cdd wrote:Why are cars a social benefit? BEcause the entire infrastructure you see around you, the fact you can get homogenous products, the fact you can communicate in a timely manner, the fact your trash can be collected, can all be traced back to the car industry. Personal driving of course is a different issue, but it provides benefits too: people who live far apart can see each other (benefits both parties). There can be a greater use of remote sites like industrial parks because people can drive to them which lowers prices.
And again, those things deliver a private benefit. The fact that I can buy goods from a store is a benefit to me. I've paid for that benefit, because I've contributed to the cost of transporting that good. Communication is a slightly different matter - the benefit would ordinarily accrue to all parties involved, but when it comes to driving, only one party might have faced the cost. In saying that of course there are the cases where you end up communicating with someone that you actually have no desire to communicate with.
At any rate, the social benefit aspect of driving is in fact quite low relative to the private benefit associated with it. People don't choose to buy a car because they believe they'll be contributing to society's well being (in fact, I would argue it is more likely that people would choose
not to buy a car because of their concern for the environment), they do so because it makes them personally better off. In this a car is absolutely no different to most other products, including cigarettes. We consume goods because they deliver a personal benefit to us. Again I come back to the point I've been making all along: the issue is whether that consumption imposes an external cost. If it does, then we should devise ways to 'internalise' that cost in the market price paid by the consumer - ie. a tax.
As for the objective of banning smoking, this is that "fewer people should smoke". I may be missing something obvious here, in which case I'd be grateful for your correction.
Yes, but why? Ensuring "fewer people should smoke" is not an end in itself. What is the reason for pursuing that policy?
As for the idea of interest groups, anti-Smoking supporters have little to gain financially by stopping smoking (except very dilutedly). The pro-smoking lobby, on the othhand, is far more accurate a definition of an interest group, for they stand to gain if smoking is allowed. Saying that those against smoking is an interest group is as absurd as saying those against criminal theft is an interest group.
Strictly speaking, 'those against criminal theft' would be an interest group. If you're a pharmaceutical company, for instance, you're going to want strong intellectual property rights to protect your research and development efforts. If you're a film or TV studio, you're going to want to stop such things as BitTorrent and pirate DVDs. They have a vested interest in those outcomes. Just because they are an interest group does not necessarily mean they are wrong or that their views should be opposed - but it's important to identify those interests wherever they exist. Anti-smoking groups exist with the sole purpose of ending smoking. They do so on the basis that they believe smoking is bad and they don't believe anyone should do it. That means they are imposing their views on others: chiefly those who happen to enjoy smoking and believe they should be allowed to do it.
To the statement that being against smoking is a 'value judgment' this, like many points in defence of smoking (and the previous point about interest groups), overlooks the fact that it is harmful to others. Just like PUBLIC pornography is widely accepted to be detrimental to society and thus banned.
Well, I can't say I know what "PUBLIC" pornography is - has there been some proposal to air XXX-rated content in open town squares? But as to your broader point, I'm not arguing there is no external cost from cigarette smoke - but again I make the point there are a whole range of things which could be harmful to others, but we still allow them anyway. So long as that external cost - which is reflective of the harm that might be imposed - is accounted for by those generating the cost, then there's no issue.
As to the idea of internalising the cost, this makes the flawed assumption that you can put a price on the health damage of smoking. To an extent you can, but prevention is better than cure. And to reiterate, I am completely against the over-zealous taxation of tobacco.
Of course you can put a price on it. There's no problem there at all. Whether we like it or not, we place values on life all the time. If we weren't capable of valuing life (and hence, it registered an infinite value) then we would ban anything and everything that might possibly contribute to a lessening of one's life. So yes, smoking would be banned. So too would cars, alcohol, bath tubs, electricity - in fact, you could make a case for banning anything that has contributed to anyone's death.
Finally, in response to the evidence of harm from alcohol and caffeine, two points. Firstly, (and I don't think I expressed this clearly enough earlier) they don't harm others. Smoking does. Secondly, these substances don't cause private damage when consumed moderately. Tobacco, on the other hand, causes damage even when consumed at average quantities.
