Illiberalism
Why The New York Times and I will never really be ideological friends...
It's not so much their enthusiasm for anti-smoking as a public interest. It manifestly IS a legitimate public interest to reduce smoking in the population at large, but not for the reasons they cite. Reducing smoking in bars is fine to the extent that one is considering the material interests of non-smoking bar patrons. Increasing the cost of smoking is fine to the extent that one is off-setting the public costs of the habit.
But none of this is the logic upon which their editorial board operates. No, the compelling state interest is the salvation of actors from the consequences of their own impoverished judgment. "All this shows how effective vigorous government action can be in breaking a harmful addiction. That makes it all the more frustrating that so many state and local governments — lured by the possibilities of revenue from slot machines, lotteries and casinos — are doing everything they can to make addictive gambling more convenient and irresistible. "
Now, I'm a non-smoker. I went from a pack-a-day-plus-habit-for-seven-years to a no-cigarettes-any-day-pattern over five months ago. One can't argue that I'm still physically addicted to smoking. If anything, I feel like the distance from my habit has given me a good sense of perspective on the whole thing. Except for the negative impact upon health, I have to admit that smoking is on the whole, a wonderful thing. Most Americans SHOULD BE SMOKERS for some point in their life. It materially enhances quality of life, broadens perspective, is good for the mind and good for the soul. I wish I could still be a smoker, and don't regret for a moment that I originally became a smoker, despite the pain of my latter-period habit and the excruciating pain of withdrawal.
I wouldn't want to live in a world where the Taliban were able to impose their moral values upon my private choices of pleasure. The oppressive nannying ninnyhood of the New York Times Editorial Board is not qualitatively separate from the preening coercive moralism of Falwell-type conservative Christians or fundamentalist Islamic imams. The hijacking of the state to coerce behavior from citizens for no reason apart from the presumptive salutary benefits to private interiority is fundamentally illiberal and should be denounced.
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1 Comments:
I can see your point, but I'm not sure I agree...
It's a difficult question to resolve, considering the huge amount of money cigarrete companies spend on convincing people to smoke. While free will must be a basic presumption, there is nevertheless the scientific fact that repeating something enough increases its validity to people.
Thus, there is some negative externality of the companies repeating ad naseum how good (or rather, fun or cool or whatever) smoking is. (Similarly, the fast food industry is producing the externality of poor conceptions of food's health content). While neither should be illegal, one could argue that messages about smoking's effects (and fast food's effects) or perhaps rather positive messages should have as much investment as private companies' messages, to counter the externality.
It may be possible to argue that smoking is going in the direction of a much lower externality and higher amount of education. And addiction does seem to be partly cultural; some number of cultures use hallunicogens and opium for specific purposes, without apparent addiction.
Similarly, gambling produces rather large externalities, and to the extent that the government is promoting it, it is promoting a negative public good that our public mechanisms, i.e. the government, will then have to deal with again.
As people have said, gambling is a tax on those who don't understand math (probability). And to the extent that it is extremely regressive in the distribution of its benefits, it bears governmental involvement.
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