Haha. Smokers OWNED by Mankato

[Gabu]

There are two competing principles here, and neither one is wrong. 

That's just plain ridiculous. If you really believe something like this, you need to learn some basic principles of sound thinking, such as the Law of Noncontradiction.

Under what circumstances can it be decided that one is "wrong" and the other is "right"?  Statements of what ought to be are not statements of fact that can be falsified.

[Gabu]

There are two competing principles here, and neither one is wrong. 

That's just plain ridiculous. If you really believe something like this, you need to learn some basic principles of sound thinking, such as the Law of Noncontradiction.

Under what circumstances can it be decided that one is "wrong" and the other is "right"?  Statements of what ought to be are not statements of fact that can be falsified.

He accepted both principles.

No... he said that neither one is wrong, which is simply true, as something can't be wrong unless it's theoretically falsifiable.  He didn't say that he agreed with both.

[Gabu]

As far as I'm concerned its not the government's business who smokes where. Too many people in the left and right believe that too many elements of people's private lives are things that need government regulation.

Smoking in a public restaurant is not what I'd consider part of someone's "private life".

[Gabu]

They freely chose to work there so its their problem.

A lot of people don't exactly have a lot of choices where they'd like to work, especially if it's one of their first jobs, so I wouldn't exactly consider "either do this job or be unemployed and make no money" to be much of a choice at all.

I think many people who live in a world of 24/7 economic theory don't seem to remember the fundamental assumption in any theory surrounding a competitive market, which is that there is an infinite number of buyers (buyers, in the case of the employment market, being employers).  Obviously, this assumption is never, ever true, and is simply made to simplify the situation to make it workable for analysis.  In the case of a prospective employee with few job skills and little work experience, the assumption is very wrong, in fact.

[Gabu]

My lawyer says your claims of health problems are unsubstantiated , and uncalculatable. He demands the same tax cuts for my restaurant.

Uncalculatable, maybe, but unsubstantiated?  There have been dozens upon dozens of studies showing the health risks surrounding exposure to secondhand smoke.

[Gabu]

Well, I just have to point to my signature to let you know how I feel about this. What? No, not the Cinnabon damnit -

The politically correct crowd will probably start working on those Cinnabons next. The will claim that Cinnabons are bad for your health and increase the rate of obesity and diabetes and therefore put additional strain on the healthcare system. That will be viewed as a justifiable reason for government to regulate, tax or ban them. They'll call it the Cinnaban.

Unless eating a Cinnabon somehow causes others in the general vicinity of the eater to also have their health adversely affected, that is completely incomparable to the topic of smoking.

[Gabu]

Wrong. Both "issues" are the same because the health nazis are obsessed with btrying to msake everyone "live irghht".

Oh, okay, thank you for informing me of what I think.  It is clearly more productive to tell other people what they think instead of actually trying to understand what they actually think.

The justification given to ban smoking in public places is that secondhand smoke has been shown to be just as effective at causing cancer than inhaling smoke directly from a cigarette, and hence, that the smokers are adversely affecting the health of everyone around them against the will of those in the smokers' vicinity.  No attention is paid to the smokers' health.

The exact opposite is true in campaigns to ban junk food - these campaigns are trying to save people from themselves by making them unable to eat unhealthy things.  No attention is paid to the people in contact with the person eating the junk food.

And if you still think that they're exactly the same, you're now being wilfully ignorant.

[Gabu]

Depends on the particular anti-smoking campaign - seen a 'Truth' commercial lately? They seem to be concerned about more than just the second-hand smoke. I'm pretty sure if they had their way they'd ban all tobacco period.

I'm specifically talking about campaigns surrounding banning smoking from public places.  There are, of course, other anti-smoking campaigns with much broader goals and with much different justifications behind them.  I was not talking about those, however.

Sometimes it is - if a person gets heart problems due to eating too much junk food, it might result in them having to get the government to front some of their health costs. This does affect other people as they are paying the taxes that pay for this, and some health advocates do note this in their campaigns. Or what if the person dies of a heart attack, who will take care of his kids? Just examples, but such logic is used by some people.

If I looked for quotes from anti-junk food activists, I have a strong feeling that 99% of them would be citing obesity statistics, how children don't have enough good food to eat, etc., all of which are focusing on the people eating the food, not on those around them.  There are other concerns that people have, but I think it's fairly clear that the health of those eating the junk food is by far the biggest one.

