Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 02:56:42 -0500 (EST)
To: improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
cc: reeves-kalkman &AElig umich.edu
From: Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
Subject: mea culpa: everything I've ever said about smoke-free workplace laws

   It took a while but Cam Wicklow's and Matt Rudary's (and possibly other 
of my opponents in this debate who I'm forgetting) points have finally 
fully sunk in.  (The greatest thing about improvetheworld in my opinion is 
how often we prove Carl Sagan's otherwise apt obversation about political 
debate wrong (see appended email signature).)

   I no longer support smoke-free workplace laws!

   The right strategy is a coherent policy that upholds everyone's freedom: 
freedom to smoke and freedom to not breathe smoke.  For example, mandated 
risk-pay (i.e., the very real risk of cancer for the waitstaff of smoky 
bars) could make it expensive enough to allow smoking that a minority of 
establishments would choose to.  Voila, everyone's happy!  I'm really sick 
of governments banning things.  It's a dangerous precedent.
   Basically, I think policy-makers should be more like mathematicians. 
Smoking in bars and restaurants is/was a real social problem.  But there 
are ways to fix it without adding laws.  In fact, we can fix it by 
generalizing, clarifying, and consistently enforcing existing laws. 
Risk-pay is one way.  Another way is to generalize liquor-license laws to 
include smoking, i.e., directly make it more expensive for bar and 
restaurant owners to allow smoking.
   It really boils down to the Golden Rule.  Banning something is A-OK 
when you don't happen to want to do that thing anyway.  But worry about 
the precedent you're setting for when the government decides that *your* 
favorite risky activity is a danger to yourself and others.
   I should confess though that part of the reason I finally saw the light 
on this is that, living in supposedly smoke-free New York City you can't 
walk a block without getting three facefuls of smoke.
  I keep thinking how nice it would be to get the smokers into some kind of 
special smoking establishments -- "bars" if you will -- and off the damn 
sidewalks!  Oh the irony.

   And don't get me started on New York's transfats ban.

Danny

-- 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  search://"Daniel Reeves"

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's 
a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they 
would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view 
from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as 
it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes 
painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time 
something like that happened in politics or religion."
   -- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP Keynote Address