What's public?

We played a game Christmas day called “Would you rather…” As the game’s name might indicate, the game is comprised largely of either or choices. A player advances if he can correctly predict the group’s majority position on some thorny moral or mythical dilemma.

One such dilemma was, “would you rather do without public bathrooms or public trash cans?” My position was that no one uses public bathrooms so we should just do away with them. That sparked an interesting discussion of what the word “public” meant. In my mind it meant owned and operated by the state, thereby making it “public.” Like libraries, bus stations, parks etc. Many took the view that that if a business was open to the public, it was in fact public.

This type of thinking is how we get smoking bans, wheelchair accessibility laws, transfat laws etc. Simply because a business opens its doors to the public does not entitle the public to run the business.

Non-smokers howl that they prefer to eat in smoke free restaurants. Fine open one. But alas, it far easier and cheaper to buy off a creepy politician - unfortunately, a category that comprises a group of the whole – than it is to run the risk of gathering partners, pooling funds, renting a building, buying equipment, hiring staff and actually running a restaurant.

So the mayor decides that restaurants ought to be smoke free. Since they are open to the public and we don’t smoke, we think it’s a good idea. Then the mayor thinks the restaurant ought to be transfat free. Since we don’t know what transfats are but have been told that they are bad for us, we think that’s a good idea. Then the mayor decides that every restaurant should have a two drink limit. Hey, wait a minute you fascists idiot. Well, he was a fascist idiot way back when he banned smoking. But you happened to approve of that bit of fascism, so what was to stop him from the next bit of fascism?

So the next time you pull over at a gas station or a McDonald’s to use the restroom, remember the man who owns the shop is not in business to run a public restroom. Buy a cup of coffee or pop and a candy bar or bag of chips.