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Velociryx
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of Candle'Bre
Apr 1999
time: 05:37
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Irrelevant to the argument, which is "vehicles cause more pollution than smoking, why not ban them". Under this line of thinking, all vehicles that pollute would have to be banned. Arguing about aggregate pollution form different classes of vehicles is utterly irrelevant to that red herring of an arguement. Stop wasting space.
NOT irrelevant. I brought the original counter argument up, thankyouverymuch. But it does go to show that YOU are the one who needs a bit of help when it comes to reading posts.
The argument is/was that if you're soooooo worried about the safety and welfare of the public that you pass a law banning that awful, injurious habit some folks have, (smoking), before you pat yourself on the back for it, why not look at the pollution numbers and acknowledge the fact that every smoker in chicago puffing away at the same time pollutes less in a given day than ten minutes of rush hour traffic in that same city.
When put side by side with OTHER forms of pollution, it makes the whole "we're saving lives!" mantra somewhat silly. No, strike that, it makes it just this side of rediculous. That said, if you're really serious about saving lives, you'd go after the BIG pollution, and believe me, you don't have to eliminate every combustion engine on the planet to have an impact....a fine beginning (and a MUCH bigger impact that a smoking ban) would be the ban I mentioned. It must kill you to be wrong.
I know, I predictably come up with better arguments than yours. I do like that predictability.
You are arguing about how a ban would be implemented, inserting all sorts of assumptions that mean nothing to the point, ie. why ban smoking if you won't ban cars, which pollute more. That was Mings strawman. You have added nothing of worth to help his strawman, except for your assumptions on the eocnomics of retooling the American economy, which in themselves are highly dubious, but again, pointless.
 Which is funny, especially since a) you don't, and certainly not with any predictability, and b) the argument before you is anything BUT a strawman, which is, I think, the only debating term you know....do you stand in front of the mirror and parrot that word cos you read it somewhere? "Bwaaak! Strawman! Bwaaak!" I can hear it now...
And you would then have to balance this with the lower costs paid by the health care industryand by the insurance industry given lower fatality rates form car accidents, plus the intalngible of less human beings dying.
If you care to claim that 140 Million have been spent in a decade or so, then compare that to the savings and the intangibles.
Hmmm...well, but this flies in the face of the core argument. "IT SAVES LIVES" Implies that folks who don't wear their seatbelts lose their lives (I know....that's tough to get your mind around, but do try). And this in turn, implies no additional healthcare costs, since there aren't many EMT's who will administer much in the way of health care to a dead guy. Granted, not everyone who doesn't wear a seatbelt will die, and they certainly will have medical costs, but separating their injuries and the dollars spent on them into wearing a seatbelt/not wearing a seatbelt categories is nigh on impossible, and to my knowledge, no such attempt is even being made. Good try tho! Further, the "cost" where insurance is concerned is borne by individuals PAYING for said insurance, and not by the government (which represents society as a whole) and so cannot even be factored into the equation. We're talking about the cost of passing and implementing the legislation, which is the cost borne by the government, and as programs go, this one has been pretty expensive on a "per life saved" basis. The money would have been better spent elsewhere if saving lives was truly the agenda, which it wasn't.
Those reasons are? But why waste even more space with your answer. We are better off with it not being given.
Unlike anti-smoking laws (which are nearly as silly as an anti-flatulence law passed in an attempt to save lives by cleaning up the air), laws against murder DO provide an immediate social benefit, in that it, by creating a structure to deal with such crimes, prevents, or greatly reduces the tendency for vigilantism, which, while gratifying to the families of the victims of a murder, works directly against the desire of the "masses" for safety, security, and predictibility. Smoking does none of those things, especially given that a) smoking as a form of pollution is one of the most insignificant forms of pollution out there, and b) to my knowledge, there hasn't been a single case of injury or death that could be directly related back to second hand smoke, exclusively (and probably, there never will be, given the sheer number and amounts of other, much more dangerous pollutants out there).
But go ahead and continue to sing the praises of its massive effectiveness.
It's amusing. 
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31-08-2005 09:09
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