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Talk:Debate:Should government restrictions on smoking be tightened or rolled back? (view source)
Revision as of 21:30, July 23, 2008
, 21:30, July 23, 2008→Comments
::I think that the use of restrictions serves two purposes. First, it levels the playing field in promoting change, which is why there's smoking in European establishments - no one wants to go first and lose smokers to other competitors. Second, it's often necessary to drive change in the public interest in the face of resistance to voluntary adoption. We impose pollution and health-inspection restrictions on companies instead of relying on free markets to deal with the polluters and makers of tainted food, for example.--[[User:DinsdaleP|DinsdaleP]] 17:06, 23 July 2008 (EDT)
::I think that the use of restrictions serves two purposes. First, it levels the playing field in promoting change, which is why there's smoking in European establishments - no one wants to go first and lose smokers to other competitors. Second, it's often necessary to drive change in the public interest in the face of resistance to voluntary adoption. We impose pollution and health-inspection restrictions on companies instead of relying on free markets to deal with the polluters and makers of tainted food, for example.--[[User:DinsdaleP|DinsdaleP]] 17:06, 23 July 2008 (EDT)
:::...but, again, I think there's a significant difference: when you buy tainted meat or drink water that's been polluted by a factory upstream, you don't know what you're getting. Yes, a free market would eventually correct those things, but it would purely suck to be the people who got poisoned in the meantime. Walking into a restaurant with a smoking section is another matter entirely; you know what you're getting up-front. You can make the decision to stay or to walk back out. --[[User:Benp|Benp]] 17:30, 23 July 2008 (EDT)