Quarantines may be justified

[John Kelsey]

At 04:30 PM 4/23/03 -0700, Tim May wrote:
...
>But in practice, in real practice out on the streets, this has never been 
>where the anti-smoking laws have been invoked. No state in the U.S., to my 
>knowledge, bans smoking outside, on public streets.

Right, but that was what was being discussed--regulation of smoking on 
public property.  (Which raises all kinds of interesting definitional 
issues, since that includes the county courthouse, the street in front of 
the courthouse, the river running through the middle of town, and the ocean 
several miles away.  Nobody bans smoking in all those places, but I think 
almost everyone bans smoking in government buildings, and I've seen at 
least one city park (here in North Carolina!) where smoking is banned once 
you get off the parking lot.)

...
[Discussing real-world antismoking laws, applied to "public places" as in 
places where the public happens to be--bars, restaurants, etc.]
>And here the issue is about as nearly unambiguous as one can get: it is up 
>to the property owner to decide on smoking policies on his property. This 
>was as it once was, and it worked very well. Some restaurants barred 
>smoking, some permitted it, some set up different sections. Likewise, some 
>companies barrred smoking, some permitted it, some set up smoking lounges, etc.

Yep.  When only consenting adults are involved on private property, the 
state ought not to be involved.  For some non-obvious dangerous activities, 
the state might legitimately require a warning of some kind (e.g., 
"DANGER--POISON"),  though in practice this usually seems to devolve to 
attaching a warning label to everything, with the effect that you don't 
always know an ass-covering warning label from an honest-to-God, drink a 
teaspoon of this and you're a corpse, sort of warning label.  And for some 
dangerous activities the state might legitimately restrict children from 
the activity, though second-hand smoke is a couple orders of magnitude too 
low of a risk for this to make sense.  (And the other Schelling point is to 
let parents make decisions for their kids until the kids are being 
obviously abused or subjected to horrifying risks.)

...
>The Schelling point for such rights was agreed-upon a couple of centuries 
>ago with the protection of property rights. My house, my rules. Your 
>house, your rules.

>Examples like Sarin are not  helpful, as they differ massively from the 
>annoyance of smoking.

My point was that it's not obvious where the line gets drawn for (say) 
offensive smells or dangerous fumes, but it is obvious that there needs to 
be a line there somewhere.  Sarin, tear gas, or skunk smell are pretty 
obvious examples of fumes that, if I give them off in a public place or 
waft them over to your property, ought to be actionable somehow.  Fumes 
from various inhaled/smoked drugs are somewhere in a gray area.

These gray areas exist in every area of life, and a lot of libertarians 
seem to miss them, because they don't fit cleanly into the 
list-of-rights-granted-by-God/Rand/TheConstitution model.  (For some 
discussion by a libertarian who understands them very well, see David 
Friedman's wonderful book _Law's Order_.)

>--Tim May

--John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
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