The Upside of Smoking
For some reason, people do not like me. The reasons for their disdain are numerous and even justified and range from my desire to save money (cheap-skate) to my possible clinical depression (weakling who just can't accept that life inherently sucks). Now I can hardly defend these reasons to hate me, since I do agree with the majority of them. Hell, I don't I like me most of the time. But the one aspect of my persona, my individual selfness that I hold dear are my views on politics, whether these are on local, national, or even personal scales. My political views are the one thing I believe are right. Of course, the "rightness" of my views depends on whatever philosophy they are based on. In my case, these political views are based on half-assed objectivism (read Atlas Shrugged) or whole-assed Libertarianism (i.e. not Republican or Democrat). In a nutshell, the basis for my views is centered around personal freedom and personal responsibility (includes violations of other's rights). For example, if one wants to shoot a gun in his own back yard with a silencer, he should be allowed to do so. However, if he shoots his weapon and a bullet ricochets which in turn kills his neighbor, he should be held responsible (possibly through legal and/or monetary means).
Now, as I hear many of you normal people (we call you "Normies" under the surface) gasp and proclaim "But He shouldn't be allowed to have a gun at all!!!!" or the flip-side "He should be allowed to have all the guns he wants, and if a bullet ricochets on his property, its not his problem because it's God's will," I know that my views are not popular. Hell, they are downright controversial to you normies. Some people (Communists Fruit-cakes who do not believe people can take care of themselves) side me with the fascists, and others (Religious Zealots with a flare for running worthless Corporations reliant on government handouts) put me in the homosexual hippie pot-smoking devil-worshiping crowd. For those of you who are not idiots, please read between the lines. However, as I have stated before to many friends, I do not consider myself on the left side of political spectrum, or on the right. I am up. I am above the petty disagreements, the religious arguments, the handouts to individuals and corporations alike. I can see through all that garbage and narrow the issues down to roughly black and white by bringing it all back to personal freedom and personal responsibility.
So where am I going with this, you ask? Well, this set up is to prepare you normies for a view of mine that I have found to be tremendously controversial. In my many travels on this tainted orb, I have never found a human being who agrees with me on this one issue . The issue itself is whether or not the government should outlaw smoking in any domain, public and private. Most recently, New York City had outlawed smoking in all bars throughout the city, a policy which is being copied by other large metropolitan areas.
Before I continue my argument, I would like to make something clear. I do not like smoking (cigarettes in particular). I have difficulty conversing with people who smoke because the stench gives me nosebleed inducing headaches. I hate it when I walk into a bar, and instantly I smell like the ol' tabaccy. This being said, I do not think someone who owns a bar should prevent his customers from smoking just because I hate it.
Obviously, I do not think the government should have any say whether or not private establishments should have smoking on the premises, especially if they comply with fire safety regulations. Such laws violate the rights of the property owners, who should be allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want, on their property as long as their actions do not violate the rights of others. Of course, the first salvo from my opponents is usually "But smoking is health hazard. That surely violates the rights of the employees and the non-smoking customers. " Nope. Not at all. As long as the property owners clearly emphasize (possibly in a window, or on the front door) that smoking is allowed on the establishment and imply its already well known dangers. "But I want to go to the bar, and have a good time without the smoke." Tough. You have a choice of which bar, dive, or hole in the wall you decide to contract syphilis and develop cirrhosis of the liver in. Some bar owners, seeing a market for it, will inevitably make their bars non-smoking establishments. This will be done for two reasons 1) most people today in the U.S. are not regular smokers and 2) most hot girls will not work in environments that cause them to age quickly (like a smoke-filled bar). Without hot girls working at a bar, it becomes infinitely harder to attract the male sex (and lesbians) to one's establishment. Men being roughly 50% of the population, and the heavier drinking sex, definitely are required for the success of a bar. No horny male college student is going to stumble into a smoke-filled dive full 40 something single mothers with bags under their eyes and cottage cheese thighs if he does not have to.
Another argument presented by you normies usually is "But if the government doesn't do anything, smoking will be everywhere." Wrong again losers. I have first-hand proof of a private establishment that has a self-imposed no smoking policy. The Universal Plaza Hotel in Orlando Florida is one such establishment. The Universal executives at one point made a conscious decision to keep smoking out of their grand hotels. The reasons for this are simple, the most glaring being the family-oriented theme park laden city of Orlando. If one wants families to come to his hotel, he will keep smoking out, to protect children and pregnant women, or else he will lose such valuable business to more competitive hotels.
