Henry Farrell's interesting post on smoking bans reminds me of an ongoing question that I have never heard a libertarian answer satisfactorily. Smoking in bars and so forth is dangerous to bystanders who have pulmonary disease (the dangers of secondhand smoke to those who are not already breathing-impaired seem to be largely mythical). It's noxious to some other number of people who do not smoke. The libertarian rejoinder to the smoking bans is that bars could choose not to smoke if people wanted it. But in practice, despite the fact that smokers are a minority, and most people hate it, almost no establishment went non-smoking without government fiat.
This seems like a market failure. You can explain it through preference asymmetry and the profitability of various customer classes: heavy drinkers are more likely to also be heavy smokers, and they are the most profitable customers. Bar owners don't want big groups of people who are going to take up three tables for an hour and a half while nursing one white wine spritzer apiece. They want people who are there to drink. In a competitive equilibrium, they couldn't afford to go non-smoking because they'd lose their most profitable customers to all the other bars.
You can explain it, but this doesn't seem like a good market outcome by any measure. Let me be clear, I'm still against the smoking ban, even though I personally vastly prefer smoke-free environments; I think interfering with property rights like this has even heavier costs. But I also recognize that I'm in a minority. And I think that politically, if not intellectually, the success of smoking bans is a heavy blow to libertarian credibility.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
There was a non-smoking bar right in the middle of downtown Richmond, VA 9 or 10 years ago. It went outta business.
What that means I don't know.
What about tea houses and coffee shops? Why didn't these go non-smoking on their own? Are caffine addicts also heavy smokers?
I'm philosophically against smoking bans as well, although as a non-smoker it is nice to be able to go hear live music or see live professional sports without being expected to breathe second-hand smoke (this injustice always bothered me). Still, it is true that I'm personally benefitting by stripping rights from non-smokers.
Now, that the market landscape has been cleared of open smoking establishments, I'm curious what would happen if cities began issuing tobacco licenses to establishments akin to the liguor licenses they currently issue.
Here in the college town of Tallahassee, FL (FSU), most bars still allow smoking, but the large majority of them have indoor and outdoor areas. Several that provide craft brews on tap ban smoking outright. I know the north is much colder most of the year, but my guess it's just a matter of time and population density before non-smoking bars gain traction. Of course, most of the restaurants turn into bars after 10 and smoking is still banned in those.
But the market did produce non-smoking coffee shops and cafes. Why? Because margins on a cup of Fair Trade Hazelnut Decaf are so large the owners can sell one and afford to have the patron take up a comfy chair for 2 hours.
Megan is right to point out that margins per alcoholic drink are lower, so the need is to have customers consume more over a shorter period of time. Heavy drinkers tend to be smokers. You could up the price of a drink, but it would drive the smokers to drink at home.
I have never understood liberterianism (witheither a big or small L) to mean that in every circumstance the market will provide the outcome that you personally prefer *or even that the majority prefers). My personal view on that mater is that even if we all agreed the lack of non-smoking bars is not a 'good market outcome' it would not be reason enough to further erode the property rights of the bar owners. The cliche (but true!) reason being that, yes, today maybe the government is doing something I like (such as removing smoking form bars), but maybe tomorrow the voting majority would find a different vice I enjoy to be aestheticlaly displeasing enough to ban it. (The additional implication here being that I agree with your statement "the dangers of secondhand smoke to those who are not already breathing-impaired seem to be largely mythical")
The question of why more no-smoking bars did not pop up is an interesting one, and may even be answerable right now if one looked at how well non-smoking bars fared in neighborhoods which contained bars of both types.
I agree. Libertarianism does not equal the belief there is a market solution to everything.
OTOH it is true that market solutions are typically what libertarians will propose when asked "well how are you going to handle problem X...". If the answer is that the sub-optimal situation just has to be accepted, well sometimes that just recognizing reality, and avoiding creating an even worse problem to try to solve a mild one, but that doesn't change the fact that if you can't propose a solution, many people will see it as a weakness in libertarianism.
I agree with the argument that "if government is going to ban X (something disliked), maybe tomorrow it will ban Y (which you do like)", is a valid and important argument, but I don't think it has a lot of impact with non-libertarians.
I think it does.. My friend Samad operated a cool bar/lounge, Mosaic, in Raleigh (the capital of a major tobacco producing state) for more than two years and benefited from having a very different atmosphere (also no TV screens and no bud lite). NC has now banned smoking in bars and restaurants and although he thought it might help him a little (some smokers will now come) I'm not so sure..
I wonder if at least part of it is that a lot of bars also sell cigarettes - either over the bar or at vending machines - so they are making money that way on smokers too. Plus, lots of bartenders smoke, so despite that claims that the smoking bans were to protect employees, there are probably quite a few bartenders who like working in a place they can smoke in.
Depends on jurisdiction, really. A lot of places don't allow cigarette sales in bars, so the financial argument is moot. The "bartenders smoke" argument is more valid, but that won't apply everywhere.
Smokers might be a minority, but they a powerful minority when in a network of friends that want to get together.
I don't know about how profitiable cigarette sales are in bars. I doubt very.
I have heard that when not allowed to smoke, smokers drink more. But if they have the option, they will go somewhere else and get their non-smoking companions to go along.
Usually it's a matter of price, there are plenty of places light on smoking or with no smoking, but most people are priced out. The priced out group probably tend smoke or to have smoker friends anyway.
Perhaps what you're witnessing is the market's resistance to change. Is there an economic term for that?
I've lived in two states with smoking bans; in each, there was lots of mooing about revenue drops. What I saw -- and I'm married to a musician, so I saw firsthand -- is that the smokers went outside. There didn't seem to be a shift in drinking patterns, etc. There was a problem with outside litter, however. But being inside was definitely more fun when the smoke moved out.
The image of the smoke-filled room with a smoking band improvising on the stage is romantic; the reality of the smoke is easy to live without.
Megan writes:
Well, yeah, but that's because smokers have become the buttmonkeys of democracy. Politically, if not intellectually, smoking taxes were already a heavy blow to libertarian credibility[*] -- the majority slaps a heavy and regressive tax on a minotiry population of addicts, then slaps itself on the back because smoking is bad for the taxees and spends most of the money on the non-smokers' kids. After that, telling smokers that they couldn't smoke in bars because non-smokers weren't willing to pay higher drink prices to go to non-smoking bars was a fairly small step.
[*] Put more directly, I don't think libertarians have ever had "political credibility" - the fact that they can't win elections is enough to establish that. At best, libertarians can hope for "intellectual credibility."
smokers have become the buttmonkeys of democracy.
Hear, hear. Passing anti-smoking laws and regulations (Congress and FDA, I'm looking at you!) are the new V-chip: a symbolism-heavy, substance-lite way of making "progress."
For the record, I have never smoked nor do I enjoy being around smokers. (Well, okay, they are more fun -- but I don't like the smell.)
Its a mistake to think that bar patrons are purchasing alcohol and food, they could get a far better and cheaper selection of either at their local grocery store (well not those of us suckers who live in PA). Bar patrons are paying for something else, call it atmosphere, socializing- or whatever. When people said that they wish there were non smoking bars what they generally mean is that they wish there was a bar with the same number of people with no smoke, not no smoke and half the amount of people. As long as there were some bars with smoking they would continue to be the more popular bars and would still hold a strong attraction for those who disliked smoking. The only way to get what they wanted was to eliminate smoking all together.
the dangers of secondhand smoke to those who are not already breathing-impaired seem to be largely mythical
Indeed, and more disturbingly, a great deal of the medical research that purported to show otherwise was subject to outright fraud.
