Photo credit, Flickr user Valentin.Ottone

Via Jacob Grier, it looks like DC Councilman Jack Evans only likes smoking bans when he’s in a position to manipulate them to exempt organizations of which he is a part.  I’d probably do the same thing if I were in office (though I wouldn’t have supported the ban in the first place, so I’d just be inappropriately taking advantage of my position, not taking advantage of my position and being a hypocrite, which is far more distasteful).

But politicians being hypocrites isn’t really surprising news.  What’s far more surprising to me is that Smokefree DC still exists and is still run by Angela Bradbury, who, not content with having imposed her personal preference for non-smoking bars on everyone in our fair city, is still sitting up nights worried that someone, somewhere in the District is having fun. And they Must. Be. Stopped.

These fun-havers are doing all kinds of things that can’t be allowed, like smoking on sidewalks, smoking in outdoor cafes, and smoking in their own homes. These are in addition to the exemptions Evans wanted for two specific events this year.

And of course there are the scourges of THIRD-hand smoke and e-cigarettes:

Unfortunately, [Matt Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids] said that e-cigarettes provide an alternative to smoking in smokefree places.

Whoa. Hold on there. We don’t accept that. It’s still unclear whether the chemicals in the vapor emitted from electronic cigarettes is harmful. Plus, there is the confusion factor – a smoker with a real cigarette may see the smoker with the e-cigarette across the restaurant or bar and figure it’s okay to light up. That would burden employees at bars and restaurants with unnecessary enforcement responsibilities.

Yes, hold on there Matt.  We don’t want people switching to reduced-harm products like e-cigarettes because we don’t know what the potential dangers of vapor are and we don’t want people to get confused and ask their waiters whether smoking is allowed.  Silly, Matt.

I for one look forward to hearing Big Anti Tobacco’s arguments for banning e-cigarette smoking on sidewalks; I’m sure it will have something to do with fifth hand vapor.

Keep it up, Angela.  If you blog just a little bit harder, I bet you can make this whole city into the joyless, soulless dystopia you crave.

What happens when stupid people learn some economic jargon without actually learning any economics?

We get things like this piece today in the Huffington Post by Richard Greene.

The gist: companies whose products are used in excess by irresponsible consumers should compensate the rest of us for their products’ “external costs”–that is, their costs to society via government-run health care programs.

According to the study just reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine, obesity results in $147 Billion a year in health costs for America.

And soda manufacturers and pizza vendors (and we all love pizza) don’t pay one penny of that.

In a true free market, the real costs of any goods and services are always included in the cost of the goods and services. Otherwise the market is out of balance. If the pro-rata share, for example, of a 20 ounce can of Coke is $.50 of that $147 Billion, then the free market demands that Coca Cola take care of that cost and add it to their product so that “the market” can then make an informed decision as to whether they want to buy the can of coke or a can of Perrier or Fiji water.

Only problem is, in a “true free market,” the cost of drinking too many Cokes–obesity and higher health care costs–would be shouldered by the individuals who drink too many Cokes, not by the government and the taxpayers.  By subsidizing health care, the government takes those costs that should be internal, and it artificially externalizes them.  That’s hardly Coke’s fault, and it’s hardly Coke’s fault that people consume its product irresponsibly or choose to lead inactive lifestyles.

And as an occasional consumer of Coke products, it isn’t my fault either.  I consume Coke products, pizzas, cigarettes, booze, and lots of other things that could be bad for me if I overindulged, but I don’t consume them in a way that will negatively affect my long term health, and certainly not in a way that will require government-subsidized health care.

So why should I have to pay an extra soda tax or a pizza tax or an alcohol tax or a cigarette tax?  There aren’t any negative externalities to the transactions I make with the companies that sell me those products, and what minor costs there are to my (usually) responsible consumption of them (hangovers, bronchitis, feeling full, and caffeine crashes) remain internal. (If there were, however, a way for the federal government to externalize hangovers, I’d be all about it.)

This is the price we pay for having a health care system that subsidizes bad decision making and makes individuals immune to their irresponsible consumption habits.  It isn’t the choice I’d make, but it’s the choice our society has made, so I’m dealing with it.

So Mr. Greene, we can have a subsidized health care system that spreads out the costs and benefits of the bad and good health decisions Americans make, or we can have a free market system in which costs are covered by producers and consumers alone, with no subsidized health care–and the logical outcome would be that people would buy fewer Cokes. But you can’t have it both ways.

As you can see, I finally sucked it up and shelled out $90 for Thesis.  While I’m figuring out what to do with, the site will remain kind of aesthetically bare. But trust me, it’s going to be AWESOME when it’s done.

I haven’t done any regular writing for the last two or three years, and it’s beginning to upset me, so I thought it was time to wade back in.  Welcome to it.  Do please try to be patient while I try to remember how to write more than 140 characters at a time and sustain arguments across multiple paragraphs. I’m already tired after just this much.

What you can expect: topics of general libertarian interest (free market economics, freedom, and peace and such); how evolutionary psychology justifies many of my personal shortcomings, including but not limited to my love of gossip magazines and reality TV; technology and Internet policy and industry chit chat; tobacco policy–although you may be pleased to learn that I’ve pretty much quit smoking; snarky (though usually substantive) criticism of people I disagree with, occasionally resulting in ad hominem-charged blog wars; limited dog-blogging; lamentations on the sorry state of American English; and whatever else suits my fancy.

Do leave a comment if you like what you see. Or if you don’t; I’m not above getting into protracted arguments with people in the comments section, even though I’m well aware of the inadvisability of swinging at pitches in the dirt.

Wow, 200 words. I need a nap.