Spinko Tournament - Conservative Showdown - Smoking Rights

I'm not sure how good a debate this was. It's been interesting to play debate as a game, but the preoccupation with debater's points has led to subordinating the issues.Resolution1. A semantic issue endures over what "in a majority of cases" means. Are there two cases: voluntary and involuntary? Are there 311 million cases, one for each citizen? Or is it some number of logically distinct situations --workplaces, homes, public buildings, parks-- with each being determined by evidence and logical analysis? At no point did Con count cases and claim that a majority demanded regulation. If he had done so we would know what counts as a case. Beyond that, if a majority of something ought to be regulated, is that supposed to mean that all cases should be regulated? Con's summary claims regulation is required because "a decent amount of people will be effected by being around [SHS]." Nearly all who have significant risk from second hand smoke are those who subject themselves to it voluntarily. There is no majority defined.2. I never argued that the issue of infinitesimal second-hand smoke was a semantic argument. I said that explicitly in R2. It is some other species of debater's point. The notion behind that is every individual decision somehow affects every other person. Individual freedoms are thereby abolished. The argument is specious, but it's not semantic.3. Pro says I ignored "three points of analysis." He has multiple overlapping repetitive numbered sequences so I don't know what he is talking about. The substantial points of the debate are simple. The basic one is whether people have a right to free choice whatsoever based upon a supposed government right to regulate trivial impact to others.FrameworkCon claims I never established that the costs of regulation outweighed the harms. From the outset I argued that the cost of regulation was in loss of individual freedom. What is freedom worth? It cannot be quantified and does not need to be. Consider how one would one argue against slavery. The Pro-slavery arguments might include the benefits of full employment, whereas the anti-slavery argument rests primarily on the value of freedom. There is an economic argument against slavery, but few care about it.To make the point I cited risky activities like skateboarding and skiing. The benefit of allowing them is that people get to choose their own risks for rewards.Those reading the debate get to decide whether trivial impacts on others justify the loss of freedom. Note that Con took it as self-evident that "better health" is worth something that justifies government regulation. The value of better health, per se is also not quantified.In R1 I argued a second harm. "When a person goes to any public place ... there is finite risk of contracting a dangerous disease from one of the other attendees. Under a broad principle that government should regulate anything that poses harm to the public, there would be grounds for preventing public assembly altogether." In the case of smoking, the low risk is an excuse for imposition of regulation is due to an irrational intolerance. I offered as evidence the lack of comparable regulation of gasoline fumes, wood smoke, and arsenic when the levels of those thing are comparable to ambient.Con did not respond to either harm that I claimed, but rather said that I had not claimed a harm.Medical CostsThere is no study that shows that smoke at ambient atmospheric levels causes a significant health risk. (How would such a study even be conducted?) Pro says that some lower levels of smoke where included along with the high levels. However, he admits that the median was used in the evaluation. The study is clearly dominated by high-smoke-level cases. Consequently, my point stands that there is no demonstration of risk at levels near ambient.There is no foundation in science for all levels of smoke posing the same health risk, and making that claim defies common sense. The claim is not prima facia. Although I did refute it, I don't have to because it does not stand on it's own.Con concedes that under a single-payer system, health care costs decrease due to smoking. Pro previously argued that under an individual health care system, people are paying for their own costs in the form of insurance premiums, so there is no public cost or benefit by reducing voluntary smoking. I agreed with that argument when Pro made it. Virtually all the acute costs to individual smokers are born my the smokers themselves.Con then makes an argument that s "rich people" receive better health care so in the United States we should expect smokers to live longer, which he claims would increase the cost of caring for them. Pro offered no evidence that his assertion of better care by "rich people" is true. In the US, about 86% of the population is covered by some type of health insurance, and free care is is almost universally available trough the emergency room system. Pro offered "rich people get better care" as a new argument in R4, so I am entitled to introduce evidence to answer it. To my knowledge, no study in the US has shown a net savings when life expectancy is taken into account. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine reports, "... in a population in which no one smoked the costs would be 7 percent higher among men and 4 percent higher among women than the costs in the current mixed population of smokers and non smokers." http://www.nejm.org...Con argues that because I did not provide a specific level of smoke that defines "ambient" that my argument fails. Con has not contested that the technology to reduce SHS smoke to levels below any ambient level is both available and practical. I cited the specific case of Silicon Valley establishments offering to filer air to a level much cleaner than the outdoor air. Ambient levels may vary, and it is therefore reasonable to require more filtering in places that naturally have very clean air. However, Con has not shown any technical problem in measuring ambient air quality, so his objection is pointless. Air quality is measured routinely for environmental reasons. Just measure whatever the ambient is. AlternativesAfter all has been argued, I think Con is arguing "Because any amount of second hand smoke poses some health hazard, the government should ban all smoking." I cannot guess what else it might be that Con is arguing. My argument is, "Government should not regulate smoking beyond what is required to reduce involuntary second hand smoke to levels below atmospheric ambient." Con's latest rebuttal again speaks in tongues, "Not really because you rent fiating that into existence for analysis because those regulations already exist without a Con vote." We arguing what the government should do. Many localities, voluntary exposure to second hand smoke is banned outright. Clearly I am arguing that ought to be undone in favor of a much less severe regulation. Debate IssuesCon wanted this to be technical debate, so okay.Con demanded in the challenge that there be no semantic arguments in the debate. He could have at any point cleared up the semantics but presenting a clear meaning of the resolution. I provided my understanding of what the resolution meant and Con never agreed or disagreed. Con made the rule that there should be no semantic arguments, so he violated his own rule.Con's lapses into debate jargon shorthand did not conform to standard English and make his arguments difficult to understand. I had to take space decoding his arguments as well as answering them.Con made the silly mistake of abbreviating second hand smoke (SHS) as SSM (same sex marriage), and persisted with that through the fourth round. It's silly, but it's a distraction. He also apparently failed to run the spell checker on his R4.