This coming Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe, we are going to discuss free speech.
The original topic was hate versus free speech, but I thought it would be interesting to expand it to a more general discussion about how to set limits to free speech.
Free speech is something that is valued as a foundation to a free society. However, when we have to coexists with other beings who also claim their right to their freedom, where do we set the compromise limit of one's freedom to express versus another's freedom to object or to not even want to hear it ?
One limitation often cited is that we should not be free to yell "fire" in a crowded theater for fear of creating a stampede to the exits by the crowd.
Does this mean that our freedom of expression should be curtailed by the consequence of what it may cause?
Should we therefore not speak out against the opinion of a prominent social leader because his leadership is so important to society that discrediting him will cause too much disruption and real damage to society? A utilitarian approach to the issue?
We are all familiar with the accepted hate speech from people who doubt the existence of the holocaust and what happened to the Jews in the second world war.
But what about the news last week that there is talk in Japan about doubts if the massive killing of civilians in Nanking in China in the second world war really happened? The Chinese government objected. But should doubts be raised to start with ?
Perhaps we can say that cases like these are easily judged because of the overwhelming evidence of the number of people killed.
But what about historical events that are more open to interpretation and subject to the moral and values of those times? Is it valid to raise questions of interpretation ? or possible motives of the day that no one is so sure of today?
Are the Japanese solders who died in the second world war heroes to be honored annually by Japan's head of state? Is it Japan's freedom to do so ?
What about omission.
Are historians free to omit inconvenient truths ? Is omission a fundamental right? Or is it an obligation and pillar of free discussion? Should children's history books be less favorable to the state?
Another example is the popular saying that "my freedom to swing my fist stops just before it hits your chin." That is certainly true physically but what about the threat manifested by the swinging of the fist, should that freedom be curtailed as a mental threat that can be every bit as damaging as physical assault?
Where is the balance between libel laws and a journalist's claim to freedom of the press? What level of proof is required before something can be published?
Can we be free without limits? How many limits can we impose before we are no longer free?
Who gets to set the line and how?
Looking forward to the discussion on Wednesday.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Meeting on pleasures, expectations, and contentment
We had our Ideas Cafe discussion tonight.
While I had assumed that we all know about the dulling of our senses as we take pleasure of our indulgences, I did not find much agreement among the group!
Shula disagreed with my use of the word "habituation" to describe our need to escalate our pleasure activities to get the same excitement without boredom, I thought they would at least agree that the escalation exists.
Not so. They also did not think much of my hypothesis that our pleasure sensation or happiness is a function of how our actual experience compared to our expectation of the event.
For Shula, the pleasure sensation is something that happens in our brain when endorphins are released. This can be the result of drugs, electrical nerve stimulation or some other event.
Ricki wonders if we can manipulate our expectations to get more contentment and whether it is valid to manipulate expectations internally. Can we really convince ourselves to expect less?
Not much follow up here either since my earlier hypothesis was not generally accepted.
Robert talked about living for the moment and to accept things as they are for the moment. Expectations are about the future and as such, do not belong to the moment.
Mike mentioned that our thirst for water builds up over time, quenched by a drink, then builds up again. Same with food and other experiences.
Dan mentioned that he enjoys his morning coffee everyday and that pleasure is not diminished over the years.
I wonder if this is the relationship between pleasure and boredom. That for every pleasure, there is a gradual build up of the longing for that pleasure over time (whether it is thirst for water or hunger for food). So long as we sample that pleasure at a long enough interval to build up the desire for the next fix, our senses will not be dulled.
Is it possible that rich people are often bored because they can afford to indulge in pleasures more often than they should? Maybe they should increase the variety and complexity of their pleasure activities to ensure a longer interval before indulging the same pleasures?
Mano said there is a difference between "consuming" a pleasure versus being a connoisseur and that the consuming experience is very thin. We were trying to nail down what consuming is and Bob suggested that it may be like only listening to the most popular songs. In other words, trying to enjoy ourselves by doing what others said are pleasurable rather than trusting our own judgement of what is pleasurable to us.
