Alright, so now that someone who is not me has said it, you believe him. Fine, fine. I'm not bitter. :P Anyway, you actually bring up an interesting point: the only people I'm aware of who ever took the policy change personally are non-smokers.

It seems strange that we're arguing about this smoking ban on a website that has put a lot of work into bringing us a DRM-free PC gaming website. Replace smoke with DRM. Although, I don't think a smoking bar has ever tried to say you can't circumvent their smoke :) And many people didn't know that the PC games they were purchasing would require DRM.

It would be kind of insulting to GOG if we tried to force DRM-free on everybody else. It's like telling them that we'd rather be using Steam but we must ban DRM first and then it's hasta luego, GOG. Some PC gamers actually like how some DRM works. That's madness! It wasn't just DRM-free that brought people here though. GOG did other awesome things that everyone can like to bring customers while also being DRM-free.

Maybe we could get a bunch of people who never participate in the supply and demand side of PC gaming at all and never will to vote to ban DRM with a referendum and then we can call that the "free market" choice.

It's like complaining about loud music at rock concerts but then continue to knowingly attend them. Don't go or else bring ear plugs (gas mask) if you're going to go anyway. Maybe we can get all the old people to vote to ban loud music at rock concerts. In the grand scheme, people who attend rock concerts are not many. They're a minority. Surely we can get enough people to vote to ban loud music even when it's privately self-contained. I mean, nobody would play live music that doesn't blast the eardrums unless we ban loud music! We gotta protect the roadies.

I wouldn't call this sick, but I do think it comes off as a little bit selfish.

Do you know what a voter referendum is? Because that's how we passed the smoking ban here in my state, meaning over 50% of those voting on the issue voted to ban it.

So you really think that carries no support? This isn't the fiat of some presidential order or something, this is the voters, who are the consumers in question, who decided it. Government doesn't have to be some evil "other-entity" when it's not co-opted by monies interests it's nothing more than "how we do things together that we cannot do on our own."

So, in effect, the voters very clearly showed their demand for non-smoking establishments (and the protection of workers, since that was an issue as well).
Voting a referendum allowed us to make the same choice, simply more quickly and efficiently. The voters and the "customers" are effectively the same group.

This was very much a case of something that couldn't be solved by the free market, only one person opening a smoke free bar was probably doomed to failure, if everyone is forced onto equal footing then they can actually compete.

Again, the referendum solution kept the tyranny of the minority from sinking the whole concept. Non-smoking IS what the majority wanted, there was simply no free market way to get there. Same thing with pollution standards, the reason businesses weren't cleaning up without the government forcing the issue was because of the competitive disadvantage. By forcing everyone to maintain minimum standards said disadvantage is removed.

The fairy tale that government is always the worst way to do things is simply that: a fairy tale. Yes, when people don't get good information (frequently due to monied interests) or get scared, then it can break down. However smoking in common areas is pretty easy to understand, all the monied interests in keeping the status quo couldn't sway the voters in my state on said issue.

It's also surprising to me that some people who think that people in general are stupid should be given the right to vote to restrict other people with a referendum. All of the sudden, people aren't stupid anymore I guess.

People are ignorant and uninformed in general, our presidential elections bear that out every 4 years, but again, the smoking in a bar thing isn't hard to understand, the average child could understand it at the time.

And I'm generally far more happy with the results of referendums in my state than with anything our legislature does.

We are uninformed. We're just dumb parts of a complex system though. I think this kind of behavior is like a neuron trying to dictate what other neurons in a brain do, or neurons telling the brain how to act.

I'm also talking out of my uninformed ass though. I don't claim to be an expert on the brain.

I don't believe any expertise is required for a simile:)

For the same reason that a superior company would lose out against a worse performing monopolist: inertia (and the monopoly applying unfair pressure that had nothing to do with market desires). For the same reason it's hard for companies to compete if they pollute less and their competitors do not. There are other pressures involved aside from "smoking or not" and those other pressures submarine the whole thing, EVEN when the majority would prefer it.

That is the exact reason we do certain things together via government, ideally that's the only way government would ever work: as a way to accomplish things we cannot do on our own.
I'm confused why you have this question... if everyone has to operate according to rule X then everyone is on even footing. I.E. Post ban no one could have a smoking bar. Therefor everyone was on even footing and could compete on their other merits.

I mean, there's a strip club owner that got popped in my town for tax dodging A LOT of money. It's not hard to see that he had a competitive advantage by not playing by the rules, is it? In his case he was able to open clubs more aggressively and hire away the best girls from the other clubs. This is why it's fairly important for everyone to have a base set of rules by which they must abide. We do this with a host of things. Smoking in bars isn't really isn't very different except it gets people all riled up for some reason.

Again, your examples are no-where near the situation being discussed. The company that pollutes less incurs the extra costs of doing so. A non-smoking bar has identical costs to a smoking one.. and according to you, would have the majority of customers. They should be rolling in money!

I asked you why they are not and waving a hand at "inertia" isn't going to cut it. It'd be like saying that people are so used to paying for stuff, that a shop giving away things for free would have trouble getting people to come in and take stuff. You are basically telling me that a majority of customers don't care enough about wanting non-smoking to go to a bar that provides everything the same.. but without the smoke.