So if I drink five shots of tequila in quick succession and then proceed to drive a car, that won't harm others? The alcohol impairs my judgment, which results in me crashing, and hence I kill someone. I suspect - though I don't have any figures handy on this issue - that the death toll for alcohol-related deaths (in terms of those who have died because somebody else was drinking) is almost certainly higher than those who have died from passive smoking.
To portray a ban on smoking as an erosion of civil liberties is a huge misrepresentation. Smokers are more than free to smoke as many cigarettes as they desire in privacy. A smoking ban is strictly focussed on the effects of smoking to others, and so we should be looking at the externalities of smoking, many of which cannot be fixed with cash. Perhaps you don't believe passive smoking is damaging to health - that is the only explanation I can think of that is consistent with your stated views. Otherwise, your argument could be just as easily extended to cover, say, the erosion of civil liberties from not being able to mug people (That derives private benefit at social cosţright?)
I'm not denying the presence of an externality at all. I think the externality can be overstated, but I'm not at at all denying its existence. But when we deal with externalities, our goal is not to eliminate the external cost imposed on others. What we are trying to do is ensure that society's wellbeing is maximised - and society includes smokers just as much as it does non-smokers. Yes, smoking imposes a cost on some non-smokers. Banning smoking for the sake of non-smokers though imposes a cost on smokers though. To take a hypothetical example, how is a society benefitted by a pub where almost everyone smokes being banned from allowing smoking inside. Yes, the occasional non-smoker who drifts in can enjoy clean air - that's a good thing. But there's a large cost imposed on all the smokers - and that private cost, in terms of inconvenience which represents diminished utility, will exceed the 'social' benefit which accrues to the non-smoker. So society is made worse off. Of course, you can frame that example differently to get different outcomes - my point is that simply banning something does not get you to a socially-optimal point (unless of course the social optimum happens to be prohibition - though that seldom works effectively anyway).
The following is a technical exposition of the externality problem, so forgive me. But what you need to do is value the cost imposed on non-smokers from each cigarette being consumed, apply that as a tax to cigarettes so smokers are made to consider that cost in their decision making. They will still smoke - there will still be an external cost imposed on other parties - but there will be less smoking, but at that level of smoking, the marginal private benefit to smokers of consuming that last cigarette will be equal to the marginal social cost (which is the private cost to the smoker in terms of what they've paid for the cigarette and the external cost which accrues to others in society - ie. non-smokers) that consumption imposes. That is our socially optimal point - higher levels of cigarette consumption will reduce social welfare, because the cost imposed on society is greater than the benefit to the smoker; lower levels of cigarette consumption would also reduce social welfare, because smokers would be deprived of some of their private benefits from smoking, even though at those marginal units of consumption, those benefits are greater than the costs they impose.
The difference between theft and smoking is that the act of theft is designed to deprive someone else of their right to property. That is the definition of theft. Smoking, by contrast, does not deny someone else the right to live. Through our day-to-day lives we inhale all sorts of particulates in the air that might be bad for our health. We don't instantly ban those things. There is an external cost, and so long as that external cost is 'internalised', then we reach the socially-optimal level. You can think about theft in the same way. The private benefit from theft accrues to the thief. But the cost is almost entirely an external one. Aside from negligible costs of equipment and transportation, a thief faces very little direct cost - it is imposed entirely on the party they are stealing from. Now, hypothetically, we could tax the proceeds of theft - which would mean making the thief pay the value of the goods they've stolen, as well as any additional costs (emotional trauma, property damage etc) that they've imposed on the victim. In other words, they'd be better off just going to shop and buying the goods legitimately. In essence, the rate of tax would be prohibitive. For that reason, a tax on theft isn't going to work - after all, we're talking about criminals. I suspect they're not overly concerned about paying their taxes either. In that case, we are better off banning theft.
Gavin Scott wrote:This legislation was sold firmly on that footing, and I would say that 2 years into the exercise (in Scotland anyway), there should be some useful data to prove or disprove the notion.
Gavin, I think you'd need way more than 2 years to establish any change. After all, smokers aren't likely to develop lung cancer themselves after smoking for just two years (unless I've missed a whole wave of students just dropping dead), so I don't see why passive smokers would. You probably won't be able to safely draw any conclusions for at least 50 years.