This opens up the discussion of living according to the expectations of others rather than doing or saying what we want. Being afraid of not approved or accepted by others.
We talked about a lot of things in many directions, but not what I thought would happen. But then, I was one of the few who had expectations, others do not seem to have expectations or anticipate things as I do.
Surprise is a good thing and I was surprised.
While I had assumed that we all know about the dulling of our senses as we take pleasure of our indulgences, I did not find much agreement among the group!
Shula disagreed with my use of the word "habituation" to describe our need to escalate our pleasure activities to get the same excitement without boredom, I thought they would at least agree that the escalation exists.
Not so. They also did not think much of my hypothesis that our pleasure sensation or happiness is a function of how our actual experience compared to our expectation of the event.
For Shula, the pleasure sensation is something that happens in our brain when endorphins are released. This can be the result of drugs, electrical nerve stimulation or some other event.
Ricki wonders if we can manipulate our expectations to get more contentment and whether it is valid to manipulate expectations internally. Can we really convince ourselves to expect less?
Not much follow up here either since my earlier hypothesis was not generally accepted.
Robert talked about living for the moment and to accept things as they are for the moment. Expectations are about the future and as such, do not belong to the moment.
Mike mentioned that our thirst for water builds up over time, quenched by a drink, then builds up again. Same with food and other experiences.
Dan mentioned that he enjoys his morning coffee everyday and that pleasure is not diminished over the years.
I wonder if this is the relationship between pleasure and boredom. That for every pleasure, there is a gradual build up of the longing for that pleasure over time (whether it is thirst for water or hunger for food). So long as we sample that pleasure at a long enough interval to build up the desire for the next fix, our senses will not be dulled.
Is it possible that rich people are often bored because they can afford to indulge in pleasures more often than they should? Maybe they should increase the variety and complexity of their pleasure activities to ensure a longer interval before indulging the same pleasures?
Mano said there is a difference between "consuming" a pleasure versus being a connoisseur and that the consuming experience is very thin. We were trying to nail down what consuming is and Bob suggested that it may be like only listening to the most popular songs. In other words, trying to enjoy ourselves by doing what others said are pleasurable rather than trusting our own judgement of what is pleasurable to us.
This opens up the discussion of living according to the expectations of others rather than doing or saying what we want. Being afraid of not approved or accepted by others.
We talked about a lot of things in many directions, but not what I thought would happen. But then, I was one of the few who had expectations, others do not seem to have expectations or anticipate things as I do.
Surprise is a good thing and I was surprised.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Pleasures, expectations, and contentment
This coming Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe, we are discussing the relationship among pleasures, expectations for future pleasures, and how to be content.
Originally, the title was to be about happiness but I substituted the word pleasure for happiness to direct our discussions to what philosophers would refer to "hedonistic pleasures", and not good feelings or human flourishing from intellectual pursuits, doing good for society, achievement etc.
We are talking about the pleasures from the physical senses; excitement, food and drink, luxury goods etc.
The basic issue with these pleasures is our habituation from past pleasurable experiences which cause us to raise the bar and expect a new level to excite our sense that much more in order to get the same amount of pleasure as we had the last time.
Like a drug addict, an ever increasing amount is required to achieve the same euphoric experience.
This is by definition not sustainable, causing the unavoidable fall due to disappointment from the high level of expectation that is built up over successive pleasurable episodes.
Is it possible to control our expectations and prevent it from ratcheting up each time?
Can we space out pleasures over time just so that we won't get used to it? Or is this stark budgeting of pleasures counter to the whole idea of maximizing pleasure?
Can we constantly remind us of how lucky we are compared to the less fortunate who cannot have the level of pleasures we are already tired off? Is this reminding going to get tiring too?
Can we continually find new adventures and sources of new pleasures in order to scale a different mountain each time to satisfy our quest for the new high?