No, the situation is quite simple. People who want non-smoking bars are not willing to put the money, time or investment into creating and supporting non-smoking bars which would have also solved the problem, with the bonus of not stepping on anyone elses toes. They got offered a big gun (the law) that would make things how they wanted with no effort and no consequences. They took that offer? Shock and surprise abound!

I hate DRM. You know what I do about that? Give people who make DRM-free as much money as possible. Even if I don't succeed in making them more profitable than the DRM'd competition (and unfortunately, this is extremely unlikely to ever happen).. I'm helping make them profitable enough to keep giving me what I want. Same with Linux gaming, software licenses, phone hardware and.. anything else where I can vote with my wallet.

Yes, and this isn't one of them. The government already provided the solution to the problem.. the option to start a business that caters to a customer base. The government was used less as a way of achieving a greater goal and more like a weapon to smite an enemy. A minority enemy no less, according to you.

Post ban, no bar could sell anything other than water. Therefore, everyone was on even footing and could compete on their other merits.

What? That is what you are suggesting. That you are free to mandate things that would otherwise be merits to compete on, as long as there are some other merits remaining (and there always will be... physical proximity).

I don't see any reason why we can't get Linux mandated as the only operating system using this logic. There are plenty of distros so there would be plenty of "even footed" competition.
Again, another terrible example because he had reduced costs. He had a competitive advantage by ignoring rules. Pre-ban, smoking bars were not ignoring any rules and there were no rules stopping non-smoking bars from existing.

You're even answering your own question and you still don't get it. How many consumers actually like DRM? Nearly none (anyone who loves Steam, btw, doesn't like the DRM aspects, they like the non-DRM parts of the service).

Give all the money you want to non-DRM providers, it won't significantly affect the market. GOG won't dethrone Steam, not much will change: BECAUSE THE MARKET IS MORE COMPLEX THAN A SINGLE ISSUE.

So, if you have a complex market fucking up the whole "free market" solution (which is frankly fucking ass, I'd love to see even half as many examples of this actually working as anyone can provide of it completely failing to do fuck all) then you need another solution.

The examples aren't meant to be an exact comparison, they're meant to illustrate that sometimes it's not simple and other factors will fuck up your blessed free market solution. The fact is people did try the whole "no smoking thing" and as it turns out, bars and restaurants operate on razor thin margins and you don't need a whole lot of external factors to fuck you up.

We didn't ban alcohol in bars, we banned smoking, and not even completely as there can still fucking be smoking areas.

But let me turn this whole thing around, if smoking is so god damned important, why haven't more bars made nice smoking patios like my neighborhood bar has? Could it be there is no demand? Maybe it's that the free market doesn't give a fuck either way and inertia just does what it does...

Regardless, Darling_Jimmy is right, largely smokers don't even bloody care because they can still smoke, only non-smokers because they want to use it as an example of some sort of tyranny while completely ignoring the fact that most smokers were fucking rude as hell while it was allowed everywhere. I still see the rude ones flicking their fucking butts on the ground or out the window and you wonder why society said, "umm enough!"?

If the free market worked, it would have worked, the fact is it didn't. The perfectly informed consumer does not exist, the free market doesn't exist and cannot ever exist, were it to exist it would result in a race to the bottom and you and I could look forward to coal town style employment and being in eternal debt to the company store while slowly being poisoned to death. Yellowstone geysers had garbage in them when the government took it over and started managing it. Free market solutions, even when they exist on a micro level, frequently cannot solve big problems.

The reason why GOG won't dethrone Steam is because they are very different to one another (less so now we get newer games here, but still very different). Oh.. and Steam has vendor lock-in (because of the DRM, exclusives etc.) so inertia is a massive force there.

But the difference between a smoking bar and a non-smoking bar go no further than that. They both offer the same drinks, same music, same whatever.. just without the smoke. So there should be little inertia there.

I don't understand why there would be, so can you explain why that is the case? Not with examples of unrelated things but why there is inertia in this particular case.

They may have been fine illustrations of why other factors can interfere, but they didn't apply to the situation we are discussing, rendering them irrelevant. If you are going to illustrate that other factors can have an effect, explicitly state and define one pertinent to the situation.

Because despite there being demand, it is not a high priority for the customer. As none of the direct competition has one either, it is unknown how much return they would get on the investment, so they are not built. How's that?

Well being allowed to smoke everywhere is certainly not an excuse to be rude. But as you just said, the ban hasn't done anything to stop them being jerks.

So why bother with this "illusion" of a free market?

I don't think we should, a well regulated market is vastly preferable in almost every respect. The history of unwatched businesses being shortsighted, selfish, and cruel pretty much bears this out, our current banking crisis is simply the latest example.

On a micro level, between bakeshop A and bakeshop B, for example, it can work out okay. It simply doesn't scale, though.

Hm.. perhaps my definitions differ from yours (or the common one), because I thought we already had a regulated market?

A well regulated market? No, a pretense at one? At times. When the industry is writing the regulation it's not real regulation, it's them trying to get a leg up on the competition. You did notice that Goldman Sachs had magically compiled with all stipulations for early TARP repayment a mere week or two before they were announced... while everyone else was left scrambling, lest the oversight rules kick in...

The head of just about every agency in the federal government (with a handful of notable exceptions) is a former CXO or other big-wig at one or more of the regulated companies. That's not really regulation...

Still, when we do regulate we manage to muddle along okay I guess... our economy is still based on the idiotic concept that infinite growth is somehow possible, so at some point that will come home to roost.