I think a law that bans tobacco is very realistic and definitely something I missed in the game.
(I accidentally put this in the general category before)
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Technically you can currently turn your society straightedge by just maxing out the tobacco and alcohol taxes, as all of those policies’ negative effects are currently modulated by tobacco and alcohol use respectively: Once nobody has those vices anymore, nobody’s paying the tax anymore and nobody minds that the tax exists.
I assume there’ll be some negative effects from doing that in the future, as well as from going overboard with a tobacco law if there is one.
Actually taxes still impose values on the game after consumption of the vice bottoms. Think of it as the resentment people feel that they can’t even afford such pleasures.
Absolutely agree that tobacco should have a regulative action associated with it, rather than an unprogressive tax that boosts poverty, especially now that it directly affects the Respiratory Disease situation.
I would love to see vice get an overhaul in terms of better quantifying how legalising those products and services affect gdp and tourism. Some do, some don’t at the moment. All I know is people come to Amsterdam from all over the world for a reason.
I’m no disaster capitalist, but I do believe unequal taxation is a regressive way to model a population’s healthy habits.
Actually taxes still impose values on the game after consumption of the vice bottoms. Think of it as the resentment people feel that they can’t even afford such pleasures.
They should, they just currently don’t.
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Consumption of those fell to 0 I guess.
No consumption, so no one cares about those any more.
So there should be residual unhappiness (smaller alcohol consumption multiplier on poor/everyone happiness)?
Residual stuff, that fades away can’t be really simulated unless you want to duplicate stuff in UI.
I think only prison regime does that - short and long term effect on crime.
If (irl) you tax things into space people will resent that they are unaffordable, in the same way people resent being unable to consume something for being banned.
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But who feels that strongly? liberals? capitalists? its quite a principled position to take, and I understand it, but Im not sure how best to represent it. Maybe capitalists should always oppose, to some extent any sky-high taxes on principle?
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I probably should have posted my thing in a separate thread since it kind of took over this one.
Anyway, at some point, there’s really not that much difference between a very high tax on a thing and a law banning that thing: It might be a different arm of the government that enforces it, but the social outcome in both cases is that the market is driven underground. So you could have it cause organized crime, violent crime, alcohol abuse, and not that much of a decrease in alcohol consumption.
Or maybe some of those effects could go on Alcohol Law instead. I don’t know. Maybe the nicest solution is to just take the last part: Give the alcohol and tobacco taxes diminishing returns (instead of, respectively, increasing and linear returns) on their consumption simulations, so that if you max them out, what you end up doing is massively impoverishing the addicts whose consumption is inelastic.
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I’d say the biggest difference between a ban and a tax is that you wouldn’t necessarily have wealthy folks financing the black market because they’d still be able to afford it. Obviously smuggling would still be a thing though.
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Exactly. One promotes poverty and inequality for profit, and one is a universal mandate. The ends are of course the same though, and many of the same voter groups would see them similarly.
Capitalists would oppose either because they dwarf the growth of potentially very lucrative markets.
Also while we’re talking vice, how come legalized gambling encourages organized crime, but legalized prostitution and drugs curb it? I understand that mobs popularly rig betting sports, but I’d think that would have more to do with the popularity of the sport than the legalality of the booky
It is worth noting that insofar as a black market exists, bans make the goods more expensive too. For inelastic demand like alcohol and tobacco, the poverty effects probably aren’t that different. Not to mention that business subsequently takes place outside of the rest of the regulatory framework, e.g. minimum wage, OHS, anti-trust, income and corporate taxes. It’s not straightforward.
Just btw, capitalists in-game don’t care about profitability, they just care about market freedom. It’s not the lucrativeness that matters.
That’s completely fair, but would depend on the existence of such a black market. Effective enforcement might countermand that.
I would think that market libertarianism would be an essential philosophy to capitalists, yeah, and I think it’s fair to allow that they may well be concerned about shortening the wealth gap, but I don’t know if I’d say that they’d go so far as to not prioritize profitability.
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I was mostly referring to their in-game description. It doesn’t really mention that side of things, just their fanboying for the market.
Do a significant number of capitalists really cite profitability as a reason to not regulate alcohol and tobacco? I’m not sure I buy that, at least not enough to warrant it being a factor in the game.
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Alcohol Law ranges from a minimum age to a total ban.
I think a Tobacco Law could also range from a minimum age to a total ban. In between you can have cancer photos on packages, just like they do in Europe. A smoking ban in restaurants or public places could also be a stop on the way to a total ban. So maybe…
min age = 16
min age = 18
lung photos on packages
restaurant ban
public spaces ban
complete tobacco ban
Something like that in essence…
Who would be that extreme? One of the great things about the game is you can steer in any extreme direction. If I can set up a dictatorial government, which I can, I’d ban smoking. 
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One thing you could do is remove the ability to destroy from the vice taxes (just cap their effect lower), so that if you want to ban them, you have to actually ban them and face the political consequences.
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