EU outlaws incandescent bulbs by 2012

No, just fire the government and let the Market do its work.

People who are addicted to regulation seem to refuse to acknowledge that the Free Market is the most brutal, merciless regulator there _IS_. If people don't like what you're selling, you go broke. So government steps in and forces you to buy their crap, using tax (i.e. stolen) money to prop up a business that couldn't stay in business without government mandates.

But, apparently the problem will get worse until we hit bottom, a la the USSR; and then most of the sheeple probably won't even notice anyway.

Sigh, Rich

The problem with a strict "free market" approach is that "caveat emptor" is fine when it comes to many items, but it's not reasonable to expect that the average person is going to be able to tell, from shopping in a store or walking through a house, whether or not the product is safe and reasonably efficient. Hence we've had various safety regulations as well as efficiency regulations for centuries now... and while it's clear that sometimes we've swung too far one way (e.g., this very thread -- outlawing incandescent bulbs supposedly in the name of efficiency and pollution), I doubt many people today would want to go back to a time when factory deaths were ten-fold what they are today -- and there was no worker's compensation or social security to pay for on-the-job injuries anyway --, no standards for electrical wiring (fuses? breakers? Who needs 'em!?), no guards for belts/gears/etc. on high-energy rotating machinery, etc.

Weren't you in the navy, Rich? What do you think of the U.S. nuclear submarine designs where there's a heat exchanger between the "hot" sides and "people" sides with the turbines (running non-radioactive water) vs. the Russian design where the radioactive water ran the turbines directly? The Russian approach gains some efficiency, but of course is rather more dangerous if something breaks.

---Joel

IIRC Rich believes cancer is caused by having the wrong attitude.

So my guess he'd be fine with it :)

--

John Devereux

The problem is that you have less than no plan whatsoever for any kind of transition. Bring that plan around and maybe someone will listen to you. Short of that you are just noise.

And the bulbs in a side bender? How will guitars be made without incandescent light bulbs?

On a sunny day (Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:20:13 -0500) it happened Ben Bradley wrote in :

Had to look up 'side bender':

nice! Perhaps stock up on those bulbs, ask a good price after 2012. Or that industry will move to China too, where there is no ban on those bulbs! Aha:-)

Forcing one person to serve another By WALTER E. WILLIAMS

That's what "due diligence" is for. If you're too stupid, lazy, or negligent to determine if a product is safe or not, then it's time to play Darwin Roulette. >:->

Cite? Especially that "centuries" part...

What you mean "we", paleface? Isn't that the Borg collective mentality speaking?

Well, my Dad taught me not to cut off my own fingers on the table saw.

People who are that incompetent and/or negligent have no business working around anything that dangerous.

The control-freaks are trying to override Natural Selection, and the unintended consequences are manifesting themselves all around us as we speak.

Thanks, Rich

No, it's not _caused_ by the attitude - the attitude is simply another symptom of the same denied self-hatred that's the cause of most, if not all, of the pain and suffering in the world.

Cheers! Rich

--
For more information, please feel free to visit http://www.godchannel.com

How about:

1. Pull back all of the invasion forces, and send them home.

1. Take all of the warhips threatening everybody all over the place and back them up into the harbors and plug their reactors into the power grid.

2. Order that all gun control laws shall be deemed unconstitutional, and thereby null and void.

1. End all subsidies, tariffs, and any other thing that uses taxpayer money to support preferential treatment for ANYONE.

2. Abolish the income tax, and replace it with an outgo tax - i.e., you don't get taxed on what you _earn_, you get taxed on what you _SPEND_.

1. a. Draw a line in the sand on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. b. Audit the system and find out just how far we're in the hole, and commit future tax revunes to paying that off. c. Concurrently, end withholding and make SS, MC, and MA optional.

2. Restore competition for medical care - it's a service, it's the customer's responsibility to do his/her own due diligence, like caveat emptor. But in any case, get the Government out of the doctor/patient relationship.

1. Lead by example by publicly dismantling all of the US's weapons of mass destruction, and with a little cleverness, retooling for Free Enterprise.

2. Declare World Peace I. ;-)

So, got any specific refutations, or are YOU the one blowing smoke?

Thanks, Rich

For starters?

Thanks, Rich

Uh, the way they've been made for the last 400 years or so?

Thanks, Rich

But that requires not only breeders with "common sense" (a mythical term) but also the knowledge and skill to transfer it to the new generation. Those attributes were rare when i was a kid and are far rarer today. What is your plan to correct this issue?

Total imaginary poppycock. There is no such thing as inborn knowledge in hominids, or vertebrates for that matter. There are variations in parenting competence.

Sounds to me that maybe you should re-evaluate your lighting fixtures. I have plenty of CFLs that have 3 to 5 years on them.

I get many years from mine; I'm not sure why, but I don't have the longevity problems other people report.

Thermal cycling fatigues the starting filaments--maybe that's a factor. Filament failure accounts for 100% of my burned out CFLs so far. But, my bathroom light gets cycled many times a day and it's been going several years...

Cheers, James Arthur

Considering the existing stock pile of incandescent lamps maybe in 5 to 12 years.

I suspect something similar to the USA "bans" scheduled to take effect in a 2-part "event" in 2012 and 2014.

The USA 2012/2014 "ban" has exemptions for:

1: Design voltage far from "mains voltage", and on that basis all incandescent lamps previously experiencing significant usage in automobiles, flashlights and on bicycles are exempted.

2: Achieving "energy efficiency" that a few incandescents have already achieved without compromosing life expectancy in hours below 4 figures. Namely, halogen lamps using "HIR" technology. "A19" size ones of a couple wattages have already existed at Home Depot for a goodly half a year already.

3: Many categories of "specialty lamp" including vibration-duty, T-bulb, reflectorized bulb, most decorative style types, colored ones other than "modified spectrum" (what I would call "adjustment of white"), and ones with special coatings over the bulb for previously-known major industrial purposes.

4: Ones with light output range outside the range of 310-2600 lumens. 2600 lumens is fairly achieveable by a 120V 150 watt incandescent. 310 lumens is out of reach of all 25-watt 120V incandescents that I have ever seen on the market so far (though I am aware of 12V halogens claiming 350 lumens) - it appears to me that non-halogen 120V 25W incandescents at most achieve less than 240 lumens unless rated to last less than 1500 hours. So I expect better ones of 150W, nearly enough all at least 200W, and nearly enough all 120V 25W ones and nearly enough all others of wattage 15W or less to be exempt on basis of range of light output - whether or not exempted on basis of other factors, such as design voltage, energy efficiency or "specialty type".

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

That's a pretty harsh attitude, Rich.

OK, the earliest ones list are from the very late 1800s, and that is just a bit more than one century; I should have said "over a century."

The Borg Collective wouldn't allow you to leave, Rich, whereas at least here in the U.S. you're free to renounce your citizenship whenever you feel like it.

While it's true that there can be a very large difference in the incidence of accidents between those with proper training and expertise and those without, everyone makes mistakes occasionally so there's something to be said for making products "reasonably" safe even if it is incompetent people who'll benefit the most. Of course, defining "reasonably safe" is all but impossible.

I suspect there's not a big difference in how many people support government-mandated seatbelts in automobiles based on good of drivers they happen to personally be...

---Joel

Hey, life is harsh, unless you've got a Great Nanny who gives you everything at somebody else's expense.

I don't want to leave the US; I want to REPAIR the US.

Thanks, Rich