Maybe we can convince ourselves that we should be content with "good enough", that what we had last time was good enough and that we really ought to enjoy that even though our senses tell us otherwise?
Is contentment possible if we subscribe to the belief that habituation is integral to our senses and that as human beings, it is our nature to respond to changes rather than a constant state of affairs?
Or, should we take the route of a lot of philosophers and demote physical pleasures as not very desirable and aim for human flourishing instead?
While some philosophers indeed live a simple life, a lot of them do indulge in physical pleasures as well. How can this be managed?
Perhaps pleasures are just sugar coated pills for future disappointment after the inevitable rise in expectations following the pleasures. Is there a ledger that is tracking our pleasures requiring us to make deposits in disappointment after withdrawals in pleasures? Do they balance out in the long run?
Are we better off not trying to have pleasure at all and have a flat line for our lives instead of the peaks of pleasure and valleys of disappointment?
Flat line, how boring! Is contentment meant to be boring? How can we be content without being bored?
And we thought we were just going to have fun!
Looking forward to your ideas and comments and see you Wednesday.
Originally, the title was to be about happiness but I substituted the word pleasure for happiness to direct our discussions to what philosophers would refer to "hedonistic pleasures", and not good feelings or human flourishing from intellectual pursuits, doing good for society, achievement etc.
We are talking about the pleasures from the physical senses; excitement, food and drink, luxury goods etc.
The basic issue with these pleasures is our habituation from past pleasurable experiences which cause us to raise the bar and expect a new level to excite our sense that much more in order to get the same amount of pleasure as we had the last time.
Like a drug addict, an ever increasing amount is required to achieve the same euphoric experience.
This is by definition not sustainable, causing the unavoidable fall due to disappointment from the high level of expectation that is built up over successive pleasurable episodes.
Is it possible to control our expectations and prevent it from ratcheting up each time?
Can we space out pleasures over time just so that we won't get used to it? Or is this stark budgeting of pleasures counter to the whole idea of maximizing pleasure?
Can we constantly remind us of how lucky we are compared to the less fortunate who cannot have the level of pleasures we are already tired off? Is this reminding going to get tiring too?
Can we continually find new adventures and sources of new pleasures in order to scale a different mountain each time to satisfy our quest for the new high?
Maybe we can convince ourselves that we should be content with "good enough", that what we had last time was good enough and that we really ought to enjoy that even though our senses tell us otherwise?
Is contentment possible if we subscribe to the belief that habituation is integral to our senses and that as human beings, it is our nature to respond to changes rather than a constant state of affairs?
Or, should we take the route of a lot of philosophers and demote physical pleasures as not very desirable and aim for human flourishing instead?
While some philosophers indeed live a simple life, a lot of them do indulge in physical pleasures as well. How can this be managed?
Perhaps pleasures are just sugar coated pills for future disappointment after the inevitable rise in expectations following the pleasures. Is there a ledger that is tracking our pleasures requiring us to make deposits in disappointment after withdrawals in pleasures? Do they balance out in the long run?
Are we better off not trying to have pleasure at all and have a flat line for our lives instead of the peaks of pleasure and valleys of disappointment?
Flat line, how boring! Is contentment meant to be boring? How can we be content without being bored?
And we thought we were just going to have fun!
Looking forward to your ideas and comments and see you Wednesday.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Meeting discussion on loyalty
I just got home from our Ideas Cafe discussion on loyalty.
Boy did we move all over the place tonight. It seems that discussions about loyalty easily move to forms of government, various political events, and just about everything else.
We started off trying to figure out what loyalty is.
It can just be a matter of habit, staying with the familiar. Then there is the allegiance to one of one's many social groups.
We discussed the reasons why there is loyalty to the monarchy when none of us wanted a monarch who obtained power through hereditary to rule over us. The consensus was that it is better to have a separate entity (the monarch) other than the head of the legislature (prime minister) to represent the country so that governments and prime ministers can change but people can be loyal to the country through the monarch which seldom changes.