The issue here is not whether or not smoking is bad for people. The issue here is that proponents of such regulations against private establishments believe that people do not have a right to do what they want on their property, whether this property is some crappy bar or their crappy body. This is the same reason people can not smoke marijuana in the eyes of you normies. "Pot is bad for the body and mind, so therefore you can not do it." So what did you normies do? You made a law making the possession of marijuana illegal. Well, just because it is illegal this does not mean people will abide by such a law. The same applies to property. "What? My house is not zoned for a swimming pool in the basement? Well nuts to you. I own the well which supplies the water to my house, and if anything happens to my house as a result of my swimming pool, it will be my problem." If such laws are imposed, they inevitably broken sooner or later.
A prime example of this is the institution of Prohibition, which had deprived Americans with the privilege to legally destroy their livers and their lives with alcoholic beverages. Well, after this law was imposed many Americans, bar owners included, disregarded such a fascist demand and continued, mostly in secrecy, to sell and consume spirited beverages. Not surprisingly, the law was repealed when people realized that they love to drink and such a law makes a lot of people criminals for simply destroying their bodies.
Now, of course, smoking is different from drinking. Second-hand smoke expelled from smokers can be inhaled by unwitting bystanders. Over the years these bystanders have demanded separate non-smoking sections, and eventually instituted such restrictive regulations. As I said before, I hate smoking and if I were to come to a restaurant that had a sign informing me that the establishment allowed smoking, I would consider going to another establishment. If there are options available, people will take them. Advocates of non-smoking regulations are riding in the same uppity boat as prohibitionists and others who think they know what is right for every single person. Soon, similar trolls will demand that Americans must exercise regularly or face excessive fines. These same trolls will then say, well if you have a guest bedroom you must let a homeless person stay in it for free, or face the aforementioned excessive fines. No one should have the right to tell people what to do with their lives or their businesses (as long as they properly inform customers and employees of potential danger). Its called covering one's ass. If perhaps years down the road, a former employee tries to sue the owner of a then smoke-filled bar, the employer can legally show that the employee signed a contract stating that they were informed they would be working in an environment filled with second-hand smoke.
Its that simple. But apparently, some people have to complicate things by imposing on other people's rights and responsibilities.
And this is what gets to me. This is what wakes me in the night in a cold sweat and a urine filled bed. The fear that someday, someone will come and tell me how to live life or face repercussions wrought by a governing body I support through my taxes. In other words, in this nightmarish dystopian future, I will be paying for my own enslavement. We all will. So next time you complain about a smoke-filled bar, realize that you are there by choice. No one forced you into an environment filled with smoke. And if you spend enough time in smoke-filled bars that you actually contract lung cancer, that is your own problem. Besides, you would have to spend at least thirty years of your life in such bars to actually contract said disease. Wise up you dumbass normies.
Now, as I hear many of you normal people (we call you "Normies" under the surface) gasp and proclaim "But He shouldn't be allowed to have a gun at all!!!!" or the flip-side "He should be allowed to have all the guns he wants, and if a bullet ricochets on his property, its not his problem because it's God's will," I know that my views are not popular. Hell, they are downright controversial to you normies. Some people (Communists Fruit-cakes who do not believe people can take care of themselves) side me with the fascists, and others (Religious Zealots with a flare for running worthless Corporations reliant on government handouts) put me in the homosexual hippie pot-smoking devil-worshiping crowd. For those of you who are not idiots, please read between the lines. However, as I have stated before to many friends, I do not consider myself on the left side of political spectrum, or on the right. I am up. I am above the petty disagreements, the religious arguments, the handouts to individuals and corporations alike. I can see through all that garbage and narrow the issues down to roughly black and white by bringing it all back to personal freedom and personal responsibility.
So where am I going with this, you ask? Well, this set up is to prepare you normies for a view of mine that I have found to be tremendously controversial. In my many travels on this tainted orb, I have never found a human being who agrees with me on this one issue . The issue itself is whether or not the government should outlaw smoking in any domain, public and private. Most recently, New York City had outlawed smoking in all bars throughout the city, a policy which is being copied by other large metropolitan areas.
Before I continue my argument, I would like to make something clear. I do not like smoking (cigarettes in particular). I have difficulty conversing with people who smoke because the stench gives me nosebleed inducing headaches. I hate it when I walk into a bar, and instantly I smell like the ol' tabaccy. This being said, I do not think someone who owns a bar should prevent his customers from smoking just because I hate it.
