On 1/22/07, Daniel Reeves <dreeves Æ umich.edu> wrote:

   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