We can also disagree with the government and prime minister and still be loyal to the country through the monarch.
Bruce refer to the movie "The King's speech" where King George lifted the spirits of the British citizens during war time with his speech. This is in spite of his difficulty with delivering speeches and the speech was written by someone else for him. He was acting as the mouth piece of the country and people need a person to connect this to rather than the more abstract concept of the country.
In this case, the people connect to King George much like they would connect to a movie actor or actress as it is human nature for us to connect to the person we interact with. While there is a speech writer behind the king and a movie script writer behind the actor, we attribute our emotional reaction to the person who delivered the speech or appear on the movie.
Mike mentioned that loyalty to the queen comes from the immersion experience of growing up with the queen in the news. It is just part of life.
Mano said that there is something similar between loyalty and the concept of "natural" which we discussed a few weeks ago. We thought then that "natural" is not a very well defined word but impart some warm feelings that can easily be used to manipulate our emotional responses. Similarly, loyalty to a cause or group may be open to similar abuses. Loyalty is a word we need to describe our emotional tendency to act a certain way but we also need to be careful when it is used as a reason to act.
If there are good reasons to do something, do we still need to invoke loyalty as a reason to act? So when loyalty is used to motivate, it may suggest that the underlying reasoning is weak.
Shula suggested that it may have a parallel with love in that it may not logically be a good thing or beneficial to love someone but we can love regardless of logically good reasons.
When we are asked to support someone's cause because we know that person, are we being asked to suspend our own judgment and conform with the group because of group loyalty?
After the discussion, it seemed to me that loyalty may be another one of those short cuts we take in decision making where we defer to someone that we either respect, had good previous experience with that we can trust, or is part of our upbringing and past experience that we automatically identify with.
Together with the obligations we feel for the social groups that we belong to, all these considerations predispose us to make decisions emotionally before we put the situation to proper information gathering and logical analysis.
Very often, the short cut and emotional social ties carry us or lull us into not taking the logical steps.
At other times, the situation is too complex for our limited observation and analytical abilities.
Loyalty is definitely a topic that we can visit again.
Boy did we move all over the place tonight. It seems that discussions about loyalty easily move to forms of government, various political events, and just about everything else.
We started off trying to figure out what loyalty is.
It can just be a matter of habit, staying with the familiar. Then there is the allegiance to one of one's many social groups.
We discussed the reasons why there is loyalty to the monarchy when none of us wanted a monarch who obtained power through hereditary to rule over us. The consensus was that it is better to have a separate entity (the monarch) other than the head of the legislature (prime minister) to represent the country so that governments and prime ministers can change but people can be loyal to the country through the monarch which seldom changes.
We can also disagree with the government and prime minister and still be loyal to the country through the monarch.
Bruce refer to the movie "The King's speech" where King George lifted the spirits of the British citizens during war time with his speech. This is in spite of his difficulty with delivering speeches and the speech was written by someone else for him. He was acting as the mouth piece of the country and people need a person to connect this to rather than the more abstract concept of the country.
In this case, the people connect to King George much like they would connect to a movie actor or actress as it is human nature for us to connect to the person we interact with. While there is a speech writer behind the king and a movie script writer behind the actor, we attribute our emotional reaction to the person who delivered the speech or appear on the movie.
Mike mentioned that loyalty to the queen comes from the immersion experience of growing up with the queen in the news. It is just part of life.
Mano said that there is something similar between loyalty and the concept of "natural" which we discussed a few weeks ago. We thought then that "natural" is not a very well defined word but impart some warm feelings that can easily be used to manipulate our emotional responses. Similarly, loyalty to a cause or group may be open to similar abuses. Loyalty is a word we need to describe our emotional tendency to act a certain way but we also need to be careful when it is used as a reason to act.
If there are good reasons to do something, do we still need to invoke loyalty as a reason to act? So when loyalty is used to motivate, it may suggest that the underlying reasoning is weak.