I'm curious. On what research are these statements that the dangers of secondhand are mythical come from? Hopefully, more than just criticism of the Helena study.
Anyway, if there were ever any nonsmoking bars and they don't exist now that may be a clue to the answer. But not the answer itself.
I'd like to know that, too. My guess is that it's a dose-response argument. Secondhand smoke contains most of the same toxic and carcinogenic compounds which make smoking itself dangerous to your health. Certainly, the levels of these compounds in the air inside a bar are well above the EPA action levels. But it's possible that if you're only breathing the second-hand smoke for a few hours a week, your risk of health problems (if any) would be very difficult to detect.
Megan,
Maybe it is not a failure? By what criteria have you deemed it a failure?
It seems to be that the market had made a decision you don't like, and so you call it a failure.
Have a great week!
"the smokers went outside": yep, and that's why the beer gardens of English pubs are less pleasant these days - the smokey, shrieky morons are outdoors, rather than enjoying the fug indoors.
It isn't true that "almost no establishment" went nonsmoking without the government requiring it. Lots of fast food restaurants and other places focused on serving kids and not alcohol went nonsmoking without the government requiring them to.
As for the "success" of smoking bans: what do you mean? Bans have killed and continue to kill bars. It's a generational thing I'm sure, but bars and restaurants that catered to folks ten and fifteen years older than you are hurting and closing as a result of smoking bans. (Younger people are more likely to be looking for other things, so to speak, and so are more willing to be deprived of smoking.)
Just because the market doesn't provide an item you desire is not indication of a market failure. If such bars cannot be run profitably, then the lack of such bars is indication of a market success.
Cap and Trade. Cap and Trade!
Create an "indoor smoking license." Cap the number at 20% of the liquor licenses, or whatever percentage is your policy preference. Auction them off. Most places won't bother to buy them, especially if their competitors are also taking a pass. The norm would be non-smoking.
Some bars would buy permits and allow smoking. But that's okay! You at least wouldn't have the ridiculous situation I saw recently of every person at my neighborhood joint going outside to smoke. Including the bartender. Who in that situation was being unfairly harmed?
I always thought that this made more sense than a total smoking ban.
I think that's jaw-droppingly brilliant. If you start a campaign to get this thing started, I will gladly contribute.
Wait, why? Insofar as cap & trade makes sense with carbon, it's b/c carbon reductions are a true public good -- non-rival & more importantly non-excludable -- so you expect too much carbon. But we're not talking about an externality at all: the environment of a bar is quite rival and quite excludable. So essentially we're talking about adding all the defects of the carbon cap & trade to a non-externality situation. I grant it's better than an outright ban, but it's not hard to be better than a poke in the eye. What's the upside here?
Whoa--I put all of about 5 minutes of thought into idea (part of the beauty of being a commenter).
I guess the upside is that there are still some bars and customers that would be fine with indoor smoking, but no way to separate those out from the establishments or customers that either want a smoking ban, or would be fine with one.
If the argument is that the emergence of non-smoking bars is desirable but impossible as a result of market failure,* then
a limited number of licenses for smoking bars is brilliant.
Issue 1 smoking liquor licenses for every 3 non-smoking, auction
them off, and let smoking *and* non-smoking establishments exist.
* (Basically, this is a "lemons equilibrium" narrative. I'll
grant that it's probably not true, but it's one of the driving
narratives for the ban.)
And then when it becomes clear that being a smoking bar is desirable, bars get screwed.
The liquor license itself is a failure. The power that the granting body has over establishments is quite absurd.
I agree completely.
That's a wonderful idea.
Wow, that's some out of the box thinking. Not sure it's actually *good* policy per se, but it's certainly better than a ban.
The gorgeous beauty of this plan, is that immediately those 20% of thr bars would gain 80% of the traffic - they'd be the most fun libertine places to be, causing all sorts of wonderful side-effects.
Yes, this idea is excellent, and one that doesn't mean you ban going out versus feeling like an ad for murdering one's grandmother (I wonder if anyone else has been chased away from a bar's backdoor for letting the smoke in, physics be damned). Obviously, I smoke, and have for twenty five odd years. If you give one the chance to pay 10% more for a drink where I can smoke, I'd go there. In San Diego, they came up with a nice solution -- bars that are actually outside but with the feel of being inside. Yet, I'd bet one thing, if you have a hit band, and they're choosing between a sweet gig at a non-smoking place and a major profit at a smoking bar, the non-smokers will come.
Markets indeed.
One last point: a bar in an undisclosed location has twenty-five signs up saying No Smoking, but if you put your pack on the table, the 'tender will give you a nice glass of water in a paper cup to dump your ashes and butts. It's raided quite often, but once you get used to spilling your "drink" on the ground, it's hard to get a ticket (at $380 bucks for the first offense).
That's what a free market is all about.
They could have required a certain air purity standard. Air testers are not that expansive, and it would give owners the choice of banning smokers or investing in better HVAC systems...
Here's a friendly libertarian answer for you: because if you have six people going out, and even one of them says they don't want to go to a nonsmoking bar . . . the group goes to a bar that allows smoking. Iow, the preferences of one individual override those of the group through what I believe is called 'courtesy'.
That'd be a big part of it, yeah. That said, on those occasions when you do have a good point to make, you'll get listened to more readily when you're not a snarky jerk about how you present your point.
Non smokers are courteous. Smokers are rude jerks who will ignore all their friends who don't like smoking.
Or did you mean that non-smokers are spineless pushovers who would never express a desire to avoid a smoke filled bar?
How did the artificial restriction of liquor licenses impact the decision to go smoke free. One would imagine that without zoning and liquor sale restrictions, smoke free bars would have been quite popular.
However, with the right to sell alcohol restricted, it wasn't possible....?
Just an interesting side note. There's an Outback Steakhouse in Arlington, VA (the one off Rte 50) that is changing their bar to a "smoke free" completely on their own volition. The proprietor believes it will generate more costumers and hence more profits...I think he's probably right.
I'm one of those people who likes bars but absolutely will not go to one if I'm going to be exposed to smoke. I can't stand it.
However, the positive thing I look for in a bar (as opposed to the negative one, absence of smoke) is a good food menu. I want something beyond greasy nachos to soak up the booze, and I want to sit at a proper-sized table at a place with more of a pub or restaurant atmosphere than a bar-bar atmosphere. I won't go to places where I have to stand, and I hate being in a crush of bodies or in an overheated place.
Places that want to sell alcohol to me would do well to dress themselves up as restaurants, in short, even if their main emphasis is a really good beer list. Restaurants already have different smoking policies, because even people who might want smoke with their drinking don't always want it during dinner.
This strategy won't work for a pure bar-bar establishment that's all about standing room only and a crush of people. But they won't draw me in even if they eliminate the smoke. So perhaps it is one strategy or the other.
Have you ever looked for something, and it was right there in front of your face the whole time? I think what you are looking for is called a "restaurant".
Restaurants also didn't go non-smoking until the government intervened. It's just that the regulation happened years ago, so most relatively young people aren't aware of it.
In my part of Oakland County Michigan (Birmingham, Bloomfield, West Bloomfield, Troy) I'd be hard pressed to name a restaurant that allows smoking, and that's in the absence of a ban, and it's been this way for quite some time (like 10-12 years). Interestingly, the last ones to allow smoking were the family restaurants (Big Boy, Bob Evans, etc.), but I believe they've all fallen in line as well.
