Walter Williams’s 2000 Column on Smoking, Freedom, and Socialism; It Has Way-Beyond Relevance Today

In the process of putting together my latest Pajamas media column, which will come out later this week and be about last week’s tobacco tax hikes, I came across this 2000 item by Walter Williams.

Williams’s seemingly unrelated work ties in to this Wall Street Journal story about how a 38 year-old punk (appropriate, given that we’re currently enduring the Punk Presidency), whom Don Luskin correctly calls a “swaggering bastard,” is ordering bank and car-company CEOs around. If bankers ever used these tactics on their lending clients, they’d either be prosecuted or sued into oblivion.

The tie-in is to the two bolded sentences in this excerpt from Williams:

The first thing we should acknowledge is that we live in a world of harms. The secondhand smoke from my cigarette might harm you. However, your being able to prevent me from smoking harms me; I have less enjoyment. We cannot say which person’s harm is more important and should take precedence. The reason why is that it is impossible to make interpersonal utility comparisons. In other words, there is no scientific way of deciding whose well-being is more important: whether the harm you suffer from my smoking is more important than the harm I suffer from not being permitted to smoke.

…. In a socialistic society, conflicting harms are resolved through government intimidation and coercion. In a free society, conflicting harms are settled through the institution of private property rights. Private property rights has to do with rights, belonging to the person deemed owner of property and protected by the state, to keep, acquire, use and dispose of property as he deems fit so long as he does not violate the property rights of another.

Therefore, in a free society, whether smoking harms others or not is irrelevant. The relevant issue is who owns the air? It is clear that if you own the air, it is your right to decide how it is used. If you do not want tobacco smoke in your air, that is your right that government should protect. By the same token, if I own the air, I have rights just as you do to decide how it is used. If I want to have tobacco smoke in my air, I have every right to do so and the government should protect my property rights just as it protects yours.

….. A majority of Americans agree with laws prohibiting smoking in restaurants, bars, airplanes, factories and offices and other “public” places. But why should their wishes be indulged through force of law? Are restaurants, bars, airplanes, factories and offices publicly owned places? No. For the most part, restaurants, bars, airplanes, factories and offices are private property simply doing business with the public. As such the institution of private property rights should resolve any conflict over smoking. The owner of a restaurant or bar should have the right to decide whether smoking is permitted on his premises or not. Customers have the right to decide the terms on which they patronize the restaurant. If the owner does not permit smoking, then people who wish to smoke during dinner can decide not to patronize that restaurant. Similarly, an employer who wishes to permit smoking in his offices should have the right to do so. People who wish to work in a smoke-free office environment can simply choose some other place of employment where the owner does not permit smoking.

There is absolutely no moral argument for people to use the power of the state to force a restaurant owner who does not want smoking in his establishment to accommodate smokers. Just as there is no moral argument for people to use the power of the state to force a restaurant owner who permits smoking to prohibit smoking. That would be the moral values in a free society; however, so much of mankind exhibits a generalized contempt for the principles of liberty. We succumb to the temptation of using the power of the state to forcibly impose our preferences on others.

We’re seeing early and current signs that Williams’s characterization of socialism is as correct here as it has been elsewhere. When in doubt, this heading-towards-socialist administration plays the intimidation/coercion card. One example of many besides the items the Journal cites at the link above is its refusal to accept repayment of TARP loans made to larger banks, and threatening regulatory grief if one dares to try it:

(Fox News’s Andrew) Napolitano said this bank “has no subprime loans, it has no bad debts, wasn’t involved in credit default swaps. It didn’t need any money. It didn’t ask for the money and didn’t want it. … officials from both the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Treasury said if you don’t take this money, we will conduct a multi-year public audit of you.”

The Fox News analyst said the bank’s “board was forced to issue a class of stock just for the federal government. The federal government owns 2% of this huge bank.”

That was done under the Bush administration. Enter the Obama White House. Last month, Napolitano said, Treasury told the bank “we own 2%, we’re going to tell you how to run the place.”

“As a result of that minority ownership, they now want to control salaries. They want to see his books, and they want to tell him who he can do business with,” Napolitano reported.

The quasi-nationalization of GM also probably crosses the line into state-sponsored coercion. It is without a doubt extra-constitutional.

These guys are beginning to employ tactics the previous administration never dreamed of. To the extent the previous administration did similar things in its final months, we are learning that President ‘Prompter’s current peeps probably instigated them. Tax Cheat and Proven Liar Tim Geithner is the most likely behind-the-scenes suspect in encouraging Hank Paulson in mid-October to force the large banks to take TARP money with a (figurative) gun pointed to their heads, including the situation described above.

Republic Window and ACORN’s occupation of foreclosed homes are two other off-the-cuff examples of the culture of extra-legality this administration and its members have fostered and encouraged.

Williams got it right nine years ago, on a scale that goes way beyond smoking.