Still, regardless of the logic here the primary objection we have to these types of bans remains the same - these types of bans are people shoving their wills down the throats of others when they have no business doing so.

I don't think you'd find any political policy in the world that doesn't shove the wills of those enacting it down the throats of those who oppose it in some form or another.  Any policy you enact will affect people's lives.  If you ban smoking in restaurants, smokers will be inconvenienced by not being able to smoke in restaurants.  If you don't, non-smokers will be inconvenienced by having a harder time finding a restaurant in which they don't have to gag on second-hand smoke.  Which option you support entirely depends on what you think is best for society (or for yourself, if you have a Machiavellian streak).

The claim will be that Cinnabons increase healthcare costs and that justifies government intervention.

I suppose, but it still isn't really the same thing, because eating a Cinnabon does not adversely affect the enjoyment or health of those around the person eating it, which is what those who want to ban smoking in restaurants want to rectify.  Increased health costs is a rather mild and tangential thing to inflict on those around you compared to lung cancer.

Also some of the more far out health nazis will claim  that those evil makers of Cinnabons add ingredients that make them smell good so that others in the area will be unable to resist the temptation to eat them too. What a sinister plot!

If you're trying to draw an analogy to nicotine, it's quite well-documented that it creates not only psychological addiction but physical addiction, such that the person experiences very real adverse health effects by not smoking cigarettes once they've become addicted.

Anyway, I'd like you to point out someone who has seriously made the assertion you provide above as a justification for banning junk food, because I kind of have a feeling this person is not exactly in the mainstream of the movement.  Every person wanting to ban junk food that I've seen mainly just talks about obesity, health risks of bad food, etc.

Gabu I believe that bureaucrats cannot resist the temptation to control other people's lives. They are already making noises about regulating fast food. They just need to gradually introduce such legislation so that people are not aware of any sudden changes. I think you would find people on this very forum who would support regulating fast food. And Cinnabons would qualify as fast food.

Er, when did I not say that there are no people who want to regulate junk food?  Of course there are.  I was saying that their motives are, in general, different than (most of) those wanting to ban smoking in restaurants.  That's all.

The claim that my restaurant causes health problems is insubstantiated. How would you prove it? How many people have suffered health problems from second smoke inhaled while in my restaurant? If you can't show that anyone was injured then the claim is unsubstantiated.

It can be proven (and has been) that people exposed to secondhand smoke anywhere for extended periods of time suffer adverse health effects.  There is no reason to believe that this would not also be the case for your restaurant.  As such, you would need to prove that there is something magical about your restaurant that goes against every single medical study of secondhand smoke in existence.

[Gabu]

My point was that certain policies infringe upon rights when it is absolutely unnecessary to do so in order to maintain civilized society, and thusly those policies are not justifiable.

This is, in a nutshell, the fundamental problem that dazzleman touched upon when he commented that "there are two competing principles here, and neither one is wrong".  If I may make a slight diversion to a related topic, there's an interesting philosophical question regarding the topic of justifiability.  Essentially, it says that if you make a statement X₀, then there are one of two options: either it is a universal truth that needs no justification, or it must be justified by a subsequent statement X₁.  Then, in turn, either X₁ is a universal truth that needs no justification, or it must, in turn, be justified by a subsequent statement X₂, and so on.  This runs into a very serious problem when discussing opinions, because there really are no objective universal truths whatsoever*.  As such, people are forced either to accept a world in which no opinion is justifiable (rather difficult to do) or to create for themselves universal truths that seem sensible.

How this relates to the discussion at hand comes into play with the part I bolded.  I believe that I'm correct in saying that it comes from what you and essentially every libertarian takes as one of your universal truths, which is that government coercion should be kept to an absolute minimum.  Essentially, we've run into the situation where it is not the case that one person simply needs to be educated more on the topic or has not considered something important; rather, it is the case that we've run into a fundamental disagreement through the discovery that two people's universal truths are mutually exclusive, which is likely to render any further discussion fruitless unless one person can somehow be convinced to actually change his or her perception of universal truth, which happens... rarely, at best.

As such, this is the point where it's usually best simply to agree to disagree.