[sonny]

Anyone besides me totally blown away at some of the laws that are being passed in this country?.......stupid question ...I know.
I'm pretty freaked out about this cigarette ban here in NYC.
I remember when I was a 7 yr old kid running to the liquer store or OTB for my pop and not getting any hassle from the store owner or the cops (they knew it was not for me).
Well those days are obviously gone,and it seems that things are getting worse every day.
What's next?....what do you PREDICT will become illegal or frowned upon that at present time is completely acceptable?
Cigarette smoking is an example of something that NOBODY could have predicted would become such taboo,but it fooled me.
Anybody wanna predict the future?

[Dorrin79]

I see two options

1) we continue descending into a social-fascist nanny state, liberties eroded by the right and left until none remain

2) things go too far, and people wake up and begin rolling back the encroachments of the State on our freedoms.

I hope for 2. Sometimes 1 seems more likely. The smoking bans are a logical extension of social-facsist principles ("for your own good" laws and prohibitionism). Perhaps the thing that disturbs me most is that so few seem to be willing to attack the statists on principles . Utilitarian analysis of the benefits and costs of policy is all well and good, but without core principles to stand on, it's just solipsism.

Rand warned about the lack of core principles among conservatives and even libertarians for a long time - that fascists and socialists had strong principles (albeit bad ones) while the conservatives could only lean on 'tradition' or possibly religion. I used to disagree with her on that point. Nowadays, I am beginning to believe that she was correct in that, as she was in so many other things.

[Standing Wolf]

Perhaps the thing that disturbs me most is that so few seem to be willing to attack the statists on principles . Utilitarian analysis of the benefits and costs of policy is all well and good, but without core principles to stand on, it's just solipsism.

You've hit the nail squarely on the head.

[sonny]

It is my theory that those that can't take care of their own problems or those that are jealous of other people's pleasure are the ones that neatly walk in line to vote for giving the govt the power to enforce whatever benifits them.
Hows that for a run on sentence :D

[geekWithA.45]

Another part of the problem is that its often hard to convincingly articulate the value of the core principles of Liberty in a compelling way when confronted with an immediate, simplistic argument on their limitations such as "you don't have the right to pollute the air I breath and give me emphysema with your smoke".

Liberty is deep, and not everyone gets it, while immediate benefit isn't deep, and any moron can understand it.

It's a case of farsightedness vs shortsightedness.

[Boats]

So the "complex liberty argument" is that you have the right to pollute the air I breathe wherever and whenever you feel like it?

That and $2.75 will get you a coffee at Starbucks.:rolleyes:

[Preacherman]

I think we're seeing a fundamental split in attitude between big-city folks and small-town or rural folks. I know that many on THR live in or come from big cities and are as independent as many from small towns or rural areas: but if you look at the famous county-by-county map of the 2000 Presidential election, you see that most of our big cities are Gore territory, while virtually all smaller towns and rural areas are solidly Bush territory. I think that what may eventually happen is that big cities (and some middle-size ones) will become sheeple territory almost exclusively, while the more independent folks will move to areas where they can have some say over their lifestyles, instead of allowing others to legislate their destinies.

Of course, another problem will be to prevent big city voting blocs from taking over State and National government through force of numbers. We're going to have to fight hard to prevent this... can we encourage inner-city voter apathy in some way? :D

[Sam Adams]

If I may speak for Geek, I think that you misinterpreted what he meant regarding the cigarette smoking comment. I think that he meant (and I DO mean) that some things are more important than the immediate health benefits of some policy - specifically, LIBERTY. Liberty is so important that literally millions of people throughout history have died to obtain or preserve it and, hopefully, millions more will have the same intestinal fortitude (though better luck) when liberty is challenged again.

Do you seriously think that several hundred thousand of our best people went to fight in Iraq to preserve the power of NYC's government to ban smoking? Did those who were killed in the flower of their youth want LESS liberty here at home, or more?

I will grant you that anyone's liberty extends only to the point where another's liberty begins, but there has to be a cutoff point in the analysis - it has got to be a DIRECT assault on another's liberty, not some incredibly indirect finding in an obscure and not-so-universally-agreed-with health study. I personally don't smoke, and I hate breathing in 2nd-hand smoke (except from pipes - they smell GOOOOOD), but I don't believe that I have the right to tell someone not to smoke near me except in my home or in a very enclosed space (like a plane or bus). If I don't like someone smoking at the table next to me at lunch, I am perfectly free to express my discontent to the owner, and to walk out.

