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

To: Lane3 who wrote (2242)	7/31/2007 5:05:56 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 2253

I agree that a change in old restaurants won't generate the same kind of buzz that a "new widget" might create (and even a brand new restaurant often won't have a lot of buzz or if it does it will probably be for some other reason then smoking policy). And also its harder to separate out whether success of failure of the business is due to smoking policy (unless the change is really dramatic). While I think this makes market based change more difficult, I don't think it makes them impossible. And of course if you don't start with the assumption that the point is to make the change, then even no change isn't market failure, except in the most broad sense of the term in that the market doesn't perfect address everyone's desires. But nothing will perfectly address everyone's desires, and that includes laws against smoking in bars. Remember, Tim, I'm old enough to remember spittoons. You don't find them in bars anymore, either. It took laws to make that happen. Did it? I don't remember them (at least not as something common) but I doubt that all major jurisdictions have laws against them. I don't doubt that laws in some places made their disappearance easier and/or faster but I bet they would have faded away anyway, and in fact I think they may have indeed done so in the absence of a law in many places.

To: Lane3 who wrote (2242)	7/31/2007 7:50:02 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2253

What's your opinion on this? Fund Considered for Va. Tech Victims State Compensation Could Be Modeled on Program Created After 9/11 Attacks By Tim Craig Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, July 29, 2007; Page C01 RICHMOND -- Virginia legislators are considering creating a taxpayer-financed fund that would compensate the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre to try to stave off potential lawsuits. The informal talks among legislators center around what, if any, responsibility the state should shoulder in financially supporting the more than two dozen injured students and faculty members, as well as the relatives of the 32 victims who were killed during the April 16 shooting. A state fund could be modeled after the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, which Congress created in 2001 to disperse $7 billion in taxpayer money to the families of victims of the terror attacks in exchange for a waiver of their right to sue. washingtonpost.com One opinion can be found here distributedrepublic.net --- My take is that if there is a real case (or enough of a threat of serious lawsuit problems even without a real case) that this would amount to an out of court settlement. If there isn't any need for an out of court settlement, then I'd sort of be against the fund, for the same type of reasons laid out in the blog post. There is already a private fund (that received $7mil so far), and I don't see why it should be the governments job to try to compensate people that it hasn't harmed. (I suppose you could argue that it did harm them through disarming them with the "gun free school zone" rules, but that's a whole separate debate). In addition to considerations like "should the government pay people who suffer when it isn't the government's fault (and the payments aren't really welfare or disaster relief, so any justification based on arguments for those things don't really apply), there is the point that lots of people suffer, why should someone shot in a mass shooting get money, while someone shot in a 7-11 robbery, or killed in a car accident doesn't? OTOH I don't get worked up about it to the extent that Jonathan Wilde apparently does. Certainly there are a lot of worse things the government does with out money. Yes I know that that argument could be used to defend a lot of waste, and useless or even harmful programs, but still I'm not really upset about this one.