But non-smoking sections in restaurants (and airplanes... and probably other public places) flourished long before government bans in those spaces became fashionable. That seems to suggest that non-smoker market preferences were being expressed perfectly well in the restaurant context - and makes the "market failure" hypothesis vis-a-vis bars kinda dubious.
Some restaurants *did* go non-smoking before it was required by law. In fact, I'd be willing to bet there are still areas in the United States where there is no smoking ban for restaurants, and that you can find restaurants there which have voluntarily gone smoke-free.
Don K-
I respectfully disagree. Many place I know in that region (Forte, Cameron's, Mitchell's, Big Rock Chop House, Blue Martini) have smoking areas. They just invest in good ventilation so that the non-smoking areas don't get doused.
Also, I have observed that many non-smokers don't realize how great it is to go to a bar without smoking until you've been to a place that has it. And SOV has it dead on - smoking establishments persist because in social groups the single strongest opinion almost always wins over the majority's preference. I think the legislative bans are supported in part by a passive-aggressive reaction against this; supporting laws to get what one wants without seeming pushy in company.
This new puritanism is simply amazing. In my youth, my mother dragged five little ones weekly up to AF Super, which had those big tippy ash trays at the end of every aisle, say somewhere between ten and twenty. If she was cashiering, my mom always went to Carla's lane - apparently an old high-school crony - and she would as often as not have a cigarette going as she rang up the swag and gossiped about who was doing what to whom.
Of course, this was also before the time when Dad once subjected us to forty minutes of cruising because he swore he would never, ever, pay for gas priced at $0.35/gal. I must say though, that even then, people knew that smoking was bad for you, despite whatever those lyin' tobacco companies said.
My answer is, first of all, that the market does produce some non-smoking bars. Here's one in Ann Arbor, where I live:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/caseys-tavern-ann-arbor
But even apart from totally smoke-free places, the local market has also produced both bars that are so smoky you have to wash all your clothes if you spend even a few minutes indoors, and also places bars where, though there are small smoking sections, they are separate enough and well-ventilated enough that if you are not seated there, you wouldn't be aware of it. So here, the market is working pretty well, producing a range of choices.
Why doesn't the market produce more nudist restaurants?
The point is the market did provide non-smoking family restaurants long before any laws mandated it. In Chicago before the smoking ban took affect, I knew bars that allowed cigarette smoking but banned cigars, and vis versa.
People are very quick to call any outcome they don't prefer a "market failure" and hence justify intervention. But real market failures: externalities, information asymmetries, etc., have an clearly understandable mechanism by which the normal market function is prevented. "I don't like it" doesn't cut it.
To those who share the sentiment:
(not to pick on M.C.) Would you go to a smokefree bar where drinks were 25%-50% more expensive? If so, and you believe you are not alone, there is a profitable opportunity for you(unless of course you live in a state which has already eliminated the niche). If (as I expect) you might not, that the market doesn't offer you the opportunity is not a failure but a success.I live in Nassau County, Long Island, NY, which was quite early on the no smoking rules. What I've witnessed in my own area if that many bars have closed. I have no way of knowing if the closing is related to the smoking ban, but the drop in bars has been quite high.
Interestingly, the smoking ban adversely effected a local diner. My wife and I went there regularly and were friendly with the owner. He told us that he had gotten hurt by the smoking ban with a drop in his "after movie crowd".
He had done a good business with people stopping in for coffee, or coke, and cake (whatever) after the movies let out. When he had to ban smoking, he lost a lot of that business. He was really upset because the cake and coffee were very profitable.
I suspect there is an extremely simple explanation- because historically, no bars had smoking bans, nonsmokers just didn't know how nice a nonsmoking bar could be until the smoking bans were enacted. I grew up in Delaware, one of the first states to enact a smoking ban. I don't remember anyone having strong opinions about smoking in bars until the ban was enacted; now everyone LOVES the smoke-free bars, and they hate going out to smoky bars in other states. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that now, if the ban was dropped, many bars in Delaware would keep a smoke-free policy.
Would a libertarian be more friendly to a smoking ban on public streets than in restaurants/bars? After all, the smoke-hater can choose to not go to a bar, but probably has to get to work anyway. (And please don't cheat me out of an answer by claiming there should be no public streets, even if you believe that.)
The practical problem on public streets is less severe, because ventilation is provided free by Mother Nature. Enclosed spaces, particularly windowless ones and those in cellars (both common for bars) concentrate smoke. I don't mind a slight whiff of smoke on a breeze. But I don't want to immerse my head in a cloud of it for several hours.
I'm guessing your question is directed more at the "hard-core" libertarians who really don't want the gov't doing anything, but I would say a smoking ban on a public street would be less bothersome than one in restaraunt/bars from the perspective of interfering with one's property rights. It's not much different than bans against indecent exposure (which I think you can agree with while considering yourself libertarian): do what you want on your own property, but on public property, there are certain restrictions on your behavior that are aimed at preventing your rights from interfering with other person's rights. Restrictions on what a property/business owner can do and can allow his/her patrons to do is much more intrusive.
But as a practical matter, I've never seen smoking on public streets as being a real problem. You generally don't have anything more than a passing whiff and the smell doesn't stick to you, so I'm not sure there is a reason to interfere with smokers' ability to choose to smoke. Is this different in a place like NYC?
Again, though, I'm not really a libertarian as much as a cynic. I want to limit gov't authority b/c gov't at all levels seems to be more or less incompetent at most things, not b/c of some philosphical belief about liberty.
After we bar smoking on public streets, we can also ban cars, trucks and busses on public streets since they put far more garbage in the air than all cigarettes combined.
Then we can ban heat in buildings. Those boilers in buildings, including your house, also put out far more junk than all cigarettes combined.
After that, we can ban forced air heat/AC in buildings. Those air currents pick up fine dust and suspend it in the air - for you to breathe.
Actually, other than carbon emissions, the newest cars put the majority of their pollution into the air at the fuel pump (gasoline evaporation). Tobacco products, by contrast, put out a magnificent blend of chemicals, and a good deal of soot besides.
Then I suppose you like to sit in your running car in the garage and listen to the radio for a few hours.
If you have not already done this, you might try it and see what happens.
Obviously, a market failure in rhetoric, as here are many shorter, more efficient euphemisms available when one decides to surrender an argument ungraciously.
I'm not sure that cars really put most pollution in to the air at the fuel pump. Even if that's true a car engine will still emit a lot more pollution than a cigarette.
Part of the question is obscured by the difficulty in obtaining figures for exactly how much chemicals (by volume) are emitted from a single cigarette -- everyone can come up with stats on the dozens of ingredience present, but not the quantities. If this source is reliable, though, the concentration is pretty big:
"The burning of tobacco generates more than 150 billion tar particles per cubic inch, constituting the visible portion of cigarette smoke. According to chemists at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, cigarette smoke is 10,000 times more concentrated than the automobile pollution at rush hour on a freeway."
http://www.quitsmokingsupport.com/whatsinit.htm
(I presume they mean the smoke at the point of inhalation versus auto pollution at the point of inhalation, but the reference isn't entirely clear on that point.)
