Tue, 03 Aug 2004

Close to the Truth

I stumbled across this article from the BBC while reading a news items about the complete ban on public smoking about to be enforced in Montenegro.

It details a trial ban on smoking put in place at several student union bars at the University of Leeds earlier this year. The bans were called "failures" after the take at the establishments dropped rather dramatically. But what was revealing was the admission by one of the proponents of the ban, which goes a long way towards explaining why they insist on legal sanctions rather than simply letting the market work out the "smoking in bars" problem on it's own"

It is regrettable the trial was not a success, but as the only venue in the city banning smoking it was difficult for us to maintain trading levels.

This shows an understanding of reality that's scary: smokers won't go to bars where smoking is banned if the have a choice to go to bars where it's not! The solution, therefore, is to ban smoking in all bars, short circuiting the market entirely. Because if people have a choice, they'll choose the "wrong" thing ....

Think about all the other places this kind of logic is used by various special interest groups (which is really what the anti-smoking lobby is). I can't test my cattle for BSE because nobody else can afford to ... I must pay "universal service" taxes on my Internet phone service, even though I don't go thru a phone company with circuit switching wired technology. I''ll leave it as an exercise for my readers to discover more instances ...

This is close to the truth: the most common tactic for business or political success seems to have morphed from "offer superior services/products/prices" to "use Congress/agencies/government to force everyone to be as identical as possible". In short, to replace a market driven by consumer choice with one driven by commodity factors - availability and time.

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