenstar
UPDATED: Thursday, June 16, 2011 09:23
VIEWED: 32999
PAGE 28 of 31
Well, if we wanted to keep this thread going and get into the details of smoking bans, then both sides have a point.
The issue ultimately boils down to consent versus non-consent in a potentially harmful activity, as well as property rights.
We can probably say that open air smoking is well enough ventilated that there is little impact to non-smokers in the vicinity of a smoker, with some dependence on proximity and wind speed. Perhaps Sig might disagree, I'm not sure.
Once you get onto private property, it's a little trickier. A building is not so well-ventilated as the outdoors, and there's also a difference between a business and a residence.
For a business, this is not a place where people generally spend more than eight hours a day, if even that. Some businesses would probably prefer if people did not smoke on their premises, such as a clothing store (fire hazard as well as protecting the merchandise so that the items are as appealing to purchase as possible). But some businesses might actually prefer to have smoking, such as some bars and clubs, depending on their patrons.
Presumably, before businesses had smoking bans, customers who didn't like smoking would assess their risks for exposure, possibly in a non-smoking section, and if they didn't like the amount of smoke, they would vote with their money and leave. Similarly smokers would become frustrated with businesses that turn them away, and be drawn to the businesses that don't. Eventually it would be assumed that the only customers remaining a a smoking establishment would be the one who had already agreed to breathe smoke anyway, and in this sense, it becomes a consensual group activity even if there is no interaction between them.
As such, I believe the business owner or landlord may deserve to have their say here.
For a private residence, there may be a family, and children are never consenting parties. There's also the complication that a person may spend as many as 24 hours a day in a home, and that a person or children may not be able to leave. However, in the absence of children, a person does have some reasonable freedom in terms of what they can do in their own home. Perhaps resolution of the issue should be left as some agreement between or compromise on the part of the consenting for the otherwise non-consenting.
I do have some sympathy for you, Sig, in that one of my grandmothers smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. I didn't have to live with her, but my mother did, and actually both of us are bothered by the smell of cigarettes even with my much reduced exposure.
The thing is, as a family we tried to encourage her to quit smoking, and also drinking, and we thought she did. But we found vodka in her hall closet when we were looking through it, and so there's no knowing if she really did quit. But if she didn't, then at least we succeeded in getting her to compromise, and not drink or smoke when we were around.
She died in April due to a blood clot and a stroke caused by lung cancer. And stupid and pointless as it is, I have to accept that's how she wanted to live her life.
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Bytemite wrote:
"And stupid and pointless as it is, I have to accept that's how she wanted to live her life."
I think you nailed it. Thats the epitome of freedom. The right to be stupid...or great. Without someone else telling you, as an adult, how to live.
I may be a bit old-fashioned, but I believe that you have the right to live as you want to live. So long as your actions do not hurt someone else.
The "hurting someone else" portion has gotten convoluted in my time, however.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SkyDiveLife:
Everyone,
I happened across this article, and it really pulled me up short. Its a ranking of the states by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, on the personal and economic freedoms held within.
Do think this study holds water?
http://mercatus.org/freedom-50-states-2011
I dug into this a little. Part of their methodology includes " Estimates" of the effects of legislations and policies. Which means they could cook the books any way they wanted to. They see to give a lot of influence to gun ownership policies; freedom of businesses to do whatever they want, without interference; lack of environmental interference; and legalization of mariajuana.( Hey, man... according to the spell checker, I didn't spell that last word right... Whoao...
)Seems like, if you ask yourself, " How do the states stack up libertarian-style?", you'd get about the same poll results.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Skydive: the purpose of banning public smoking is not to keep YOU from smoking, if that is your choice. It is to keep you from forcing ME to smoke, whether I want to or not.
As the asthmatic offspring of former heavy smokers, I can tell you I truly appreciate the ban on public smoking. I can't stand the stench, it makes me wheeze, and it shortens my life. As they say: The right to swing your fist ... or, in this case, light up... ends at my nose.