Suffice to say unless a car is running very badly or is recirculating its own exhaust (per ed's suggestion), the majority of all emissions during a cruising burn are carbon dioxide and water. Computer-controlled fuel metering can maintain an ideal ratio to minimize inefficient combustion and modern catalytic converters can capture most of the rest, so unless the engine systems are still cold, the majority of all emissions are carbon dioxide and water, with only trace amounts of peripheral products such as carbon monoxide and oxides of nitrogen.
Obviously, if you're most concerned about climate change, the carbon emissions from the vehicle are a much more serious problem. But if you're worried about absolute air quality in terms of what is being injected into the ground-level (breathable) atmosphere, for a cigarette and a car running the same length of time, the cigarette is a far greater offender.
The density of different substances in the smoke isn't the only concern. A car puts out A LOT more exhaust than a cigarette does. Only looking at the density seriously distorts the picture, even if the 10,000 times more dense claim is accurate and meaningful (and I think it isn't)
A car engine might not emit as much tar, but it emits significantly more carbon monoxide.
Its not just a matter of recirculating its own exhaust, change Ed's scenario to one where the cars air intake comes from a sealed tube leading outside the garage so there is no recirculation. Would you really rather be in a sealed (except for that tube) garage with a typical car (not a brand new, perfectly adjusted low emissions vehicle, but an average or typical car pulled from the road) than with a person smoking a cigarette? I doubt it.
I think my point is that a smoke-free bar has to be a somewhat different niche than a bar that wants to draw the hard drinking/hard smoking crowd. A place that sells interesting drinks paired with interesting food (e.g., a Belgian food and ale place) will get my business, and I will pay for that combination. A place that just sells same old/same old, but with more of a markup to compensate for a drop in volume, doesn't have the same appeal.
Intuitively, it seems to me that BaconBacon is onto something. People think it's a market failure because the majority of people would prefer smokefree bars. In reality, they're in the market for atmosphere/socializing, which is often provided by other people, a significant portion of which are smokers. This theory is definitely consistent with my experiences in college, where we often ended up in very smoky bars, as opposed to the slightly less smoky places taht we would have preferred had the crowds been the same. Non-smoking bars are not as successful because they have trouble providing people what they want, which is primarily a good atmosphere.
I also think there might be something to Lee's comment, though, as now that I've lived in two different places with smoking bans, I tend to take whether a place is smokey into account when deciding where/whether to go out when I'm in other cities. That may be more of a function of getting older, and not really looking to hang out with people not in our group when we go out.
I don't think it's a function of getting older- most of my friends are in their mid-20s, and some still in college. I'd almost say the younger the crowd, the more they hate the smoke.
Let me also second the point about liquor-licensing. If state and local governments didn't create such a high barrier to entry with exhorbinantly priced liquor licenses, the market would be able to produce a wider variety of choices including establishments that catered to various niches.
And in what sense have smoking bans been successful? They've enabled a majority with a weak preference to enforce their desires on a minority with much more at stake. In this respect they are like gay marriage bans -- a majority without much at stake personally enforcing their will on a less powerful minority. In both cases, the opposite of live-and-let-live.
Smoking bans have put bars out of business and pushed smokers out of public spaces they previously enjoyed. And when a smoking ban comes in Michigan where I live, it is likely to create more problem gamblers and possibly even more drunk driving, since there is no possibility of banning smoking in Indian-owned casinos (instead of smoking and drinking in a local establishment, some smokers will smoke, drink, and gamble at casinos that are a considerable distance from home).
In what respect is the preference for a smoke-free atmosphere weak? I consider it a very strong preference, similar to my preference for arsenic-free drinking water and a workplace that won't make me deaf or lop my fingers off. A preference for the absence of something is not the same as a weak preference.
You're right. But unwillingness to pay very much for one's preference is the same as a weak preference (well ... or poverty, but that's clearly not the issue with non-smokers). I think Slocum's implying that since we didn't see a bunch of non-smoking bars were still successful because they charged a huge mark-up and non-smokers loved to patronize them, we can infer that there aren't too many non-smokers who like going to non-smoking bars a lot.
I'm not sure gay marriage bans are a good example of that idea Slocum. They would be if they where real bans against gay marriage (have a ceremony, say your married, live together and have a sexual and romantic relationship, and you'll be arrested), but their really bans on the state recognizing or giving benefits to such marriages. Which doesn't mean that they are necessarily a good idea, there are arguments for such recognition and benefits, but smoking in bars isn't an issue of public benefits and recognition, but an actual ban.
California has 75 different types of liquor licenses. Some cost as much as $12,000 to originate.
Scratch any "market failure", and you'll usually find a government failure hiding inside.
Megan,
A vast majority of Americans prefer hamburgers to sushi, and yet, you can never get a hamburger in a sushi restaurant. Isn't that the same sort of market failure you're talking about? A small minority of sushi eaters are catered to while the vast majority of hamburger eaters are stuck with a menu serving nothing but raw fish.
The problem with your argument, I think, is the term "market failure." How can a market fail? How can the market pass? The market is the playing field where the game is played. You say you don't understand why a certain minority preference outcome occurs in the marketplace, when most people would prefer something else. That's a fine question. But to look at the outcome and say that the market failed...my only response is to say that you've confused the field with one of the players.
In general, people go to restaurants looking for a particular selection of foods. That's why restaurants exist. Most restaurants do not exist specifically to provide a haven for smoking. The presence or absence of smoking is a third factor to both entities of the example you cited, therefore, the example is not a valid analogy.
Also, you might familiarize yourself with some economics terms before claiming someone else is confused. The term "market" is much broader than you think, and can be used to refer to the summed actions of the market actors. "Market failure" refers to a condition where the market arrives at a suboptimal condition, and the hostess appears to be using it correctly: The market did not produce a widespread smokefree policy in the bar and restaurant industry, yet government bans seem to in line with what the majority of patrons wanted. Why?
I think I disagree about the first point. If you like to smoke, smoking and drinking are very strong complements (as are working and smoking, as most bartenders smoke). So yeah, when I smoked I went to bars partly to smoke, at least in the sense that I went to McDonalds partly to consume salt on my fries.
Right, that's why I referred particularly to his restaurant example and called smoking a "third factor", since it could exist (or not) equally in a hamburger joint or a sushi shop.
Putting aside your digs for the moment (FYI BA Economics Amherst College)...please explain the following:
How did the market go about producing smoking bars? What actions did the market itself take, as opposed to the actions of the bar owners and patrons?
Wow, Doug, I'm a Amherst College Econ grad as well. What year were you there? Frank the Tank?
Its always fun feeding crow to those who think they are so much smarter than others that they have the right not just to debate with them, but to try and make them look stupid. Its even better when you you happen to be defending the sacred honor of a fellow Jeff.
FYI BA Economics Amherst College
Well, there's your problem right there.
The collective actions of the bar owners and patrons ARE the market. Therefore, the outcome is the market outcome, and may be described as such without confusing the audience. Or at least, most of it.
Interesting qualifications you cite. I've heard that Amherst has very respected programs, and as such, I am fairly certain they did not teach you the definitions of "market" and "market failure" that you have appropriated for this discussion. If they did, you might want to contact US News & World Report, as they will probably want to give Williams the edge after hearing about this.
So I put the question back to you: why if so many drivers prefer Luxury automobiles, does the market continue to supply so many cheaper alternatives people enjoy less?
Chris, did you bring a bad day into this discussion by mistake? You make some sharp accusations of bad faith on my part, and all you have for evidence is my fair request that a person accusing someone else of not understanding the question first be using consistent definitions of words that have a well-known, established definition in the field and its popular literature.
