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If people won't do it on their own, the nanny state has no right to force them to do so. It's the classic "Government knows best" mentality. Of course, we all know that only silly people don't realize that they don't know how to run their own lives. As for "rolling brown outs," it's a well-known fact that one of the main causes of power shortages is over-regulation. Just look at the ones that happened in California. A classic case of government management. If private industry were given greater freedom in this sector, blackouts and brownouts would be almost nonexistent, as nuclear and hydro would rapidly be phased in in preference over coal, oil, and natural gas, and they would operate more effeciently when profits and losses are involved. And this would NOT be at government gunpoint.
By the way, "phasing out" the production of bulbs at the point of Federal guns is morally and effectively the same as making it illegal to purchase bulbs.
Nuclear energy would not be rapidly phased in. The pundits and the politicians on one side like to say that. It is all typical rhetoric used to garner support from an uninformed public. The last nuclear plant built Limerick 2 cost 2.9 billion dollars to construct. That was in 1984. The cost now would be in the neighborhood of 6-8 billion dollars. Yes a lot of the cost involve regulation. I don't know about you, but I don't want some greedy jerks building a nuclear plant without regulation. It also takes 10-12 years to build a plant and they have to be retrofitted every 10 years or so. Nuclear materials are very corrosive for lack of a better word. Public utilities are usually very hesitant to construct nuclear plants. To begin with it is a huge capital outlay. It requires huge rate increases to finance and I think most people here know how they react to any request for additional money. It is a hard sell and very difficult to get the customers to sign off on. Nuclear will not occur because of the so called free market. It will be the terrible nanny state that will bring nuclear to fruition. They will have to give huge subsidies to the energy companies to get them to switch over. It's all about dollars and cents. Common sense has nothing to do with it.
So in the end your nanny government is actually saving you and the country money. I hate being told what to do too. In this case I see the wisdom of it. If CFL's could be had for 2.00 for a box of 4, like the cheap incandescent s sold at Wally World. People would buy them in a heart beat. After all you get the same amount of light for 1/3 the cost. It's a no brainer except where they are not effective, like garages in the winter. They are much cheaper in the long haul. People are very short sighted though and the initial outlay is the important part. That's why places like Wally World are so popular. If you can buy a widget at WW for 10.00 that will last for 1 year or buy a similar looking widget at some American product store that will last 10 years for 20.00 most Americans will buy the 10.00 widget and just put out another 12.00 to replace it the next year and 14.00 the next year to replace it ans so forth. That is the reason why we have a broken system. That's why everything sold in America is made in China and there are people showing CFL's that catch on fire. It's because the free market takes care of everything. The corporate moguls know what is best for us and some people actually buy in to it.
Sorry about the side track. Nuclear energy will come at a very high cost. The free market will take care of it alright.
By the way if you read the article posted about exemptions you will see that GE is developing an incandescent bulb that uses less energy and will hopefully be on the market soon. More efficient use of energy is the name of the game. You may feel that you have the right to consume as much of our natural resources as you want. Fact is that they belong to everyone. The nanny government is just trying to make it so there is enough to go around until a better alternative is available. Don't get mad at Mom because she only let you have 2 cookies instead of a whole fist full.
You own what you pay for, buddy. And yes, the free market would, in fact, bring in nuclear power. The fact is, even with the large initial capital outlay and the cost of maintainence, nuclear creates mind-boggling amounts of energy, with no pollution except the waste, which is easily disposed of safely. The only real obstacles are over-regulation and public misconception of nuke power. The solution to regulation is simple, but the public misunderstanding will take some effort.
To put it frankly, I'd feel safer with a greedy private company running a nuke plant than I would with equally greedy politicians - the difference being profit motive. Government control brought us Chernobyl, not private enterprise. The fact is, American's DON'T trust the market! They naively assume that politicians, who are also greedy human beings, will SOMEHOW magically understand things better than the average person can. The reason China is clobbering us right now is because we can't compete due to government over-regulation, specifically the utterly insane minimum wage law, as well as a few others.
Oh, yeah, and if something belongs to everyone, you know who it really belongs to? NO ONE. If it belongs to no one - or "everyone" - then there is no incentive to conserve it or take care of it. Look at the Yellowstone fires. Look at the Aral Sea. Look at endangered species. Look at the river fires of the early to mid - 1900s. "Everyone" owned the Cuyahoga river, so nobody owned it. The government gave permission to companies to dump garbage in the river, and people along the river had no legal recourse to deal with it since NOBODY OWNED IT. Common resources will be abused and wasted, private resources will be tended. Nobody spits on their own doorstep. It's like a law of nature.
As for your point about people favoring cheap, low quality products, that is true. But if people want to be shortsighted, that's their own problem, and they'll live with the consequences. The government has no right to force people to buy high-quality products.
Jefferson, Washington, Henry, and the rest of the Founders would have started a revolution by now.
But Americans are happy with the status quo of "The government will take care of me," so they'll just sit on their butts until the federal government implodes on its overspending self.
Couldn't have said it better.