Shula suggested that it may have a parallel with love in that it may not logically be a good thing or beneficial to love someone but we can love regardless of logically good reasons.
When we are asked to support someone's cause because we know that person, are we being asked to suspend our own judgment and conform with the group because of group loyalty?
After the discussion, it seemed to me that loyalty may be another one of those short cuts we take in decision making where we defer to someone that we either respect, had good previous experience with that we can trust, or is part of our upbringing and past experience that we automatically identify with.
Together with the obligations we feel for the social groups that we belong to, all these considerations predispose us to make decisions emotionally before we put the situation to proper information gathering and logical analysis.
Very often, the short cut and emotional social ties carry us or lull us into not taking the logical steps.
At other times, the situation is too complex for our limited observation and analytical abilities.
Loyalty is definitely a topic that we can visit again.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Loyalty - why and how?
This coming Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe, we will be discussing the why and how of loyalty.
Why do we feel loyalty to a country, a community, a person, a brand ?
Seems to me it is an identity that stands out from other similar entities.
Apart from the born into family and tribal ties, maybe there are qualities in these identities that deserve our admiration and therefore our loyalty.
Perhaps our emotional chord resonates and urge us to join a common cause, to be part of a social group.
Acceptance and promise of mutual support is another common reason for invoking loyalty.
Or can it be as basic as trying to have more of a good experience we had in the past?
Trust likely plays a big part. At the very least we are trusting the entity we are loyal to to remain the same as we know it before.
It is also very possible that we are lazy in figuring things out ourselves and find it easier to be loyal and just follow the herd or some accepted authority?
With greater division of labor comes specialization and the individual silos of expertise we find ourselves in. We have to trust those we delegate to to cooperate as we expect them to. We have had failures from these cooperation partners in the past. When we find someone that we can depend on in an area we have no expertise in, we trust them. Is this loyalty?
What about tribalism. Are we driven to be loyal to leaders of our community because we want to emphasize our identity of belonging to the community in our dealings with outsiders? Or just plain suspicion of outsiders make us by default loyal to our tribe?
Attacks on our community make us more loyal to our community and its leaders? (Is that why political leaders resort to talking about outside threats to boaster domestic support? Is world peace not possible unless there are threats from aliens?)
Would a prominent figure get more loyalty by getting closer to its followers or get more of a halo effect by staying majestic? (How should the royal family deal with the public?)
Should a corporation use its resources to build up a better public stature to garner admiration or spend more on salaries in order to raise the loyalty of its employees?
Is brand loyalty for a product or supplier based on favorable past experience, endorsement by respected authority, approval by the consumer's peers, good warranty and service, consistent competitive pricing?
Can we live in a world without loyalty? Is loyalty an integral part of socialization? Is it all emotion? Logic used to justify the emotion felt? A way for social bond to overcome logical objection?
Let's hear your ideas on Wednesday.
Why do we feel loyalty to a country, a community, a person, a brand ?
Seems to me it is an identity that stands out from other similar entities.
Apart from the born into family and tribal ties, maybe there are qualities in these identities that deserve our admiration and therefore our loyalty.
Perhaps our emotional chord resonates and urge us to join a common cause, to be part of a social group.
Acceptance and promise of mutual support is another common reason for invoking loyalty.
Or can it be as basic as trying to have more of a good experience we had in the past?
Trust likely plays a big part. At the very least we are trusting the entity we are loyal to to remain the same as we know it before.
It is also very possible that we are lazy in figuring things out ourselves and find it easier to be loyal and just follow the herd or some accepted authority?
With greater division of labor comes specialization and the individual silos of expertise we find ourselves in. We have to trust those we delegate to to cooperate as we expect them to. We have had failures from these cooperation partners in the past. When we find someone that we can depend on in an area we have no expertise in, we trust them. Is this loyalty?
What about tribalism. Are we driven to be loyal to leaders of our community because we want to emphasize our identity of belonging to the community in our dealings with outsiders? Or just plain suspicion of outsiders make us by default loyal to our tribe?