Your car question is interesting enough, but I don't know how it speaks to the question at hand, since it has the same problem as the earlier hamburgers versus sushi example. If we were discussing a ban on ashtrays in public taxis, it might get closer to the mark.
Damn these nested comments.
Mouse-
I apologize if I imputed ill will that wasn't there. Usually when rather than explaining concepts they find so simple, people order others to familiarize themselves, get a clue, etc., it is not merely constructive criticism.
Perhaps I miss your point with the hamburgers and sushi, but when we have reached the level of discussing a ban on ashtrays in taxis, it is probably simpler to speak plainly about the smoking and bars in question. My point with the cars was only to say "the market" takes into account more than just consumer preferences but also consumer willingness to pay and producer costs. Everyone wants a Cadillac, but the market only allows those willing to pay more than the sellers charge to have them.
Rereading the sushi and hamburger example, I am not sure we can separate primary and ancillary factors. The good being purchased is the combination of the meal, the atmosphere, the service, the location, etc. To say to a smoker what he really wanted was the drink and to discount "third factors" seems unfair. Or, by the same token, why for those who come to the bar hoping for a lack of smoke is it not the drink that matters (and the presence of smoke, Around the Horn, or any number of annoyances are third factors)? If I'm misunderstanding your "third factors" let me know.
"Third factor": I only meant that you can have hamburgers with or without smoking, and you can have sushi with or without smoking, and smoking is the factor we are interested in -- so the fact that sushi restaurants don't serve hamburgers doesn't clarify the issue. Ditto for expensive restaurants versus cheap restaurants, or for that matter, expensive cars versus cheap cars.
Someone who wants and can afford a Lexus SUV probably doesn't care one way or the other about the availability of the Toyota Corolla, and someone who cannot afford a Lexus (regardless of desire, or not) will give a serious look at the Corolla, but will both of them pay proportionately more, at their existing prference and price point, for the same vhicel with traction control as opposed to without? If so, how much? If we found a situation where traction control was a very rare option for either of the vehicles, but everyone seemed to really like having it once the government mandated it as a standard safety feature, how would we explain that outcome?
IMO that's the question we've got here in regards to the smoking bans, and while the binary political outcome seems to favor a majority preference, the lack of a previous market cosensus for that option is somewhat mysterious. Hence the present discussion.
I'm not sure there has been a market failure with respect to non-smoking bars, but the hamburger/sushi analogy is not really applicable.
Most people prefer hamburgers to sushi, and there are many more places to get a hamburger than to get sushi. The market fills the need for both and presumably in a way that reflects people's preferences.
Most people allegedly prefer non-smoking areas to smoking areas, but at least with respect to bars, the number of non-smoking bars that are produced doesn't seem to be reflective of people's preferences at first glance.
As to market failures, I'm not an economist, but I believe markets "fail" when they result in an inefficient allocation of resources. Could be due to positive or negative externalities that are not captured, barriers to entry, monopolistic market power by a producer, and I'm sure lots of other factors. The reason some people assume that the failure to produce non-smoking bars is a market failure is that it doesn't seem to reflect people's preferences, which would indicate that resources are allocated inefficiently? Although as many posters have pointed out, there are lots of other potential explanations.
You say the market fails when it results in an inefficient allocation of resources. The market doesn't allocate anything, any more than the football field decides what plays each team runs.
The market didn't fail in the Soviet Union. The market was simply the place where the goods were exchanged. What people paid for things and what they got in return seemed pretty crappy, but it didn't have anything to do with the actions of the market, since the market can't act. It had to do with government policies.
Sidenote: now that bars are all smoke-free and since the vast majority of patrons apparently prefer this, then bars should all be witnessing a wild upswing in revenue, right? If not, why not?
"The market doesn't allocate anything, any more than the football field decides what plays each team runs."
This is really how you want to debate this issue?
Buyer's and Seller's set prices in markets. Prices are a signal as to what buyer's value, which helps producers determine what to produce and in what amounts. That more or less determines how resources will be allocated. The reason the Soviet Union's markets failed is b/c they were poorly designed. Markets tend to do a better job of allocating resources when they're free, although they still result in inefficient/suboptimal allocations under some conditions.
I'm sure there's plenty to nitpick here, but is that framework really not understandable to you? This is obviously not a forum for economists, why spend your time nitpicking terms if the concepts are clear? Or at least provide what you think is the proper reasoning/terminology, rather than simply saying "markets don't fail because they don't act." That doesn't seem to add a lot to the conversation.
Megan,
One more thought...the market doesn't produce anything.
Another data point - until bars were forced by law to become non-smoking here, Rochester, NY had "Johnny's Smoke Free Pub". Now that there's nothing special about being smoke free, it's "Johnny's Irish Pub".
I'll grant there weren't very MANY - but that probably just reflects that it just was NOT all that important to most people. They might have moaned a bit, but they kept going to smoky bars (at least that is true for my wife). If people cared ENOUGH, Johnny probably would have had to expand.
Minor point that changes the debate slightly. In CA (not sure about other states) the indoor smoking ban is actually a workplace safety regulation. Any business that has employees has to comply just as they have to pay overtime and not ask employees to climb ladders with rotting wood. The legislation makes no mention of bar patrons who are obviously there by choice. A business without employees can allow smoking indoors -- and there is at least one family-owned and run bar in LA that does exactly that.
I have no idea whether second hand smoke is all that dangerous, but if it is then clearly someone who works in place with lots of smokers for 40 hours a week is a lot more at risk than us non-puffers who spend a few hours a week in bars.
Point being I think the libertarian position on workplace safety regulations is a lot more mixed than it is on ones that are intended solely to (supposedly) protect the health of people voluntarily getting together for a drink.
The argument always seemed particularly silly to me (not yours Lee, that from workplace safety). I guess it turns on the belief that unlike truck drivers, lumberjacks, enlisted men, and any number of others involved vastly more dangerous activities, there is something about those who work in bars which prevents them from being able to work anywhere else.
You're missing an obvious problem with your logic - trucks cannot be driven without taking it on the road with attendant dangers of accident; trees won't be cut without heavy machinery felling them; national defense won't be maintained without arms and possibly combat. Bbut food and booze can easily be served without , therefore it's an entirely avoidable danger. Not to mention the government DOES regulate plenty of aspects of logging, trucking and armed service inlcuding safety measures.
Why not require that all freight travel as far as possible in non-truck (presumably safer) modes of transport? Or require that logging companies use these? Your argument boils down to "while people who want to drink and smoke can suck it up and accept a less preferred outcome, goods HAVE to be trucked and trees HAVE to be cut down". Why is the producer surplus of the timber and trucking companies is sacred but the consumer surplus of smoking bar goers is up for grabs? Okay, I have an idea about the truckers.
I never said the government ought the regulate every possible safety aspect into workplace rules, only that regulation of safety occurs the very industries you mentioned which you seemed to deny rather directly.
I didn't say the government ought to regulate bars out of existence because people smoke in them (which your examples in response would likely do), I said it's reasonable to enact public safety regulation on those work enivronments just as pretty much very other profession gets safety regulations.
Whether or not the tavern smoking bans is really a workplace safety issue or a backdoor means of legislating an outcome most people wish to have, but can't get via other means, is a different question that many commenters have addressed and deserves a lot more thought than it gets.
But there is a legitimate argument to be had and you're dismissing it out of hand.
Workers are also there by choice. They chose to work at that bar.
