Quarantines may be justified

[stuart]

On Tuesday, April 29, 2003, Jim came up with this...

JC> On Sat, 19 Apr 2003, stuart wrote:
>> Smoking in public, that's an easy one to pick on. But the argument
>> holds no water, unfortunately. Find me RELIABLE, UNBIASED evidence that
>> second-hand smoke is actually dangerous, and I'll agree to ban smoking.

JC> Bullshit line of reasoning (actually your whole line is pretty much tits
JC> up but why waste precious time). It's not a matter of 'proof'. It -is- a
JC> matter of interfering with others. Note they are not saying you can't
JC> smoke, they -are- saying that you can't make them smoke along with you.
JC> There is this concept called 'consent'. You seem to be missing it.

JC> You can do what you want until it interferes with what another wants. If
JC> they want to breath unpolluted air and drink clean water then there is
JC> nothing that gives you the right to pollute either outside of -your-
JC> immediate vicinity.

There is a line, that line is harm, not discomfort. My argument is that
there are many things that cause discomfort, that's life, tough shit.
If smoking actually caused harm to people near a smoker, I wouldn't
protest any of these bans. But nobody has been able to prove it does.
I know exactly what consent is. I don't consent to the kid next to me in
my OS class who doesn't know what deodorant is stinking the room up, but
it doesn't cause me any harm so the law has no right to impose speed
stick on him.

People aren't permitted to blast music in the middle of the night
because it prevents other people from sleeping, which causes harm.
When smoking is banned in places, it removes the RIGHT of the owner of
that place to permit or prohibit a legal activity within their domain.
Without those laws the owner could permit smoking, and patrons could
then CONSENT to go to that place, or go somewhere else, where the owner
has prohibited smoking. So yeah, I know what consent is, do you know
what private property is?

-- 
stuart

Anyone who tells you they want a utopia wants to put chains on the
souls of your children. They want to deny history and strangle any
unforeseen possibility. They should be resisted to the last breath.
-Bruce Sterling-