I sympathize. My wife is asthmatic. And I support restriction in enclosed areas- restaurants, workplaces, offices, public buildings ( Hey, it ain't legal in COURTROOMS, is it?), airplanes trains, etc. ANd yanoo something that really annoys me?-- employees not allowed to smoke in their workplace hanging around near the public entrance, smoking there in clumps. If they gotta smoke, designate an area behind the building, away from the routes the public HAS TO use.
That said, outlawing smoking in your own home, or outdoors, or on the public street or in public parks or national parks or wildernesses, that's just dumb. It can't be illegal EVERYWHERE. ANd it's dumb to make it illegal right here, where it's legal if I cross the street or walk down the block, or cross the city limits line and am legally in another town.
And as to parks and forests, it's already illegal to smoke there if you drop your ciggie or match and start a forest fire. Just exhaling some tobacco fumes there shouldn't be a crime.
So how and where do you set the limit? If it's illegal to smoke outdoors here, where does it become legal? At the edge of the local juristiction? At the state line? 400 yards into the wilderness or the Mojave desert? 2 miles? 10 miles...
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"S'what happens when you give up control of your own will and intellect to an outside source without question, anyone who knows how to format the commands owns your ass."
Along those lines - I see a lot of discussion about WORDS. I've come to have a problem with HOW many of those nebulous words are used - even words I like, like freedom. That's because these words are used like religion. They're not defined, and no one ever has to prove what those words mean in practical terms. People are expected to take those ideas on faith. Ideas like freedom, profit, reward.
So when generally older, whiter, richer and more powerful people say to generally younger, darker, poorer and powerless people - you have to go to Vietnam/ Afghanistan/ Iraq/ Libya and kill and die for 'freedom' - we are expected to take it on faith. No one has to prove what that word means, for the reason we are conditioned to NOT ASK.
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posting problems
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1Kiki - THAT needs to be it's own topic, cause that's a whole lotta meat on the bone of that discussion, and this one is kinda played out.
But that's a good topic for discussion and worthy of its own thread, which it should have.
-F
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1kiki wrote:
"So when generally older, whiter, richer and more powerful people say to generally younger, darker, poorer and powerless people - you have to go to Vietnam/ Afghanistan/ Iraq/ Libya and kill and die for 'freedom' - we are expected to take it on faith. No one has to prove what that word means, for the reason we are conditioned to NOT ASK."
I'm not sure I understand your point.
I don't believe that the boys (or girls nowadays) fighting in "Vietnam/ Afghanistan/ Iraq" are all "younger, darker, poorer and powerless people"...
In fact, Im sure thats not true.
From what I know... pretty much everytime there has been an American conflict, the fighting force of America (including all races) have done their duty.
There may be a point to what you are saying about the "poorer" people fighting. But, as I have experienced, the military is usually the ones who are able to teach, train, and pay the "underclass".
Are you saying that all "poor" people are "darker" or black and/or brown? That seems kind of racist. Now I'm not calling you racist, just wanted to understand your point of view.
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I did not say ALL, I said GENERALLY.
And generally, you'll find this is true. The younger, poorer, darker, and less powerful are disproportionately represented in the fighting forces, and disproportionately absent from the ruling classes. There is a sieve at work which makes it this way. You may call it racism, classism, ageism, or some other 'ism', but it exists. And to describe it is not to be in favor of it, just to acknowledge that it exists.
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Quote:
Bytemite wrote:
Similarly smokers would become frustrated with businesses that turn them away, and be drawn to the businesses that don't. Eventually it would be assumed that the only customers remaining a a smoking establishment would be the one who had already agreed to breathe smoke anyway, and in this sense, it becomes a consensual group activity even if there is no interaction between them.
As such, I believe the business owner or landlord may deserve to have their say here.
And there's the rub; it seems it would have been easy enough to write into such laws the exceptions whereby a club or restaurant could CHOOSE to be a smoking-only club or establishment, if they thought they could make a living at it.
I basically quit going out after the smoking ban hit the bars here in Austin. I didn't even smoke anymore by then, but it was the smells that drove me out. Long as I can remember, bars and clubs were smoky places; now, all you can smell is the stale spilled beer, the disinfectant, and vomit. Cigarettes smell better, even to a former smoker!
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill
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