Yes, fair enough. But there are all kinds of minimum safety standards that we don't do away with just because people can choose not to, say, work in a meat processing plant where they run a high risk of losing a limb when there's a way to mitigate that risk at a reasonable cost. Is a smoking ban that could drain x% of revenues at a bar a reasonable cost? Who knows? It's impossible to measure.
BTW I have no illusions that the real intent of the smoking ban was for workplace safety but rather was for patrons' convenience -- of course it was! -- yet it was a very effective way to re-frame the debate.
Being exposed to a bit of smoke, or even a room filled with fairly dense cigarette smoke, is not nearly as serious as having your arm cut off.
Also you can replace meat cutters with safer meat cutters (or safer use safer procedures or whatever) and get the same result (other than some additional expense). That is applying a restriction on the owners of the meat plants, but not nearly as major of restriction as simply not letting people smoke. Its not "you much do X with less risk", its "you can't do X".
Personally I see it as a property rights issue. The bar owner owns the bar and should be able to set policy at it, absent application of force or fraud against other people, strong risk of life, or a major externality to people outside of the bar.
I don't agree with the active legal regime about "public accommodation". I consider a bar to be private property in the same way I consider a person's house to be private property.
One can say that the market didn't provide smoke-free bars because drinkers are smokers, but the market didn't provide smoke-free airlines or smoke-free workplaces either, even though the majority of flyers wanted to be in non-smoking sections. You youths may find this hard to believe, but until the practice was outlawed, smoking was allowed on airline flights. Airlines had non-smoking rows, if you can believe it! I'd be sitting in row 11, flying cross country, and right in front of me in row 10 people would be puffing up a storm.
The commuter trains in my area always had non-smoking cars, though.
My guess: People go to bars in groups, not as an individual consumer. The point of going to a bar is to socialize and (alcoholics aside) the booze is only a means to that end. Though smokers may be in the minority in any given group I think nonsmokers tend to agree to a smoking establishment to accommodate their friends.
So why doesn't this also apply to restaurants? I'm guessing that the cultural expectations have shifted to define smoking in restaurants as unacceptable. Bar culture is still smoker-friendly so the request to go to a smoking establishment is viewed as reasonable.
That's why I like the sort of bar/restaurant that tips slightly in the restaurant direction. Many brew pubs, tapas bars, and so on fall into this category. They aren't 100% restaurants because you can go at non-mealtimes and eat less than a full meal with your drinks, but they tone down the elements of bar culture that tend to annoy non-smokers and people over 35. I suppose one drawback for the younger set is that you do end up sitting with the people you came with rather than trying to meet new people in the crush. But I consider that a major plus.
As for the market thing, whether bars or restaurants or airplanes... if 95 people want smoke-free air and 5 want to smoke, the only way the 95 can get what they want (the complete absence of smoke) is to restrain the 5 by some form of authority. Horse trading to arrive at 20% less smoke doesn't really get the desired outcome. Using government authority to enforce smoke-free zones may not be libertarian, but it is the result of years of frustration with every other approach. Smokers have not been very responsive to purely social authority.
The answer to this is fairly simple. If we list out the desires of people when they seek out an establishment to eat, drink, or socialize, it is possible that whether the place allows smoking or not isn't very high on their list of concerns. Perhaps they care more about good food, good service, and an enjoyable atmosphere. If the restaurant or bar has all of those things then maybe whether someone is allowed to smoke there isn't really that important. I am sure there are a few people who care a whole lot about dining with smokers and if they are so compelled, they will seek out other places. However, I think you overestimate the value that people place on a smoking v. non-smoking establishment. For some anecdotal evidence, I don't smoke and don't like to be smoked on but that really wouldn't stop me from going to a certain bar or restaurant that I like.
The true question is if you are analyzing the data incorrectly. You assume that individual's non-smoking bias is so great that it would affect their choice of restaurant or bar. Perhaps what this "market failure" truly reveals is that people just don't care when taking all other factors into consideration. It is like the issue of global warming. When Gallup asks people if they think global warming is a problem, a majority would say yes. But if Gallop then asked people to rank issues that they care about, global warming would fall straight to the bottom of the list behind the economy, health care, taxes, crime, etc...
I second this explanation. It's not just a matter of a disparity in spedning by smokers vs. money spent by non-smokers -- since less than 20% of Americans smoke, there would have to a 5-to-1 disparity, and even that wouldn't explain why so very few niche non-smoking establishments developed. It's a matter of a disparity in strenth of preferences. The overwhelming majority of non-smokers aren't bothered all that much by second-hand smoke, certainly not enough seek out a non-smoking establishement. But the overwhelming majority of smokers have a very strong preference for establishments that allow smoking, one they will act on by seeking out such establishments.
If one accepts this picutre, it's not clear that the smoking ban is really net utility-enhancing, at least if one ignores externalities such a health care spending. But votes are not utility-weighted, so it's quite possible for a policy to be wildly popular with voters even if it is not optimal from an economic perspective.
I'll admit there is a problem with my explanation, though: it's sort of the opposite of regulatory capture. If smoking is so unimportant to the majority, why don't politicians take the money and do the bidding of the very interested minority? I guess my answer would be that most smoking bans were implemented via direct popular ballot, and smoking is probably too immediately visible for politicians to get away with undermining a ban, even if doing so would be to their advantage.
David Wright,
Great analysis.
Here's my answer to the question in your final paragraph: The politicians DID take the money. Remember these smoking bans weren't even close to fruition until the tobacco settlement, which funneled billions of dollars to each state for smoking cessation programs. Most of that money funded ballot initiatives against which the smokers and bar owners did not have a chance at matching. A couple billion dollars in each state suddenly created huge windfalls for politicians, anti-smoking lobbyists, and their staffs.
I think that bar owners are by nature conservative about changes to their core business. They look at their bar and see a lot of smoking customers, imagine them leaving and don't want a smoking ban. What they don't see are all of the non-smokers who won't even go into a bar if it's smoky, but might be there if it were smoke-free. After bans, these people go out a lot more. Still, it's quite a leap of faith for a bar owner to rely on people they can't see showing up. However, there were a few smoke-free places I'd return to frequently in pre-ban Philly so they did exist.
Denverflyer,
You write:
After bans, these people go out a lot more.
Do you have any evidence for this? I've been asking around here in Chicago, and the bartenders I talk to say they haven't seen any increase in revenue since the smoking ban. If there are great numbers of people who will only go to non-smoking bars, then the bars should have witnessed a great increase in revenue after the imposition of the smoking ban. As far as I know, that hasn't happened.
The sources may have been dubious (I can't recall them) but when I was working at a local newspaper in WI and restaurant smoking bans were all the rage in local politics, supporters trumpeted surveys showing marked increases in restaurant sales in the years following the establishment of smoking bans in other cities/states. That said, there HAS to be data out there, better to find it than to speculate.
You're really talking 2 different businesses when you mention bars and restaurants. You go to a restaurant to eat. Yes, you might have conversation over dinner, but the food is the point of the visit. You go to a bar solely to hang out, drink, and shoot the breeze.
Earlier I posted that I had seen a decrease in the number of plain old neighborhood bars in my area since the smoking ban. While there could be other reasons for the closing, I'm guessing that the smoking ban did contribute. If the smoking ban had led to an increase in business from non smokers, they would not have closed.
I base this on the fact that many of these bars depended on a certain number of regulars. If a certain number of those, who smoked, no longer found the bar enjoyable, the bar lost that regular business. Most of these bars are small businesses that don't make the owner anywhere near rich. The loss of 10% of those regulars could put them into the out of business category.
