Hello All

Missing in Professor Chapman’s statistic-laden polemic in favour of a smoking ban in pubs was any concept of individual freedom and personal responsibility. He moves from the obvious (smoking is bad for one’s health) to the conclusion that this ban is good public policy. What of private property rights and free choice? They don’t exists in Professor Chapman’s universe!
Rather than a freedom destroying ban, why doesn’t the government …. Do nothing!
The pub owners can work out what they wish to do themselves, and it will all sort it self out. Those patrons who don’t like smoke filled pubs will go elsewhere, perhaps some pubs will close, or become smoke free. Others may retain smoking, staffed by people who are willing to accept the risk of working in such an environment (perhaps they will be smokers themselves). In time the situation will reflect community preferences, there may be a few “smoke-easies” where patrons can enjoy a cigarette, whilst others will be smoke free, or may be segregated.
Those who go to smokey pubs do so in the full knowledge of the risks, everyone benefits, peoples’ freedom is preserved, as are the rights of the pub owners. Professor Chapman’s freedom destroying procrustean prescription is bad medicine!

With Kind Regards
Geoffrey

Back to the future in Geoffrey's brave new world of total market freedom. Bar staff can accept the risks & the state can back off as long as people's precious "freedom" to selfishly harm others continues unabated. Right then! The reduction ad absurdum is let's do away with all occupational health law. Let's send children down the mines again - they're so nimble & can fit in those small spaces! Get some study tours of Pakistani child labour in carpetweaving happening, man! Toss out all these Nanny State safety standards and just tell workers to be more careful at the end of a 12 hour shift. And stop worrying about asbestos. Bands playing at 120 decibels might send you deaf? No worries.. just put a warning sign up and let it rip! Worried about drink drivers' "freedom to drive"? Hey, just stay off the roads .. it's a jungle out there.

Pub staff are typically low paid, non-unionised and often back packers who can be easily exploited. Don't like my menial wages and conditions? Well, buzz off .. I can always find someone more desperate who'll do the job. Why should we worry about someone dumb enough to work in a bar and their health? Geoffrey & his neo-Darwininan ilk probably think these people have it coming to them anyway.

Franco the bar worker

Hello all

No one likes to see sharp business practices or unsafe working conditions, but how should they be dealt with? The best way and the way most consistent with individual freedom is by individuals or groups applying pressure within the framework of a free society. The ways of applying public pressure are many; shaming, protests, economic boycotts and any other forms of voluntary protests could be used. Take one of the examples Franco uses, the case of asbestos mining. Given what is now known about it, is very unlikely anyone could be found to work in such a mine, and if they did there a would need to be very high levels of personal protection such as pressurised suits and the like. If any workers could be found no doubt they would need to pay very high wages. If the owners knew asbestos was dangerous and withheld information from their workforce, any who got sick would have strong grounds to sue for a misrepresentation that induced them to sign a contract of employment. The situation would sort itself out one way or the other without the need for state intervention.
As to the pubs ban, it is universally known that its second-hand cigarette smoke is dangerous, anyone therefore accepts the job in such environment accepts the risk. With freedom comes responsibility , if people wish to live in a free society they must accept the consequences of their own actions. The nanny state that would protect us from ourselves would also take away our freedom, such a price is always too high.
So to Franco’s charge that I am a “Neo-Darwinist”; if expecting people to take responsibility for their own actions and accept the consequence of their choices is Neo Darwinism then I’m guilty as charged.

With Kind Regards
Geoffrey

Good on ya' Geoffrey! Your comments are exactly right. Market forces and social pressure are a much more free way of change than having "Big Brother" do it for us. Fast cars, 4 wheel drives, fast foot, alcohol, cameras on the beach, they're all on the hit list. It's almost impossible these days to live a day of your life and not break some petty little rule or regulation. We need protection from pollies and their monstrous bureaucracy alot more than from anything else.

It's a simple matter of equity. Bar workers don't have the right to a smoke-free environment which other workers take for granted. In other words, bar workers' personal freedoms (not to inhale smoke, not to be at risk of carcinogenic substances) are being ignored by the likes of the AHA.

Those who feel their personal freedoms are under attack are being somewhat selective when they assert their "right" to smoke in bars. Where are the arguments for the right to smoke in libraries, in banks or at service stations?

As for arguments about "Big Brother" and too much government regulation, well, there are long accepted restrictions on alcohol consumption in terms of drink driving, under age drinking, drinking outside hotels etc. Are those rules an indication of creeping communism?

I can't for the life of me find any worthwhile argument to counter the reasonable proposal that hospitality workers should have a smoke free work environment like other people.

Geoffrey and bozzie, I agree with your sentiments 100%. Great initial post by Geoffrey. Simon Chapman is a first class scumbag, who clearly has no regard for the rights and liberties of individuals, and seeks to ENFORCE his own brand of puritanism on everyone in the community. The true markings of a tyrant.

However, I for one dispute that the so-called dangers of passive smoking are conclusive. Some studies have certainly not shown passive smoking to be dangerous to health, but surprise, surprise those studies are not widely publicised.

As for the bar workers, it's simple. A great many occupations carry some risk to health. If you don't like it, get a job elsewhere.