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Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
No, that's telling private property owners what they ought to do with their property when the public has the option of not accepting the invitation to use their private property. And you aren't justified in doing that.
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The public has the option of not accepting their invitation to use their property when they aren't up to fire codes, or have asbestos, or dangerous animals improperly confined. By your logic, government should not regulate ANYTHING a business does because the public doesn't have to go in there.
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Frankly, that's only an external cost because the government made it one.
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What? Are you trying to give me the choice between clean air and socialized medicine?
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Reductio ad absurdum, there again goes the road down to banning fast food.
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You've lost me there. The external cost is the cost of the workers who get sick because of other people smoking. The cost of fast food is the individual who eats too much of it and gets sick.
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Let's stick with natural direct external costs, not indirect artificial ones.
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Let's stop chopping arguments up into very specific versions of un-reality to suit your point.
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Otherwise, the government would have a way to justify banning any unhealthy activity. Understand the distinction?
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Yes. Do you? I'm saying they should have the authority to ban activities that YOU do that are unhealthy to OTHERS. Activities that YOU do that are harmful only to YOU, the government should not touch.
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Not when the harm is confined to private property. Which is what a restaurant is.
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You're acting like a restaurant and a house are legally the same type of property. It is privately owned property in which the public is invited to do business, and therefore it is held to different standards than the house. There's been lots of legal precedent to this. For example, in California even though malls are private property, mall owners are not allowed to kick the media out of the mall because it is considered a public place under law.
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1. Again, I don't really want to smoke. I've never smoked.
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Yeah, I get it. The you is a generalized you.
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2. Nah, that's okay, I prefer the 'leave my private property if you don't like it' option.
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We'll just have to disagree there.
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It may not be easy. At all. But it is a choice. There's no force.
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No, some people do not have that choice. Period. It's like the people who were furious over the people that didn't leave New Orleans when Katrina hit. Those people didn't have a choice. They couldn't leave because they didn't have enough money to do it.
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No, the public does not need to be safe wherever it chooses to go. That would pretty much empty out Detroit.
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I disagree with you still, but this line was really funny
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The public does need to be aware of risks associated with any particular location. The public should be able to make an informed choice. Beyond that, let them do what they want to.
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So as long as I tell you that guns are dangerous, I can shoot you?
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The majority has no business telling me what to do with my property when none of their rights are forcibly violated by my actions.
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You are attempting to violate their right to life by introducing a carcinogen into their lungs.
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It's both. It's a matter of convenience and a matter of rights.
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You do not have the right, legally defined or otherwise, to smoke. You have not been stopped from smoking before, but that does not mean it is your right.
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If there's no involuntary violation of your rights, then you have no business dictating an alternate course of action. It may be trivial in your view, it's still none of your business.
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You're right. That's why I'm not trying to get the government to ban smoking entirely. Only near others in public places.
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What's indefensible is the notion that private property accessible to the public is somehow public property.
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publicly accessible is not the same thing as public property, but it is also not the same thing as purely private property.
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It's neither indefensible nor inexcusable to insist upon the right to partake in harmful activities on your own property.
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You're right. It's indefensible and inexcusable to do it on property that is NOT yours.
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You've shown so far that you can only get a semblance of a defense for your position when you (A) falsely classify restaurants as public property and
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Uh, no, I didn't. Just because you can't grasp the difference between public property and publicly accessible property does not mean I have classified anything falsely.
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(B) falsely claim that employees have no choice in the matter.
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That's not false. You just don't want to believe it.