There have been NO replacement bars that opened. That leads me to believe that the market for such bars has declined.
Replying to ed below (since comment chanins can't go any deeper), you may never have been to Wisconsin before, but demarcating between a bar and a restaurant in Wisconsin is a LOT harder than anywhere else I have ever been. Fact is, nearly every restaurant other than fast food chains serves beer and wine in significant quantities, nearly all 'upscale' restaurants have a bar in them and nearly every bar serves a fair amount of food. In my current home state (GA), smoking is banned anywhere that employs or allows entry to minors. Back home in Wisconsin - that would have been most bars, too. Wisconsin recently passed a state law outlawing smoking anywhere with employees. People drink in restaurants and eat in bars and some smoke in both; many governments have collapsed both types into their bans, so it's perfectly valid to discuss them together.
This seems like a market failure. You can explain it through preference asymmetry and the profitability of various customer classes: heavy drinkers are more likely to also be heavy smokers, and they are the most profitable customers.
Sounds like the market was working pretty well to me.
As usual an excellent question. To a degree we don't notice because it becomes ingrained, our social behavior is determined by the equivalent of rules of engagement. Smoking is a pleasure that people can enjoy without another activity; drinking tended to be one that added smoking in as part of the relaxation. It became the default setting that you could smoke in a bar. You would have had to make a heroic effort as a patron or bar owner to stand against this. But, since many people actually preferred not smoking, the 'rules of engagement' were changed formally.
Fear of lawsuits probably factors into it.
When an individual declares a bar to be non-smoking, he faces the wrath of a lawyer with nothing better to do than sue. Even if the bar wins, the costs are nasty.
I'd venture to guess that our horrible legal climate is behind quite a few otherwise non-sensical "market failures."
It doesn't appear to me to be a matter of "success" or "failure", but in how the market is segmented differently when the smoking bans are mandatory versus how it is segmented when the bans are self-imposed.
Part of the purpose of the bar in our society is a place where one may sin, if just a little bit. You have permission to be a bit more of a libertine in a bar than elsewhere.
Going to a bar with a voluntary ban is the equivalent of taking a date to a G-rated movie (and driving her there in your Buick LeSabre.) Even if it is a perfectly nice place to booze it up, it has sterility written all over it, thanks to its self-imposed policy of puritanism that immediately informs customers of behavior that is not tolerated. Not exactly the value proposition of your average bar, when such a place is supposed to appeal to the sinful side of grownups.
With a universal ban, there is no such stigma, and the customers will value the bar on its other merits. Since the ban comes from government, it does not impact the branding message of the bar, and the customers will assign the appropriate R-rating that most bar owners would like to have.
We can't prove this, of course, but I would bet you that a bar in Town A that bans smoking voluntary would, all things being equal, perform more poorly than the same bar in an otherwise identical Town B that gently enforces a government-mandated ban. It's down to the perception of the customers who don't wish to have a boring experience, even if most of them don't actually want to smoke.
I think the absence of nonsmoking bars pre-ban and the negligible effect on business post-ban owes to a mistaken assumption smokers make about how a smoking ban will affect them.
I don't smoke but I allow my guests to smoke at my parties, provided my (massive) windows are open. In dozens of trials I've noticed the same pattern: for an hour and a half or more, ten heavy smokers can drink and talk amicably without smoking a cigarette. But as soon as one of them lights a cigarette, the rest follow -- and continue smoking without relent until the party disperses.
All these people know from the moment they arrive that they may smoke if they wish. Smoking a cigarette should perfectly indicate wanting a cigarette, so I conclude that they don't miss smoking until they see someone else doing it.
The mistake smokers make, I argue, is to imagine that it will be as hard to refrain from smoking in a smoke-free bar as to refrain in a bar that allows smoking. This isn't so. Thus, forbidding patrons from acting on the urge to smoke is a minor part of what a smoking ban does; the larger effect is to prevent those urges from arising in the first place. If this is true a smoking ban isn't as intrusive as it seems, since all smokers wish they could remain satisfied while smoking less, And if each person who lights up in a bar kindles in observers an unwelcome urge to smoke, there's good reason to forbid it.
Smoking a cigarette should perfectly indicate wanting a cigarette, so I conclude that they don't miss smoking until they see someone else doing it.
They may, as with guests presented with a buffet, merely not wish to be the first to dive in.
Going to a bar with a voluntary ban is the equivalent of taking a date to a G-rated movie (and driving her there in your Buick LeSabre.)
You're a lot more likely to get libertine in a LeSabre than in most cars. It's a geometry thing.
You can explain it, but this doesn't seem like a good market outcome by any measure.
Sure it does, people are getting what they pay for. The heavy drinkers should control the market if they're the ones keeping the bars open.
This seems more like a nonsmokers free-rider problem than anything.
I think that non-market forces (including the government) can play a role in shifting the default expectations, especially with respect to externalities like second-hand smoke.
When the default was to allow smoking, it was difficult for a bar to deviate from that. They'd have to keep informing their guests and enforcing a smoking ban, which would lead to irritation, frustration, and expense. But when everyone expects smoking to be forbidden, they don't have these costs.
It's kind of the flipside of Coase's Theorem. When the default expectation is that smoking is allowed, trying to deviate from that creates transaction costs and imperfect information, which can lead to enough inefficiency that it's more profitable for businesses to stick with the alternate inefficient choice of allowing smoking.
I would be perfectly happy with a law that says smoking is only allowed in facilities that have a huge sign at the entrance saying, "Smoking is allowed in this facility." It shifts the expectations so that the externality is only imposed on those who actively seek it out, rather than forcing people to seek out an opportunity to avoid it.
(I also feel the same way about live music in restaurants, which I hate much more than second-hand smoke. But I recognize I'm in a small minority with that one.)
I like this.
I think the way to go is a full, but temporary, smoking ban. Then mandatory big signs saying where and when smoking is allowed, at the owners discrestion.
I wouldn't call it a suboptimal outcome that the largest consumers of bars by volume also get to smoke inside and not deal with the inconvenience of smoking outside, hardly negligible during the winter months. That may seem kind of superficial from a non-smoker point of view, but we're not the ones regularly buying a half dozen drinks to enjoy the bar.
Libertarianism does not say people will not become obese, or smoke, or shoot themselves up with heroin, but it does broadly allow people to choose their own decision as long as they do not affect others, no matter how self-destructive.
What does this have to do with libertarianism or anything else, besides worker health?
Dear Megan, how would you like me to come into your workplace with 50 of my smoking friends and fill your air supply with second-hand smoke, every day, for years on end? I know of a barmaid in Ontario who died from lung cancer caused by her work environment. She was a non-smoker. She actually loved her life and her family and did not deserve this ignomious end.
Please tell me you are not so heartless as to support subjecting bar-tenders and servers to the documented dangers of second hand smoke. I suppose you also support the right of swimmers to pee and defecate in your swimming pool. I wish you would stick to economic writing, where you are without peer.
I agree that the primary issue should be worker health (and add my voice to the chorus who would like to see some links for the "damage from secondhand smoke is a myth" idea being presented here).
I'm a musician (and a wind musician at that, so lung power is a factor here). Two summers ago, I had a weekly gig at an extremely smoky bar, and it damn near killed me. If we hadn't lost the gig when football season started, I probably would have had to quit anyway, because I was getting that sick.