Obviously, I do not think the government should have any say whether or not private establishments should have smoking on the premises, especially if they comply with fire safety regulations. Such laws violate the rights of the property owners, who should be allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want, on their property as long as their actions do not violate the rights of others. Of course, the first salvo from my opponents is usually "But smoking is health hazard. That surely violates the rights of the employees and the non-smoking customers. " Nope. Not at all. As long as the property owners clearly emphasize (possibly in a window, or on the front door) that smoking is allowed on the establishment and imply its already well known dangers. "But I want to go to the bar, and have a good time without the smoke." Tough. You have a choice of which bar, dive, or hole in the wall you decide to contract syphilis and develop cirrhosis of the liver in. Some bar owners, seeing a market for it, will inevitably make their bars non-smoking establishments. This will be done for two reasons 1) most people today in the U.S. are not regular smokers and 2) most hot girls will not work in environments that cause them to age quickly (like a smoke-filled bar). Without hot girls working at a bar, it becomes infinitely harder to attract the male sex (and lesbians) to one's establishment. Men being roughly 50% of the population, and the heavier drinking sex, definitely are required for the success of a bar. No horny male college student is going to stumble into a smoke-filled dive full 40 something single mothers with bags under their eyes and cottage cheese thighs if he does not have to.
Another argument presented by you normies usually is "But if the government doesn't do anything, smoking will be everywhere." Wrong again losers. I have first-hand proof of a private establishment that has a self-imposed no smoking policy. The Universal Plaza Hotel in Orlando Florida is one such establishment. The Universal executives at one point made a conscious decision to keep smoking out of their grand hotels. The reasons for this are simple, the most glaring being the family-oriented theme park laden city of Orlando. If one wants families to come to his hotel, he will keep smoking out, to protect children and pregnant women, or else he will lose such valuable business to more competitive hotels.
The issue here is not whether or not smoking is bad for people. The issue here is that proponents of such regulations against private establishments believe that people do not have a right to do what they want on their property, whether this property is some crappy bar or their crappy body. This is the same reason people can not smoke marijuana in the eyes of you normies. "Pot is bad for the body and mind, so therefore you can not do it." So what did you normies do? You made a law making the possession of marijuana illegal. Well, just because it is illegal this does not mean people will abide by such a law. The same applies to property. "What? My house is not zoned for a swimming pool in the basement? Well nuts to you. I own the well which supplies the water to my house, and if anything happens to my house as a result of my swimming pool, it will be my problem." If such laws are imposed, they inevitably broken sooner or later.
A prime example of this is the institution of Prohibition, which had deprived Americans with the privilege to legally destroy their livers and their lives with alcoholic beverages. Well, after this law was imposed many Americans, bar owners included, disregarded such a fascist demand and continued, mostly in secrecy, to sell and consume spirited beverages. Not surprisingly, the law was repealed when people realized that they love to drink and such a law makes a lot of people criminals for simply destroying their bodies.
Now, of course, smoking is different from drinking. Second-hand smoke expelled from smokers can be inhaled by unwitting bystanders. Over the years these bystanders have demanded separate non-smoking sections, and eventually instituted such restrictive regulations. As I said before, I hate smoking and if I were to come to a restaurant that had a sign informing me that the establishment allowed smoking, I would consider going to another establishment. If there are options available, people will take them. Advocates of non-smoking regulations are riding in the same uppity boat as prohibitionists and others who think they know what is right for every single person. Soon, similar trolls will demand that Americans must exercise regularly or face excessive fines. These same trolls will then say, well if you have a guest bedroom you must let a homeless person stay in it for free, or face the aforementioned excessive fines. No one should have the right to tell people what to do with their lives or their businesses (as long as they properly inform customers and employees of potential danger). Its called covering one's ass. If perhaps years down the road, a former employee tries to sue the owner of a then smoke-filled bar, the employer can legally show that the employee signed a contract stating that they were informed they would be working in an environment filled with second-hand smoke.
Its that simple. But apparently, some people have to complicate things by imposing on other people's rights and responsibilities.
And this is what gets to me. This is what wakes me in the night in a cold sweat and a urine filled bed. The fear that someday, someone will come and tell me how to live life or face repercussions wrought by a governing body I support through my taxes. In other words, in this nightmarish dystopian future, I will be paying for my own enslavement. We all will. So next time you complain about a smoke-filled bar, realize that you are there by choice. No one forced you into an environment filled with smoke. And if you spend enough time in smoke-filled bars that you actually contract lung cancer, that is your own problem. Besides, you would have to spend at least thirty years of your life in such bars to actually contract said disease. Wise up you dumbass normies.
posted by Blackthorne at 7:29 PM
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