Feb 24, 2010

Anti-smoking nudges

A smoking ban is too much for the libertarian paternalistic. In his world, bar owners would decide if their bar is for smokers or not and people would choose where they wanna go out. (Of course, in this world there is no public health system as non-smokers do not wanna pay for smokers' health bills). But the government, though liberal, still wants to nudge smokers out of their bad habit. What could it do? Governments could:
  • subsidize a free beer for non-smokers, or free finger food
  • hire fat and ugly smokers to be in unattractive smoking section all the time...and really hot, easy-going, talkative non-smokers in non-smoking section
  • require huge noisy fans to be next to smoking sections
  • hand out free electronic cigarettes and nicotine patches
  • arrange free sex for non-smokers
  • pay people with real bad lung cancers to applaud people that go into smoky bars
  • design a cap-and-trade system for smoking emissions
ht Rieger for the 2 last suggestions

Any other ideas? Obvioulsy, I prefer the smoking ban and a public health system.

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