Sure, I could choose not to work at a place like that, but if too many bars were like that (as they used to be), it would severely limit the income of someone in my profession. And I really wondered what the long-term effect might be on people who worked in a place like that for 40 hours or more a week.
(I should point out that the bar where I played affected me almost immediately, but sometimes, the problem doesn't crop up until later. A few years earlier, I was accidentally assigned a smoking room at a hotel instead of the non-smoking one I requested. I didn't raise a stink about it at the time, because it didn't seem all that bad at first. But by the time I got home, I had a "smoker's cough" for nearly two weeks.)
To: Johnson_85
I hoped you'd pick up the point, but it seems as if you're missing it.
When we talk about what buyers and sellers have done in the marketplace, there is no basis to discuss "market failures" or "market victories." All we can do is say "look, the government banned smoking, and this resulted in an increase/decrease or no negligible difference in alcohol revenue at Joe's Bar."
The market doesn't do anything, but when we start an argument talking about "market failure," what is going on? Person A decides he or she wants a particular outcome--e.g. no smoking in bars. Person A has no place to go where he or she can drink in public without smoke. This leaves Person A with at least two options to discuss this problem.
Person A can interview all the bar owners in her town and find out that none of them feel it would enhance their revenue to cater to Person A's preferences. His bar is filled every night, why mess with success? That's economics.
Conversely, Person A can couch her argument in terms of "market failure." Once she does that she need not concern herself with bar revenue. If she's talking about "market failure" she has to take her solution outside the market, to the government. At that level she can try and impose her wishes on the bar owners and their patrons. That's politics.
To sum up, when people talk about the actions of buyers and sellers they are talking economics. When they talk about "market failure" they are talking politics. I regard "market failure" as a nefarious euphemism for "what I want to have happen."
Megan, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, could you please source this? I realize you cannot be concerned with linking every statement, but when something goes against conventional wisdom like this, I'd really like to see where it comes from. To my knowledge, second-hand smoking is pretty harmful to everybody, not just the breathing-impaired.
I must confess I am a smoker who is quite happy with the bans. Stepping outside to smoke is not that much of a bother if you want the cigarette bad enough. Why didn't I do it before? Beats me. Sometimes I did, but inertia would get the better of me most of the time. But now that I'm "brainwashed", I don't think about it anymore; I just get up and go outside. And, like most smokers, I smoke less. I suppose my liberties were restricted, but I have a distaste for arguing about liberty in these symbolic cases when there are much more serious assaults on freedom out there.
Generally, I think the greatest beneficiaries of the bans are future non-smokers. It's not that easy to get addicted to tobacco. With the current restrictions, is there anybody in this country that still manages to get hooked on ciggies?
I suppose my liberties were restricted, but I have a distaste for arguing about liberty in these symbolic cases when there are much more serious assaults on freedom out there.
"It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without possessing the other."
Alexis de Tocqueville
Well, I'm afraid I don't consider Tocqueville's words holly scripture. Or anybody's, really. Taken literally, that quote is to be interpreted as that we shouldn't care so much about freedom of speech or Habeas Corpus. Instead, we should focus on regaining the lost freedoms to jaywalk, to litter, or to have our pets doing their thing on the street without cleaning up. Or the endangered freedom to trade Credit Default Swaps.
Maybe she's referring to that Penn & Teller "investigative report"? Or to the evidence on Joe Jackson's site? Two unimpeachable sources.
Megan's Challenge: Find an explanation that does not discredit libertarianism for the market's apparent failure to create non-smoking bars.
My best guess: The limited number of liquor licenses and all the other regulations around bars prevented there from being a normal market in the first place.
Just a guess here, but absent all regulations, the cost of opening a bar would be far lower and there'd be at least twice as many bars, if not more. The lower cost of entry and the increased competition would allow/force each of those bars to specialize more and go after less profitable chunks of the market.
To see the logic, consider TV networks. When there were only three of them, they all went after a general audience. Now that there are hundreds, they specialize.
But non-smokers aren't a niche market, you say. True, but there really aren't many people who truly care, when push comes to shove, and they have to choose between no smoke and low prices or great ambiance or proximity or any of the other factors that determine where people go out.
That said, in an unregulated market with two or three times as many bars, you might have seen more non-smoking bars (along with more unconventional bars of all kinds).
It also might be possible for normal people to go out in the city and afford to buy a few drinks.
I have no empirical proof to offer, but it's a plausible sounding theory that defends the honor of libertarians.
I also would be interested in the published studies showing that the dangers of second-hand smoke health on patients without pulmonary problems are "mythical". That sounds like something you'd hear from the Cato Institute, not exactly a bastion of scientific expertise. Most of the recent research I've seen lately in the medical journals have shown detrimental effects arising from exposure to second-hand smoke.
Randy, MD
Smoking bans have little or nothing to do with science. "Science" has largely become the handmaiden of activist politics.
According OSHA, using data from air quality studies done by the American Cancer Society, in an average smoky room the levels of the constituents of tobacco smoke (including the carcinogens) is 2,500 to 25,000 times lower than OSHA's PELs (Permissible Exposure Levels) for those compounds.
I would also point you to the original SHS study done by the EPA in 1993 which claimed 3,000 deaths/year from SHS. This study was subsequently thrown out of a federal court for obvious bias by a judge (William Osteen) known for his anti-tobacco stance.
The largest study done over the longest period of time (Enstrom/Kabat 2003) on SHS showed no correlation btwn SHS exposure and disease. The ACS, which originally funded the study, pulled its funding when it became the clear that outcome would not support their political goals.
It reminds me of a joke I once heard:
How do you make an epidemiologist laugh?
Ask him if he's ever published a study that damages the interests of those who funded the study.
Make no mistake, this is about politics and money, which is why we should also think very carefully before we allow the gov't to wreck our economy to "save the earth" from carbon dioxide....
Randy, there's a relationship with minor health problems and SHS. The thing is that obsene amount of exposure are required to significantly affect health. You have to live with chronic chain smokers.
A result you don't like is not a market failure, it's just a market outcome you don't like.
As I understand it, the argument about secondhand smoke is whether it causes cancer. Don't know that there's any dispute about its helping to cause bronchitis, ear infections, and other non-fatal illnesses. Not to mention messing with allergies and asthma (neither is rare) and just making people feel like crap in a non-specific way.
The premise of the post seems faulty, at least where I live. St. Louis has no smoking ban, but two of the most popular bars in town (one a live music venue, the other a bar/restaurant) have voluntarily gone non-smoking in the past year. Business has actually increased, and these were well-patronized bars to begin with.
If there's a failure in the lack of voluntary non-smoking bars, it's the failure of bar owners to see that going non-smoking could help business just as much as hurt it. It wouldn't be the first time that incorrect, overly-cautious assumptions have clouded some capitalist's judgment (a key fault with free-market fundamentalism).
One caveat: both of the bars I'm talking about have outdoor patios where smoking is permitted. Maybe that's the difference.
Heavy smokers tend to be heavy drinkers, or vice versa. The thing is that alcohol distributors need a smoking ban to turn heavy drinker/smokers into more profitable heavier drinkers.
Especially as taxes go up.
Brew pubs are generally successful and smoke free.
On top of this, all of the AA meetings I go to are also non-smoking.
Total market failure.
A non-smoking bar opened here in Durham, NC (of all places) last fall, and it seems to be doing fine (at least on nights when they have live music.)
Of course, NC's smoking ban will go into effect on January 2 of next year anyway...