The Obama administration isn’t satisfied giving the American people several big things we don’t want — the stimulus package, expanded bailouts, Obamacare — but it is also hitting us with a multitude of bothersome regulations. Perhaps most annoying of all is Washington’s attempt to redesign home appliances. Just weeks after taking office, the president announced an accelerated process to create stringent new energy efficiency standards for nearly everything around the house that uses energy. The Department of Energy is well on its way towards accomplishing this goal, boasting of more than 20 such regulations since President Obama came to office.
If past experience is any guide, these regulations will raise the purchase price of appliances — in some cases more than is ever likely to be earned back in the form of energy savings. Worse, several may adversely impact product performance and reliability. […]
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In nearly every case, consumers who want more efficient appliances (or those compact fluorescent light bulbs) are free to buy them. Energy use labels provide all the information needed for consumers to make comparisons. The only thing federal regulations accomplish is to force the government’s preferred choice on everyone.
[my emphasis]
And that’s really the nut of it right there. It’s about power — though it is often sold to us as the product of some sort of civilized moral imperative, the nanny government knowing what’s best for us.
And yet the truth is, such regulatory interference into the market actually quite often promotes the unintentional (but certainly foreseeable, were one not blinded by an ideological Utopianism) subversion of that for which it purports to advocate: eg., more fuel efficient cars mean people drive more (and explains why “progressives” have moved on to looking for ways to drive up the cost of gasoline), albeit they now do more driving in lighter, less-safe vehicles; less water in the wash cycle means people rewash clothes and dishes, putting a long term strain on the machinery and increasing the use of detergents; weaker shower heads means folks take longer showers; and so on.
But the scores of examples of over-regulation having unintended consequences is never allowed into evidence when the nanny state pursues its latest quarry in an attempt to domesticate it. And that’s because to the state, all that matters is the “accomplishment” of regulation and the supposedly good intentions that motivate it.
The aftermath? Meh. That’s somebody else’s problem — albeit one that can most assuredly be solved with more bureaucracy. And of course, new regulations…
Yay for black markets!
I’ve said it before, as have others – for some, it’s more important to have “done something” than to actually produce a result. The triumph of perception over reality.
we’re not the land of the free home of the brave anymores we’re the land of the nannied home of the failshit
Interesting. The ostensible intent of a law is all the complex, nuanced, wholly-scientific collectivist mind contemplates.
Yet, even though the net result of such legislation is without meaning, to disagree with it is heretical, and to protest it is sacrilegious.
So much for the complex, nuanced, wholly-scientific collectivist mind.
Oh come on, Jeff. These regulations s provide safety for those most at risk, a greener and more efficient economy, and they spread the wealth around more fairly.
Everybody The Daily Show and The View and Oprah says so! Don’t you watch TV?
I’m more a “Sons of Anarchy” guy.
“If past experience is any guide, these regulations will raise the purchase price of appliances — in some cases more than is ever likely to be earned back in the form of energy savings. Worse, several may adversely impact product performance and reliability.”
Efficiency? Optimization? Folly I say! What this country really need is more meaningless gestures that we can self-righteously hold forth as prooooof! that we are all doing what’s right for gaia and the children.
Reconciling Al Gore’s opulent lifestyle, in terms of consumption, with his doomsday predictions of global warming and Malthusian apocalypse? Whatevz h8ter-he’s got some solar panels on his roof, man! No hypocrisy there; no do as I say and not as I do; no cynical profiteering off of governments “green” mandates…
You know what’s really green? Nuclear power, baby-specifically, fusion.
If eco-freaked California(the earth’s leader of eco-imperialism and FORMERLY the 8th largest economy in the world)is the any indication of things to come then the rest of US will soon live in a third-world sewer drowning in eco-shit.
California’s eco-freaked religion does not appear as KWEEL as Hollywood’s Useless Idiots would have US believe.
So long as the addicts continue worshiping Hollywood’s Eco-Freaks then the ddicts will remain in their third-world sewer sucking on The Shit streaming out of the Eco-Freak’s asses.
Ask yourself this question: Is your life so pathetic that you MUST fill yourself with Hollywood’s crap?
If you must be addicted to something then give up the Hollywood shit and instead shoot heroin; at the end of the day the heroin addict looks better than does the entertainment addict.
They’re the good guys.
I just redid the insulation to take advantage of the tax credit.
OT, but Rick Sanchez has a problem with the Jooooooooooooooos.
And OT, I thanked him when he turned his guns on Cooms for a day or two, but apparently no more defending O’Donnell. She is a weasel. It is good to be prosecutor, jury and judge all rolled up into one.
Keep boasting while you can, boys, because you won’t be once the next Congress de-funds your sorry middle-school hall monitor asses.
(I can hope, can’t I?)
Buy a Prius! Brought to you by the half ton Tundra Supercab. (Tundra’s now avaliable with 0.9% APR financing for 60 months, see your local dealer for details.)
Memo to the next Congress: de-fund the EPA, the DoE and the ED.
DO IT!
#11 – you and me both…
I was going to suggest that the DoE might actually have a core mission, somewhere deep inside, in helping to evaluate and compare technology that makes energy production cleaner, safer, and more efficient (while not forcing any technology on anyone), but the fact is that any government agency cannot seem to avoid sticking its nose where it isn’t wanted or needed.
I use examples such as these to tout my Pro Choice opposition to the ruling class. I’m for choosing my own doctor, I’m for choosing how much health insurance I want to buy, I’m for choosing how my retirement money is saved, I’m for choosing my own light bulbs,…
I was born a free man in a free country and hope to die in one.
Old Texas Turkey. I love my Tundra.
Career Planning for my Grandsons:
Smuggle: cigarettes – check
light bulbs-check
full flow toilets – check
gold -check
fully marbled pork -check
phosphate based detergents -check
DDT -check
Oh their opportunities will be endless
Hmmmm, small potatoes? Or “a larger point”?
You ever hear about “Nudge”? A book written by Cass Sunstein, one of Bumblefuck’s czars. Basically, since you rubes are too stoopid to make the, uh, “correct” choices, the gubbermint will help you, by reducing your choices.
Sorry, Mr. Beck, but I can’t sign on to your “no violence” pledge. My only concern is that there will be a shortage of lampposts. Hangin’ is too good for these motherfuckers, but I don’t know how else to get the point across.
[…] cuts. Obama knows he’s done with new policy initiatives beyond his ability to craft new regulatory schemes. The next front is how to pay for the spending he lost the House and possibly the Senate to […]