Re: [Libsa] Smoking bans: Does the end justify the means?

[Jaco Strauss]

This is a such a great example of an acceptance of the "government knows best" slippery slope...

Should consenting adults in a privately owned establishment not be allowed to enjoy smoking tobacco. If you don't smoke and you do not want to inhale second hand smoke, you just don't go to those places.

But we now have "libertarians" who have gone beyond the "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out" to a "First they came for the Socialists, and it had the desired effect"

Under the draconian laws in SA that some here see as having had the "desired effect", cigar lounges are not even allowed anymore! 

Chris Tame wrote a great book on the whole anti tobacco crusade titled "Not Just Tobacco: Health Scares, Medical Paternalism, and Individual Liberty"

On Amazon it states:

The current war against tobacco should not be seen as an isolated phenomenon. Indeed it cannot be understood fully – or effectively criticised – outside of a much broader context, including those of ethics, political ideology, the nature of special interest groups, class conflict, and the nature of science, amongst others. In this book, the war against tobacco is placed in the context of the myriad other health scares and paternalist campaigns that seem to monopolise so much of the media’s space and attention.

The book ca be found here:

https://www.amazon.com/Not-Just-Tobacco-Paternalism-Individual-ebook/dp/B01ENQ4TR6?ie=UTF8&tag=geolinker-20

Jaco

2016-05-31 10:07 GMT+02:00 Schalk Dormehl <schalk....@gmail.com>:

@Leon, again, I'm only pointing out that smoking laws have had their intended effect. This was after all in part Stephens question. 

As for Donald Trump being to libertarians as Hitler are to Jews, that's very extreme. Again, I don't want anyone for president but I don't think Donald Trump's candidate persona is real and I suspect he's less evil than he appears. I think the same thing about Julius Malema's persona, he's not as stupid as he likes to give the impression, but I suspect he is actually far more evil. 

On Mon, May 30, 2016 at 4:12 PM, Garth Zietsman <garth.z...@gmail.com> wrote:

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, property rights are an obvious solution to exposure to many obnoxious behaviors. Even here one could frequently have a Coasean solution to property rights violations rather than using the law against violators.

On 31 May 2016 at 01:05, Garth Zietsman <garth.z...@gmail.com> wrote:

Isn't there some Coasean way to deal with that?

I read the other day that there are some places experimenting with paying young men not to commit crime and, though early days, these programs appear to be highly effective in reducing crime.

Sure one wants to prevent stabbing or being peed on or marinaded in smoke involuntarily but it is not necessarily the case that having a law against it is the best or only way to do so.  I am aware that many libertarians - and left anarchists too - believe that it is never the case that a law against something is the only or best way to solve a problem.  I personally do not rule out the possibility of a law against something being the best or only way - I am in favor of rule of law after all - but I do think people reach for the law as a solution too quickly.  If anything, for the vast majority, it is the default position.

On 31 May 2016 at 00:34, Erik Peers <erik...@gmail.com> wrote:

However smokers used to inflict smoke on non smokers. Yet urinators do not urinate on others (at least not at social functions I attend) nor do knife wielders stab. Besides there are laws against stabbing and urinating on others without their consent, and definitely in public.

Liberty exists when nothing is done to others without their consent. Before anti smoking laws smokers would regularly cause me to inhale smoke against my consent. They generally either didn't care or were not aware that non addicts found inhaling their smoke offensive.

Those addicted to stabbing are soon packed off to jail. Should they not be? Should there not be laws against stabbing and urinating on others? If all three are equal should they not be treated equally?

On 31 May 2016 00:18, "Leon Louw (gmail)" <leon...@gmail.com> wrote:

@Schalk

I got the understanding from an early email in the "libertarians for Trump" conversation. Libertarians for Trump is, for me, something like Jews for Hitler, or nuns for promiscuity.

As for smoking, the line that smokers inflict smoke on (unwilling) non-smokers is as irrational as being against urination because some people pee on others, or against knives because some people stab others.

The smoking issues is extraordinarily elementary libertarianism: liberty exists when nothing is done to people or property without consent.

On 30 May 2016 at 21:53, Schalk Dormehl <schalk....@gmail.com> wrote:

I am not sure where you got the idea that I am a Trump supporter. I don't think his persona is real though. I think he'll be a terrible president (as will any other candidate), but he will be interesting.

