Why cigarettes are like private campaign contributions: path dependence.

A couple days ago, after much work and careful deliberation, a federal court declared the obvious: 

A federal judge Thursday ruled that cigarette makers were liable for a decades-long conspiracy to hide the dangers of smoking but declined to impose financial penalties on the industry.

In her 1,653 page opinion, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler wrote:

Cigarette smoking causes disease, suffering, and death. Despite internal recognition of this fact, defendants have publicly denied, distorted, and minimized the hazards of smoking for decades.

Why is this story even news?  The dangers of tobacco and the deceit of tobacco companies have long been obvious.  There has never been a more damning case against any industry.  See here. See also, the Executive Summary of Preliminary Proposed Finding of Fact in US v. Philip Morris, et al.

Cigarette smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke kills nearly 440,000 Americans every year. The annual number of deaths due to cigarette smoking is substantially greater than the annual number of deaths due to illegal drug use, alcohol consumption, automobile accidents, fires, homicides, suicides and AIDS combined. Approximately one out of every five deaths that occur in the United States is caused by cigarette smoking.

At the end of 1953, the chief executives of the five major cigarette manufacturers in the United States at the time – Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard, and American – met at the Plaza Hotel in New York City with representatives of the public relations firm Hill

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Banking laws for sale

Most American citizens believe that voters elect our state and federal legislators.  They would be wrong.  Elections are rigged by the massive amounts of money that fund them, and legislators are bought and sold in accordance with their campaign fund contributors.  This money does not come from you or me.  We could never hope to contribute enough to sway an election, we just don’t have enough to compete.  The money comes from corporations.  How do I know (besides from the minimal reports politicians must file)?  I know from the end result, from the laws that result.

Imagine yourself a working mother or father.  You work hard everyday.  You earn your paycheck, and like nearly everyone, it is spent when you get it.  If you are a poor family, maybe your optional luxuries include pizza out one night.  If your family is a little better off, maybe it means a real dinner out.  Then a little ‘hitch’ arises.  The electric bill comes in, and because it has been so hot, it is more than anticipated.  Or maybe the car needs new brakes.  Or maybe, heaven help you, someone gets really ill and you have bad or no health insurance.

So you borrow money.  You go to the payday lender down the street.  You know the kind, they are popping up all over the place.  Despite this kind of lending being legal (or thought up) only for the past couple of years, there are already more payday lending stores in this country …

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Curses! Dollars and hours are both fungible.

I’ve previously written that dollars are fungible (See “The Curse of Fungible Dollars”). In that article I pointed out that dollars are completely interchangeable.  I noted that there is actually only one kind of dollar and that dollars don’t come pre-labeled as “Christmas ornament dollars,” “pedicure dollars,” “Xbox dollars” or “charitable cause dollars.” I further suggested that we work hard to brainwash ourselves that non-fungible dollars exist and that we are free to spend any dollar we haven’t chosen to label a “charity dollar” on anything at all, conscience free.  To see the absurdity of that mindset, try to imagine a charity refusing your donation because the money you offered came out of your “vacation” fund.

Many Americans would consider my fungible dollars article to be a curse because it has the effect of moralizing every dollar we spend.  That every dollar is potentially a dollar we could (and possibly should) spend to help desperate human beings thus becomes a toxic thought that we prevent ourselves from considering.  It causes too much cognitive dissonance.  .  If you doubt the toxicity of such a thought, imagine speaking freely of the fungibility of dollars at a Las Vegas casino or at any other entertainment mecca where those “entertainment” dollars flow freely. The mere mention that all dollars are fungible will trigger the rapid and painful collapse of elaborate mental worlds constructed by everyone within hearing range. 

With the same dollars we spend to buy tickets to concerts or sports events, …

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