Think about it: using your logic, people that farted too much (and thereby polluted the air with methane, a known greenhouse gas) could be forced to consume Beano, or have their diets regulated (no more beans, beer and sauerkraut on the hotdog while watching the football game), or perhaps be fined in order to pay for some bloated government bureaucracy that is supposed to clean up the air (but which will, instead, just clean out your wallet and mine). Yes, this argument sounds absurd, but is it REALLY so absurd when you hear the Lefties talking about regulating the fat content of fast food (because all of those fatties that consume the Big Mac and fries put a burden on our health care system)? Think, man - take the argument to its logical conclusion before you adopt a particular point of view.

If you take the indirect harm argument to an extreme, all of our guns will be banned within our lifetimes. Even if you don't, the antis are using this kind of statist "logic" to disarm us and control us. Wake up and smell the coffee - Liberty is under assault, and the utilitarian arguments of the statists are largely to blame. Don't buy into those arguments - utility is NOT the issue, LIBERTY is!

[geekWithA.45]

You nailed it. Thanks!

[Boats]

Let's leave legislative coercion out of it for a moment because the latest wave of assault on "smokers' rights" is a mixed motive phenomenon and I have lived both perspectives as someone who smoked under increasing restrictions for eight years of my life and has gone without for most of the rest of my 36 years.

Even from a pure libertarian analysis of "your rights end where mine begin to be harmed" the smokers are the losers. Here I am, a man of perfect liberty for the purposes of this discussion, minding my own business, breathing the air 12-16 times a minutes without being forced to think about it and along comes Joe Camel who lights a cig upwind of me and ends all of that exercising his rights. In your analysis, it is my duty to move? Does it depend on who was there first? Does it depend on how strong the wind was blowing? Maybe it is the smoker's duty to minimize his impact, no?

Now if we interject a third party, say I am at an eating establishment, say a diner, a confined space, the owner of whom allows smoking in one half of it, what do we get. We get what was the de facto standard for much of my life--smoking and non-smoking sections I either accept the arrangement, leave without informing management, or I lobby the ownership to throw the butts out using his right to refuse service to anyone.

A division of the restaurant is a perfect idea in concept, everybody's theoretically happy. The fly in the soup is that the smoke doesn't respect the artificial section divide and the air is common to all. The solution, one that I have provided in a related thread, is that owners eventually have eliminated smoking sections in most of the restaurants in my city in response to customer demand for it. The ones that remain smoking friendly share three traits--they are either immense, they only allow smoking on the patio, or are not at all upscale and serve patrons most likely to smoke i.e., pubs.

I view the cities like NYC, or more locally, Corvallis Oregon, as anomolies which nonetheless are on the right side of the issue for the wrong reasons and with the wrong methods. I do not endorse or condone legislation banning smokers to the out-of-doors where, BTW, they rightfully belong. Market forces or private polling in the workplace as to whether to allow indoor smoking are going to eventually dictate that smoking is as welcomed as carbon monoxide poisioning normally is, which of course is to say not at all.

Smokers are literally a dying breed. The percentage of full-time smoking adults has fallen by half over the past 30 years and if that trend continues, smokers will be less than 10% of the population inside of another 10 or 15 years. Nothing less than majority marketing is going to cast you all outside even if most governments never get around to it. Railing about exclusion by the tyrannical non-smoking majority isn't going to make any smoker less offensive to the people who do not light up.

[mercedesrules]

(Sonny)Anybody wanna predict the future?
Every action will be either prohibited...or mandatory :(

MR

[Shalako]

The crystal ball on this one is H.G. Wells' The Time Machine

In the future I see drones. Lots of medicated, apathetic, pleasure driven, overbreeding drones. A seemingly benevolent one-world government will wipe their chins of drool, and staff massive bureaucracies to administer to all the needs of their dependence.

Eloi anyone?

And in the caves of the underworld, there's Billary feasting on their flesh (figuratively, I guess).

:rolleyes: