MP>>
Doug, the question was one of the welfare effects of the taxes. The
question you ask makes any answer more complex. Bombarding a child with
advertisements makes rational decision making somewhat unclear. If, I
were to assert that high cigarette taxes were a legitimate way were a
legitimate means of counteracting advertisements, as well as product
placement in the movies, then I guess I would be opening the door to host
of social controls -- some of which I would find offensive.
**********
Either way the door is open, because if you didn't, the locus of controlling
the child is given to the firms that stand to benefit from restricting her
opportunities/capacities to elude their message. Not restricting or
counteracting the advertisements is social control as well, by constraining
her ability to reach a rational decision. Notice also who pays for the costs
of providing the information for a rational decision--a socialism of costs
[why isn't the burden of proof for harmlessness placed with the firms in
question]--yet another form of social control. A public delegation of a
private right is what constrains her [the right to advertise and sell]. This
is precisely the politics of the precautionary principle writ large.
Similarly with Doug's rejoinder. By not curtailing the sale or production
for sale of tobacco products, you are curtailing the ability of the society
to deal with the consequences by restricting the options by which they deal
with them. This leads all too easily to the notion than any curtailment of
productive choices is authoritarian and constrains the FM. Thus the illusion
that the complexification of an economy is necessary for an "increase" in
welfare. Doug's logic is equivalent to the auto manufacturer's love of
regulating the tail pipe rather than constraining the design possibilities
of the engine itself. How is one less authoritarian than the other?
Ian