I recently traveled a bit and I realized that at least in the Netherlands and the UAE smokers still smoke around nonsmokers in situations where it isn't the nonsmoker's choice. Specifically in queues and around small children. I don't have an opinion beyond that he SA gov has in a ham handed and totalitarian fashion increased some people's life expectancy without their consent. If I had my way there would be no dept of health though. I'm simply noting that instead of causing more smoking (as one would expect from our gov) these laws have had their intended effect.

Your position on smoking (tobacco), if I understand it correctly, Schalk, surprises me -- along with you not thinking of Trump as a narcissistic delusional megalomaniac.

Apart from appearing to be sanguine about coercing smokers and tobacco suppliers, you seem to have embraced anti-tobacco propaganda uncritically.

Is what you've written about smoking (tobacco) serious or tong in cheek?

Are you against the libertarian option: freedom to supply and consume tobacco?

(Please don't raise the old twaddle about "passive" smoking, which is subject to the usual prohibition on rights violations).

On 27 May 2016 at 21:15, Stephen vJ <sjaar...@gmail.com> wrote:

So you really don't recognize the smoking-nazi foundation of your statement at all ? Ok, let's go back to basics. On what grounds and by whom should people be forced to do things according to your will rather than their own ? I'm talking things that may be detrimental to them and those around them in particular, but which they want anyway, like smoking, eating pork chops, voting, drinking or creating their own currency.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

On 27 May 2016, at 16:43, Schalk Dormehl <schalk....@gmail.com> wrote:

#2 well, foreigners still smoke and (anecdotally) far more than South Africans in environments that affect non-smokers, like outside queues, with minors and in cars with others. Why the government has accomplished it's goal in this regard is a mystery to me. Perhaps because the methods were not draconian but the goal was still aligned with basic respect for each other. 

#3 can I have a 30% update please?

On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 8:05 PM, Stephen van Jaarsveldt <sjaar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thumbs up on #1.

On #2, please explain "working incredibly well". I suspect the gas chambers in Germany also worked incredibly well, depending on which side you were on and what your aims were.

For #3, okay, I'll have that requirement specification out by the weekend and started engaging an offshore developer & possible partner for company registration in neutral space.

S.

On 25 May 2016 at 16:42, Schalk Dormehl <schalk....@gmail.com> wrote:

1. Well if the government was taking the money, burning it (or deleting it) would be plan A. This would be the same as a universal income grant and incentivise the hoarding of money to benefit from the grant. 
2. Anti smoking laws in South Africa, while totalitarian, are working incredibly well, those of us rich enough to smoke will live longer as a result, albeit partially against our will. Also our laws about plastic bags having to be priced worked out quite well. As to your question, the unintended consequence of the ANC government seeing the EFF as competition has retarded the complete decolonization of the country. The armed gang's war with the unarmed gang is working out in the peace loving people's favor. I still really wish some shadowy organization like a mining conglomerate would develop stealth and weaponised drones so that the price would drop and community watches could purchase them for more noble purposes.
3. South Africa has an enormous informal sector. While it's impossible to measure it's exact size, but I'm pretty sure most of SA's business activity goes unregistered. So as tax freedom becomes more and more like running the iron man, I'm sure system D is partially picking up the flack. That said, it does worry me, since the technology to scale an agorist business to multinational level safely has yet to be developed. 

On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 12:27 PM, Colin Phillips <noid...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

Today is Tax Freedom Day!!!

As calculated by our own Garth Zietsman, and observed each year by the Free Market Foundation, today is the day of the year when the country as a whole is predicted to have generated enough GDP to pay for all of government.

Source

So, today I'm asking this forum the following questions:

1.  If we fixed total government spending at 39.3% of GDP in 2017, what is the best thing for that money to be spent on?  Basic Income Grants?  Roads? Schools? Cars for Zuma's wives?  Some spending decisions are wiser than others - what do you think we could spend more on or less on?
2. Are there any government spending initiatives you have noticed that are unusually well run, compared to the usual government project?  Or any that are unusually bad?
3. The general trend of Tax Freedom Day seems to be creeping upwards by 1.8 days per year.  Are you worried by this?  I am.  What do you think we (all of us individuals) could do to stem this tide?

