Looks like the smoking ban in Pittsburgh is off again, which is a win for freedom. If you read this article in the Post Gazette you will see that the ban is off because of two smart business owners. They took their complaints to the state courts, and the courts agreed that it was unfair.
After reading this article you will find more proof that the free-market is still working to fix this “problem” on its own.
“Pat Joyce, owner of the 17th Street Cafe on the South Side, said … Our primary focus is dinner. I would say 90 to 95 percent of our guests had asked us to go nonsmoking.”
See, if enough people request these businesses to go nonsmoking, the smart business owners will give it to them. But if 95 percent of their customers want smoking then you better bet that they will want to keep it that way; and that’s fine. With businesses listening to the demand, you now have a choice between a business that does and one that doesn’t ban smoking. Everyone likes choices, so why would we want the government to take them away?
Here in Massachusetts, we’ve had a statewide smoking ban for four years now. Restaurants lobbied as hard as they could but the non-smoking bloc was too powerful.
When I was in Boston all the bars smelled like old beer. It kinda made me wish there was a little smoke in the air to cover that up.
One of the reasons that I started studying politics and philosophy was my indignation for the blatant inconsistencies within the government. Objectivism makes many decisions such as these clear-cut with the basic principle that no man has the right to initiate force on another. Smokers have rights, too.
Did this ever get off the ground again?