Attacks on our community make us more loyal to our community and its leaders? (Is that why political leaders resort to talking about outside threats to boaster domestic support? Is world peace not possible unless there are threats from aliens?)
Would a prominent figure get more loyalty by getting closer to its followers or get more of a halo effect by staying majestic? (How should the royal family deal with the public?)
Should a corporation use its resources to build up a better public stature to garner admiration or spend more on salaries in order to raise the loyalty of its employees?
Is brand loyalty for a product or supplier based on favorable past experience, endorsement by respected authority, approval by the consumer's peers, good warranty and service, consistent competitive pricing?
Can we live in a world without loyalty? Is loyalty an integral part of socialization? Is it all emotion? Logic used to justify the emotion felt? A way for social bond to overcome logical objection?
Let's hear your ideas on Wednesday.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Ideas Cafe on individual versus group rights
We had our discussion on individual versus group rights tonight. The discussion moved over a number of different areas, covering various perspectives.
Dan started with the position of individual rights and how an individual should have the right to make mistakes and even do silly things so long as it is not hurtful to others. Dan moved on to the concept of property rights where a property owner should have the right to do what they want within their property.
This extends to the argument that if logging should be stopped in order to preserve the habitat for an endangered animal species, that the group interested in preserving the animals should either buy the land to be logged or have the government buy the land instead of trying to stop the existing land owner from logging on their own land.
From this concept, a restaurant owner has the right to refuse any customer even if it is on the basis of gender, race, and physical attributes which is not acceptable to the rest of society.
Shula felt that a home owner may exercise those rights of refusing visitors of any type to the private home. However, restaurants and other businesses by applying for a business license had turned their establishment into a semi-public space and must therefore meet obligations of social equality in the society they operate in.
Mano felt the bigger issue is the lingering power of sunset industries such as the tobacco industry. This industry can see that they are set to decline but have been fighting successfully to stay on in spite of huge efforts by the medical circles to rid society of tobacco. Just like bureaucracies in governments and other systems, a self preservation mode kicks in to lobby the decision makers to slow the decline of the industry.
This is unfair as the rest of the population is opposing these forces at the bottom level of democracy while the industry lobby groups are operating at the top policy maker's level.
The same applies to oil companies trying to maintain their position in our economy and blocking us from moving to newer forms of energy.
While Mano pointed to the longevity of the tobacco industry as evidence for this, I felt that the causality is not so easily linked and maybe due to several factors, one of which may be the addictive nature of tobacco. After all, there are other sunset industries such as the music industry, photographic film industry (Kodak), yellow pages directories which were not as successful as the tobacco industry in delaying the sunset.
Rafi pointed out that all the oil companies are involved in other forms of energy and will switch the moment that these other energy forms are cost competitive. They have all morphed into energy companies rather than just oil companies.
Rafi's objection was that at least with the tobacco company, he as a consumer can choose to stop or continue to smoke. However, with projects such as pipelines, nuclear power plants, the decisions are made outside of the consumer level and he has no influence as a consumer and must leave it to the political process.
As to where we draw the line when one individual's rights clash with others. Most in the group detest government legislation as they felt that it actually takes away the two individual's option to negotiate with each other to reach a mutually agreeable compromise. I worry though, that in the real world, negotiations may come down to "might is right" and social anarchy. Compromise may not always be agreeable, especially to the strong and powerful.
No discussion about compromise can avoid the question of fairness. Mano and Bruce did not think it fair for corporation and other interest groups with enough resources to be lobbying the government while the citizens are only operating at the bottom democratic level. To me, the corporations and property development companies also represent their customer that they sell their products to. When existing residents oppose a development company from building new condominiums, they are objecting to future owners of the new condominiums who have no say in the matter. These future condominium owners, just like future generations who have no say in the pollution that we cause today, have no say in the matter but they are stakeholders.
