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« on: June 23, 2009, 10:53:25 AM »
I think the argument is that if you leave it up to the owner, many of them are in favor of banning smoking, but fear that they will lose business to restaurants who don't ban it. This causes a chain reaction where no restaurants end up banning smoking because no one wants to lose business.
It's sort of like car makers deciding not to install seat belts because if they do, then it costs them more and their competitors who don't install seat belts will be more competitive, which leads to them going out of business. So no one ends up installing seat belts.
Businesses, just like people, are wholly self-interested irrational actors. Sometimes, regulation is a very good thing.