My answers below.

1. 39.3% feels like a big proportion to me, but if it must be fixed at 39.3%, then I want the money to be spent productively.  
• I like the idea of schools and education in general, but I think the idea Milton Friedman propounded, that of giving each parent a school voucher to be spent on education, is better than directly funding the schools themselves. 
• I also like roads, and hospitals and so forth, and I want these to have funding.  The question is just how that funding should be managed.  If government must spend the money, spending it on healthcare services is not awful.  But I worry that making the hospital more dependent on pleasing government bureaucrats than on pleasing patients might lead to underperformance on health objectives.  In the same way that school vouchers might help fix education, health vouchers might fix the health system.  
  
• My general objection to the Basic Income Grant is that, as Benjamin Franklin didn't say,"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."  The fear is that if the Basic Income Grant can pay X rands per month to each citizen, the next election will be won by whoever promises that this will be increased to 2X rands per month.  If government spending somehow could be frozen at 39.3% of GDP, then my major objection falls away.
• See my answer to 2 below.  I am concerned about crime.  If I could divert resources away from other spending in order to reduce crime, I would do so.
2. My major concern at the moment is concerning crime.  It seems that if we must have government, the primary concern of government must be to maintain a secure environment for the inhabitants of its territory.  It is plainly failing at this task in absolute terms.  
3. I don't see any way to manage the level of government spending without understanding government spending.  By starting conversations about what the right level of government spending should be , with ordinary people, we can "raise consciousness" about the idea that government needs to be managed responsibly and effectively.  It may not be a quick solution, but it might work.

Colin

[Erik Peers]

Jaco I agree with what you have put forward.

However in our society the law shapes social norms. Before the smoking laws smokers felt they had a social right to smoke near me, and did not regard it as bad manners.

Since the law it is considered bad manners to smoke near a non smoker.

As a Libertarian I agree with the arguments against the state making laws against what people can do on private property.

Is there not a way to negotiate social etiquette without making a law about it? Law has unfortunately been used as a substitute for morality. Law is presumed to represent the mores of the day.

In practice I generally have no way to enforce the no smoking law. Yet when approached smokers now acquiesce more easily than before.

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[Humphry Hamilton]

Erik, I think it is the other way around. 

 

It is the social trends that determine what laws are made.  This does not preclude the ability of governments to sway or even determine social trends to some extent but it is after all a democracy.

 

Take the obvious intent of Obama and Clinton to disarm the US population.  If they could do it they would but they can’t as there is too much resistance.

 

And the present infatuation with Trump is because the state has been imposing its will excessively on the masses in recent decades. 

 

The masses are keen on removing some power from the state.  According to Bob Hoye, who did the research on credit cycles, this is the normal result of a credit bust.

[Stephen vJ]

I think you're all missing the plot, so I'm feeling almost as exasperated as Leon is on this. I don't get why this Libertarianism 101 issue is even being discussed at this level.

The only thing that I would add to what Leon said is that public property / tragedy of the commons should also be considered here. If someone pees in your yard, that is a property violation. If he dumps rubble in your house or farts in your place of business, those are property violations.

The ONLY reason for having a law against peeing on something, is if that something belongs to no-one. The ONLY reason we have smoking laws, is because of the state and the existence of public spaces... just like any other case of tragedy of the commons, such public property will necessarily be polluted, defiled, abused and consumed with no regard to consequences.

Asking for different ways of having the tragedy pan out, for example by whacking people with sticks while doing what comes naturally to them in such unnatural spaces, does not make it less tragic.

When someone smokes in your presence, either you are on private property which you should evaluate against such detriment and relocate (or not) accordingly or you are on your property which you have a valid property violation case on or you are on public property and should call for an abolition of the state which created it. None of the valid options are to call for a different flavour of the same poison.

The extent to which even people on this forum have accepted and appropriated the notion that lives are public property, astounds me.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Erik Peers]

If only it were that simple.

What is needed is a means of communication whereby the requirements of different groups (smokers vs non smokers) could be listened to and acted on. Laws serve this purpose. Finding a solution without resorting to state law requires new mechanisms to he set up.

Often a recourse to law, or the state, is in the absence of a way of being heard.