Mano's concept of fairness is that it is the process we started with and that we are not starting a new process from scratch. Rafi also felt that a good government is a consistent government, no matter where it stands. Much better to have a consistent government that we may not agree with than a government that changes all the time and unpredictable.
There were other various tangents that we got into, from the legality of stopping hate speech on the internet to the consumer having too much debt, the possibility of charging a higher health premium for smokers, and the wisdom of charging less auto insurance premium to older drivers. I leave it to the rest of you at the meeting to comment as you wish!
Another interesting roaring meeting.
Dan started with the position of individual rights and how an individual should have the right to make mistakes and even do silly things so long as it is not hurtful to others. Dan moved on to the concept of property rights where a property owner should have the right to do what they want within their property.
This extends to the argument that if logging should be stopped in order to preserve the habitat for an endangered animal species, that the group interested in preserving the animals should either buy the land to be logged or have the government buy the land instead of trying to stop the existing land owner from logging on their own land.
From this concept, a restaurant owner has the right to refuse any customer even if it is on the basis of gender, race, and physical attributes which is not acceptable to the rest of society.
Shula felt that a home owner may exercise those rights of refusing visitors of any type to the private home. However, restaurants and other businesses by applying for a business license had turned their establishment into a semi-public space and must therefore meet obligations of social equality in the society they operate in.
Mano felt the bigger issue is the lingering power of sunset industries such as the tobacco industry. This industry can see that they are set to decline but have been fighting successfully to stay on in spite of huge efforts by the medical circles to rid society of tobacco. Just like bureaucracies in governments and other systems, a self preservation mode kicks in to lobby the decision makers to slow the decline of the industry.
This is unfair as the rest of the population is opposing these forces at the bottom level of democracy while the industry lobby groups are operating at the top policy maker's level.
The same applies to oil companies trying to maintain their position in our economy and blocking us from moving to newer forms of energy.
While Mano pointed to the longevity of the tobacco industry as evidence for this, I felt that the causality is not so easily linked and maybe due to several factors, one of which may be the addictive nature of tobacco. After all, there are other sunset industries such as the music industry, photographic film industry (Kodak), yellow pages directories which were not as successful as the tobacco industry in delaying the sunset.
Rafi pointed out that all the oil companies are involved in other forms of energy and will switch the moment that these other energy forms are cost competitive. They have all morphed into energy companies rather than just oil companies.
Rafi's objection was that at least with the tobacco company, he as a consumer can choose to stop or continue to smoke. However, with projects such as pipelines, nuclear power plants, the decisions are made outside of the consumer level and he has no influence as a consumer and must leave it to the political process.
As to where we draw the line when one individual's rights clash with others. Most in the group detest government legislation as they felt that it actually takes away the two individual's option to negotiate with each other to reach a mutually agreeable compromise. I worry though, that in the real world, negotiations may come down to "might is right" and social anarchy. Compromise may not always be agreeable, especially to the strong and powerful.
No discussion about compromise can avoid the question of fairness. Mano and Bruce did not think it fair for corporation and other interest groups with enough resources to be lobbying the government while the citizens are only operating at the bottom democratic level. To me, the corporations and property development companies also represent their customer that they sell their products to. When existing residents oppose a development company from building new condominiums, they are objecting to future owners of the new condominiums who have no say in the matter. These future condominium owners, just like future generations who have no say in the pollution that we cause today, have no say in the matter but they are stakeholders.
Mano's concept of fairness is that it is the process we started with and that we are not starting a new process from scratch. Rafi also felt that a good government is a consistent government, no matter where it stands. Much better to have a consistent government that we may not agree with than a government that changes all the time and unpredictable.
There were other various tangents that we got into, from the legality of stopping hate speech on the internet to the consumer having too much debt, the possibility of charging a higher health premium for smokers, and the wisdom of charging less auto insurance premium to older drivers. I leave it to the rest of you at the meeting to comment as you wish!
Another interesting roaring meeting.
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