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Politics : A Neutral Corner -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (2240)	7/31/2007 2:26:05 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2253

If you have the desire and the capital, then "when the market fails to provide" equals opportunity. Of course in most specific individuals complaining about or otherwise talking about the issue won't have either. The more important point is that the market doesn't work in a "the market has spoken" way. It isn't a static one time decision. Its full of changes, the solutions aren't final. To be fair political decisions can also change, but political decisions on issues like this one are always going to leave someone out in the cold, because they decide for everyone, and thus don't allow any flexibility. A non-market solution probably helps your niche in this case. The niche of people who not only don't smoke, and don't like smoke, but who get sick from it or at least strongly detest it, is small compared to the other groups. The larger group that doesn't smoke and mostly doesn't like smoking, doesn't care enough to "vote with their dollar", and not go to bars that allow smoking. But if you can make it a political solution then the niche of strong anti-smokers can recruit the mild anti-smokers (except maybe some of the libertarian ones, or those who are disinclined to participate in politics or political debate), and together they outnumber the smokers. Of course then they lock everyone else out. I don't really see the issue as being similar to a prisoners dilemma. Its possible even likely that the smoking ban, supports the preferences of more people (even if for many the preference is mild) in terms of "will there be smoking in bars", and in that sense its unsurprisingly a more democratic solution. But its putting democracy above freedom and property rights, and also its putting one solution from above, ahead of the possibility of a more complex solution that allows for people who don't like smoke to find places where smoking isn't allowed (and I'm pretty sure that smoke free bars do exist even in some areas where they are not mandated). Even if the property was truly public (and thus property rights was a non-issue) the "single solution from above" would still be something of a problem.