Or of course one could burn down the university. Another way of being heard. It's the same problem of communication.

And this problem doesn't magically disappear when all land is in private hands.

[Jaco Strauss]

It actually is that simple. You do not need to be "heard" when you are in my house, my pub, or my restaurant. If you don't like it, leave. 

In fact, more than that, if I don't like the fact that you don't smoke, I should not have my natural right to allow only smokers, taken away from me by some third party.

[Stephen vJ]

Well, that is my point. It works where there is private property and breaks down when there is public property, so the solution is not public property plus sticks, it is private property. Culture and human nature and the ability to speak have all evolved to facilitate private property (or communicate, as you call it), adding artificial process to that just makes things worse.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Stephen vJ]

Exactly. The probability of me having a gun and the potential inclination to defend my property is a much clearer message to would-be intruders, even without us ever communicating, than would be a new law enacted in far off Pretoria and announced from the rooftops by their SABC puppets.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Trevor Watkins]

In my experience the vast majority of smokers respond quickly and politely to a polite request to stop smoking or move elsewhere.  It doesn't really matter whose property they are on - its just good manners, and really does not need a law to make it work. In the few cases where the smoker is belligerent, it is almost always the amount of alcohol consumed that is the problem. In that case you might have to invoke your property rights, but that still is no guarantee that you won't get a fist sandwich. 

In the words of Churchill, be polite but carry a big stick.

Trevor Watkins

[Humphry Hamilton]

Agreed, but we were discussing why laws are made not why or how they should be made.

 

You can have as many rational discussions as you like about libertarian ideals (which I would mostly agree with) but if you don’t take into account the irrational and emotional behaviour of man then I doubt you are going to get anywhere.

[Stephen vJ]

There is no such thing as irrational action. Almost all behaviour / action, whether dogs or humans or starfish, is automated, driven by mechanical or chemical processes i.e. rationality doesn't enter into it. A small quantity of actions are logically reasoned through and those more often than not turn out badly; recent research has shown an inverse correlation between the happiness with a product and the time spent choosing it, for example. What you call irrational action is not irrational, but simply different to what you think you would have done in that situation. That makes it a personification or projection, not irrational.

S.

[Humphry Hamilton]

Ok scrap irrational and call it emotional.

 

The point is that people are like this and if you want them to adopt libertarian ideals you need to take this into account.

 

For example last night I had a discussion with my neighbour regarding the dagga trade out of Lesotho through our properties and I pointed out to him that we should not concern ourselves with it as long as they are just moving dagga around.  My point was one that Leon made a while back that if you can legally put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger then surely it should be legal to put a joint in your mouth.

 

He had no real counter argument to this but said that

1.       you could not just have people smoking weed all the time

2.       Most people are like children and need to be told what to do

3.       It’s illegal

 

All the above would be untrue or at least cannot now be proven true if weed was legalised but the bottom line was that he was just uncomfortable with allowing people to smoke weed.  He was just herding.

 

You would have to change this with a massive media campaign, not designed to persuade people that weed is ok but that libertarian ideals are ok.  Leon’s articles are a start, but if the conditions are not right then you wouldn’t get anywhere (note my earlier example of trying to disarm the US population).  The fact that the Business Day is publishing Leon’s articles is a small sign that perhaps conditions are close to right.  They have an idea what people are reading and want to keep selling newspapers.

 

So a society will go through natural periods when they will be open to the ideals of libertarianism and that is when one must strike.  Timing is everything.

[Garth Zietsman]

I disagree Stephen.  If the behavior is automatic or mechanical and not involve rationality then it is irrational by definition.  Secondly, as you yourself say, behavior following reasoning often turns out badly which implies that it was badly done i.e. not all that rational.  Thirdly behavioral economics has clearly shown that human reasoning is prey to many biases and arbitrary influences which which again suggests we are less than the perfectly rational being assumed in Homo Economicus.

[Stephen vJ]

Yes, I can agree with that. I've said before, trying to convince people of stuff is generally a waste of time. Invariably they revert back to their default position, given some time (often seconds). You don't swing an election your way by winning debates, but by creating the impression that you won the debate. The one is about substance & logic, the other about hairstyle and vocalization. As long as the libertarian party talks sense in stead of beating its breast, it will not win any elections.

