Thursday, March 19, 2020

Smoking in Public Places Essay

Smoking in Public Places Essay Smoking in Public Places Essay Smoking in Public Places Should be Banned In the 1990s, the government started regulating the areas in which smokers may light up. There have been many debates over the years concerning where Americans may smoke. Smokers account for about twenty percent of America while the non-smokers account for eighty percent. The government has instrumented laws preventing smoking indoors. Smoking in all public places should be banned because it negatively affects non-smokers and smoking should not be allowed to upon on others’ breathing space. Many smokers may not be aware of what chemicals are found in cigarettes. â€Å"Cigarettes contain up to 7,000 chemical compounds and more than 250 of these are known to be harmful, and 69 are known to cause cancer.† The same chemicals may also be found in household items like paint thinner and pesticides. If more information like this were available to the public, smokers would think twice before they lit up. On average, a person would not inhale a pesticide or paint thinner. That is what people should consider before they light up (Johnson 36). There is another way chemicals and particles can travel through the air. This is called third-hand smoke. This is when the smoke off the cigarette gets shuffled around by the wind. The particles get trapped on objects like leaves and grass. â€Å"One study has shown fumes from smoke were found as far as 44 feet away. Other studies claim that, on the right windy day, fumes can rival what you may encounter in an indoor environment.† These studies have not been around for very long and have little research shown. Since the research shows evidence of the particles in the air and on objects, it is safe to assume that the chemicals from smoking may be harmful to others (Stobbe np). The surgeon general’s office has been warning people from the 1960s of the effects of second-hand smoke. They state, â€Å"There is no safe level of exposure to Second hand smoke, and any exposure is harmful.† Their research also suggests that second hand smoke causes cancer and heart problems. Heart disease is the most common which results in 46,000 deaths every year. It also showed that lung cancer kills around 3,400 a year. The research shows that thousands are dying every year from exposer to second-hand smoke. Based on this research, there is evidence to suggest innocent people are being harmed every year from second-hand smoke (American Cancer Institute 4). â€Å"Tobacco smoke is one of the most common asthma triggers.† Smoke irritates the linings of the airway which can produce an attack. The severity of these can range from mild to serious. In a severe case, the lungs cannot receive enough air due to the swelling of these linings. The Center for Disease and Control and Prevention has concluded that even the slightest particles from smoke may cause an asthma attack. Since asthma attacks can be fatal, it is best to only allow it in a personal area where they are not in contact with others (CDC 5). Even though cigarette smoke has been proven harmful, many argue that smoking should be allowed in parks. The parks are shared by non-smokers and smokers alike. That should not give one group more power over the other. Everyone pays taxes which provide the park maintenance and salaries of the employees who keep the parks open. Jacob Sullum provides a rousing rebuttal on the defense of the smokers. He states that the government bureaucrats must respect the rights of adults who make the decision to smoke. Parks should have designated smoking areas for those who choose to smoke. Almost all states have banned it from indoor environments. They should have the right to light up in designated areas in an outdoor setting like a park (Sullum

Monday, March 2, 2020

Understanding the Cash Nexus in History and Today

Understanding the Cash Nexus in History and Today Cash nexus is a phrase that refers to  the depersonalized relationship that exists between employers and employees in a capitalist society. It was coined by Thomas Carlyle, a nineteenth-century Scottish historian, but is often erroneously attributed to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was, however, Marx and Engels who popularized the concept in their writings and fueled use of the phrase within the fields of political economy and sociology. Overview Cash nexus is a phrase and concept that became associated with the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels because it perfectly encapsulates their thinking about the alienating nature of the relations of production within a capitalist economy. While Marx critiqued the social and political impacts of capitalism at length in all of his works, in particular in  Capital, Volume 1, it is within  The Communist Manifesto  (1848), jointly written by Marx and Engels, that one finds the most referenced passage relating to term. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his â€Å"natural superiors†, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous â€Å"cash payment†. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious  fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. A nexus, simply put, is a connection between things. In the passage quoted above, Marx and Engels argue that in the interest of profit, the bourgeoisiethe ruling class during the epoch of classical capitalismhad stripped away any and all connections between people except for cash payment. What they refer to here is the commodification of labor, whereby the labor of workers is effectively sold and bold on the capitalist market. Marx and Engels suggested that the commodification of labor makes workers interchangeable, and leads to workers being viewed as things rather than people. This condition further leads to commodity fetishism, wherein relations between peopleworkers and employersare viewed and understood as between thingsmoney and labor. In other words, the cash nexus has a dehumanizing power. This mindset on the part of the bourgeoisie, or among todays managers, owners, CEOs, and shareholders is a dangerous and destructive one that fosters the extreme exploitation of workers in the pursuit of profit across all industries, locally and around the world. The Cash Nexus Today The effect of the cash nexus on the lives of workers around the world has only intensified in the more than a hundred years since Marx and Engels wrote about this phenomenon. This has happened because controls on the capitalist market, including protections for workers, have been progressively dismantled since the 1960s. The removal of national barriers to relations of production which ushered in global capitalism was and continues to be disastrous for workers. Workers in the U.S. and other Western nations saw production jobs disappear because corporations were freed to pursue cheaper labor overseas. And beyond the Western world, in places like China, Southeast Asia, and India, where most of our goods are made, workers are forced to accept poverty-level wages and dangerous working conditions because, like commodities, those who run the system view them as easily replaceable. The conditions faced by workers throughout Apples supply chain are a case-in-point. Though the company preaches values of progress and togetherness, it is ultimately the cash nexus that determines its impact on workers of the world. Updated  by Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D.