Recently Nevada's smoking ban took effect. The ban makes many bars face the choice of continuing to serve food while asking their smokers to smoke outside or taking the revenue hit of not serving food any longer. There are, reportedly, a number of business owners who haven't taken a look at the research from other venues suggesting that the smoking ban will lead to an increase in same-store sales. Instead the chicken-little crowd is lining up to rip out every vestige of restaurants from their establishment. A couple of creative local bars have suggested they will pay customers' costs for ordering delivery.As with many business obstacles this is really an opportunity. A bar wanting to keep smoking in the bar (though why is another question entirely) can wall-off the kitchen. The kitchen already has an entrance to the rear of the building. Setup a delivery business of comfort and bar fare out the back door and instead of watching revenue decline there will be the opportunity to have competing neighborhood bars pay your delivery fee for their customers. It seems that this minority of business owners is more interested in playing the wounded business owner card instead of figuring out a solution.
by Joshua Brauer on January 18, 2007
6 Comments
Nevadans get clean air
Just another "wedge" that the government is using to divide our country. When business is told...."you cannot do such and such....that is "communism". If I own a private business and allow people to smoke in my business, that should be my choice. If I go broke, because no one comes to my business, because people smoke in my business, then I have a choice to make. The point is it should be my choice...NOT THE GOVERNMENT. They don't pay my overhead, employees, or anything else. They do take alot of my "profits". They want to run my business and I get to "foot" all of the bills and headaches.
Just a question: what is the difference between...LIBERALISM....SOCIALISM....and....COMMUNISM?? Answer...NOTHING.
The beauty of democracy
The beauty of democracy is that any business owner can relocate to a locale where the majority of voters have not passed laws presuming that the common good outweighs individual businesses practices.
Presuming
Presuming can be very dangerous. When WE allow the government into our private "legal" business and "homes"...we are losing another freedom. Let's ban "drinking"....Let's say the government says only one child per household...Where does it end?? It ends with you and me...keeping government out of our "legal" business and homes. As I indicated...if people refuse to go to a business that allows smoking...and that business suffers lost revenue....the business owner will make a choice...either non-smoking or go out of business. On the other hand...if his/her business is doing good with smokers...then let it be. If tobacco is so "deadly"...why doesn't the government ban it ??? I am an "old man"...your generation is what is going to suffer if you keep allowing the government to control your freedoms.
We are the people
What seems to be missed here is that it is not a government "doing" this to anyone. It is a government of the people, by the people, for the people (as Lincoln would say) enforcing a law that we the people voted for.
Perhaps in Austin, Texas there is no desire for such a law passed by the people and in these wonderful states the people are free to make that determination. In Nevada the people chose a different course.
We are the people
"How fortunate for leaders that men do not think."
- Adolf Hitler
Austin also has a "clean air act"......all I am trying to say is "THINK". Every time a law is passed....someone loses their freedom. While you and your beautiful state have elected to have non-smokers....THINK...what might be next. Maybe not tomorrow...but down the road...enough people decide....close the casino's....done. No more boating on the lakes....done.
etc, etc, etc...one day...a new law is going to pass that effects you in a negative way....something that will take away one of your freedoms......then maybe you will start to understand.
Nice and simple
Oh yes now I see... Invoke a quote from Hitler and the point is made. It is a very simplistic approach that assumes that there aren't already dozens of laws on the books that adversely impact me and that once one passes the light will suddenly come on. Unfortunately it is not so. Even more pertinent to this conversation some of the laws that most directly impinge are in effect because of a minority position that hasn't been put to a popular vote (i.e. stem-cell research). It is exactly the thinking that through long and hard thoughtful consideration one reaches the conclusion that on balance, given the freedoms we forgo for the freedoms we protect, that our form of government is on balance as good as it gets.