S.

[Garth Zietsman]

That's one reason I think Johnson's approach i.e. don't talk in terms of abstractions like consent/non-initiation of violence axioms, is probably a more effective way to increase voter support.

Incidentally I see that when a poll gives an option to choose Johnson he taps Clinton and Trump supporters about equally.

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

I'm sure we had this discussion before and I suspect I was on the other side of it at the time, so convincing me back to my previous position now is going to be weird. Maybe it is just semantics or definitions, but action cannot logically be irrational. Yes, I can make a mistake or error in judgement or something which others find incomprehensible or simply stupid, but none of that is irrational. If I walk into Engen and buy a mutton curry pie, the resulting stomach is due to my lack of experience, not irrational behaviour. Why would I buy something knowing it would make me sick ? Unless I was a masochist, in which case it would be 100% rational to buy it with full knowledge of the consequences. I don't see how any action could be irrational. If I do it, it must make sense to me. I may be misguided, stupid, ill informed, etc., but if it does not make sense to me, I will not do it. So the definition of irrational action would be exactly that I don't do it.

S.

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

Which means that a vote for him means nothing; it does not tip the scale in either direction, it simply reduces the pool size. If he tapped one more than the other, then you could argue that a vote for him is a vote against the one impacted more by a vote for him.

S.

[Garth Zietsman]

Voting for or against Hillary or Trump is not the point of voting for Johnson.  If your aim is to reduce one candidate's support relative to another then it would be most effective to vote for the latter and not some third party that might withdraw disproportionate support from the former.  

I just found it a surprise that he drew support equally from both sides.  I expected him to draw away support almost exclusively from the Republican candidate.

[Humphry Hamilton]

Perhaps rational and irrational is a poor choice of words and perhaps we shouldn’t even try to define something that Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking Fast and Slow”, wrote a whole book on.

 

His point was that you can spend some time thinking about an issue and thrashing it out as we do in this group or you can simply make a quick decision and go with the herd.  We cannot spend all day thinking about every decision as there is just not enough time but we do try and do it (or should) for important issues.  To make libertarianism relevant we would need to make it important and then people would more likely allocate the time to it.

[Garth Zietsman]

Stephen in your sense a schizophrenic would be rational because what they think and do makes sense to them.  At this point let's agree that in their subjective world they are rational.  In a bigger context they are not.  That isn't just a judgement based on my disagreement with their thinking or choices because I routinely grant the rationality of thinking and actions of people I do disagree with.

Now that I've said that let's withdraw that agreement.  I don't agree that fact that something making sense to a person means that their position was logically coherent even within the constraints of their subjective world.  This incoherence and arbitrariness and frequent lack of attachment to any reason at all is what behavioral economics demonstrates.  Furthermore I assert that this applies to goals and preferences as much as it does to instrumental factors.

[Stephen vJ]

So what would be the purpose of voting for Johnson ? Does he have an actual chance of winning ?

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Stephen vJ]

Yeah, so let's vote EFF, thereby making libertarianism very important. ;-)

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Garth Zietsman]

I guess you missed the exchange I had with Gavin yesterday.  

Your vote is extremely unlikely to determine the result so voting based on likely outcome doesn't make sense.

As I said a few posts back voting for third parties for strategic reasons doesn't make sense either because voting for the least unfavored but competitive candidate is more efficient.

In short you should always just vote for the position you like (if any.)

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

No, we are missing each other by a hair, but missing each other none-the-less...

My action cannot be considered irrational, because from my perspective it is always rational, otherwise I would have acted otherwise. I think up to there we agree, albeit that this is internal & subjective.

However, you cannot externalize this, because then you would have to evaluate all action against objective and scientific standards. My eating pork chops would be irrational, since they are marginally less healthy than broccoli.

So is my eating pork chops always and everywhere irrational because broccoli is scientifically proven to be healthier than pork chops ? Surely only Ayn Rand would say yes to that. You cannot demonstrate that an action, which is subjective by nature, is irrational on the basis of objective measures. That is irrational. :-p

S.

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

Yes, I missed that exchange. I pretty much follow every post on this forum, but lost interest in the Trump vs. Hillary thing somewhere along the line and missed everything since "The correct answer is None of the above" about 3 weeks ago. ;-)

S.