If both CFLs and incandescent bulbs are able to be placed in a standard fixture, that is standardization. Then it is up to the CONSUMER to make the choice that is best for them. You are correct that there are benefits to each. If there are benefits for each, why do some people want to eliminate the choice?

bbauska

If both CFLs and incandescent bulbs are able to be placed in a standard fixture, that is standardization. Then it is up to the CONSUMER to make the choice that is best for them. You are correct that there are benefits to each. If there are benefits for each, why do some people want to eliminate the choice?

I submit that sometimes the short term choice is negative for both the long-term health of the nation and the industry?
Take for example the mileage standards for cars in the US. The US auto industry fought them tooth and nail, and managed to secure higher standards for trucks. They also managed to get vans and SUVs labeled as trucks. They were responding to the market popularity of the larger vehicles. Hummers etc.
Short term they enjoyed greater per vehicle profits from this sector and lost market share and expertise in manufacturing more fuel efficient vehicles to imports. Short term they performed a little better. Long term, the reliance on fuel inefficient cars contributed to their failures.(What happened to Hummer?)
And contributed to higher gas usage, increasing oil imports, the trade deficit, and provided money to mideastern despots whilst driving up the cost of fuel...
Had the US auto industry accepted the tougher standards there might have been a more competitive US auto industry that might not have had to be 2/3 bailed out, would have been a lower cost of gas today, amongst other benefits.

The problem with letting the markets make all the decisions is that the markets are rarely good at long term planning. The problem with government mandates is that they don't always meet the immediate needs.
But sometimes the strategic nature of the problem can't be left entirely to the wisdom of the markets. The difference between VHS and Beta didn't mean anything to the average consumer, or to the overall US economy.. However the need to improve security in energy is important.
Energy insecurity has driven the US foreign policy to an extent. And many think unwise decisions have been prompted by this insecurity.
Energy insecurity has also had many other negative results, some of which I've alluded to... In times of national emergency your nation has resorted to strict rationing...
The ability of national economies to compete with the US, Taipei, Japan, South Korea, China, etc. has generally been because their national governments have been able to coordinate strategies within the economy. Entire industries were built as part of national strategies, and in some cases these industries now dominate in the world. Industries that were once dominated by the US) When and where a national economy can be guided by long term policies, including industry standards (Korean standards for internet connectivity for instance) they have often had very positive effects.
So why would a light bulb standardization have similar benefits? The energy saving and material saving and avoided cost of maintenance seems positive. The problems of inadequate infrastructure to handle waste does seem to be a problem. (But isn't it a problem for more than just this particular product?)
I don't know the answer in this case B. I just don't believe that Steve's drive by demonization of standardization has much reasoning or knowledge behind it, and thats why I commented.
Other fine examples where standardization benefited society immensely. Railroads, Modern flush toilet, acid rain eliminated, thousands of deaths and injuries avoided by seat belt laws and required enhancements to safe vehicular design...
In other words, standardization and regulation have brought many benefits. To accept them as inherently inadequate versus the wisdom of the markets is to deny reality. To accept regulation and standardization as a replacement to the benefits of the market is socialist nonsense. recognizing the difference between the intelligent guidance of the market towards long term benefit for the health of the national economy and unnecessary interference in functioning competitive markets is sometimes difficult.
I think, in this case, there are overwhelming issues that indicate that energy must be consumed more wisely than has evolved and that the occasional regulatory boost towards this aim is not unhealthy. .

Ricky:

Energy insecurity has driven the US foreign policy to an extent. And many think unwise decisions have been prompted by this insecurity.
Energy insecurity has also had many other negative results, some of which I've alluded to... In times of national emergency your nation has resorted to strict rationing...

I received this from the US Chamber of Commerce

ACTION ALERT:
Support the North American-Made Energy Security Act

Dear Friend,

Perhaps more than ever before in our nation's history, our energy security and economic security are inextricably intertwined.

America continues to import an increasing amount of oil from foreign partners, some of whom don't share our best economic or national security interests. In fact, in 2010 the United States spent $72 billion more on imported oil than we did in 2009.

That's a formula for trouble.

Recognizing this dependence, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee recently cleared the way for H.R.1938, the "North American-Made Energy Security Act."

This vital legislation would speed up the permitting process for the Keystone XL Pipeline, allowing greater access to Canada's vast reserves of Oil Sands.

Access to Canada's energy sources would provide a reliable source of oil from a friend and ally.

Email your Representative now and urge him or her to support this common-sense bill.

The Keystone XL pipeline would significantly increase America's energy and economic security by providing us with 1.1 million barrels of oil a day from Canada, a key ally, and create more than 20,000 jobs in the short-term.

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration continues to delay approval of the permits necessary to begin construction -- which is why we need your help to encourage Congress to act on this legislation.

We can continue to purchase oil from across the ocean -- or we can begin to tap the vast energy resources here in North America.

Thank you for acting today and emailing your member of Congress.

Sincerely,



Karen A. Harbert
President and Chief Executive Officer
Institute for 21st Century Energy
U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Ricky, based on your comments above, would you support this legislation? Would you support the US drilling more oil within the US and its waterways.

rickyp wrote:Short term they enjoyed greater per vehicle profits from this sector and lost market share and expertise in manufacturing more fuel efficient vehicles to imports. Short term they performed a little better. Long term, the reliance on fuel inefficient cars contributed to their failures.(What happened to Hummer?)

Really? You can prove Hummer is out of business because it did not pursue high-mileage vehicle production?

Go right ahead. I'll wait.

Could it be the economy collapsed and people no longer were looking for such high-priced items?

Could it be the nation's failure to produce energy it has in abundance drove the prices up, crippling the economy AND driving up energy prices?

Could it be high labor costs due to union labor?

Could it be that Hummers were designed as military vehicles and were ultimately too inefficient in many ways for the marketplace?

Nope. Ricky says he can prove what really happened. Go ahead.

If you actually did this, you would figure out that any business failure is far more complex than you make it out to be.

Had the US auto industry accepted the tougher standards there might have been a more competitive US auto industry that might not have had to be 2/3 bailed out, would have been a lower cost of gas today, amongst other benefits.

Or the government could impose unrealistic requirements, like they're doing now, which will lead to no good end. Regulation does not equal innovation.

The problem with government mandates is that they don't always meet the immediate needs.

Sometimes they don't meet long-term needs either. Sometimes they are pie-in-the-sky. Sometimes they actually hurt the economy in the short-term and in the long-term (see current energy "policy," which is to increase costs now and decrease availability later. That's very, very strategic isn't it? Weaken the country now and guarantee it will be weaker later! It's lose/lose.)

However the need to improve security in energy is important.
Energy insecurity has driven the US foreign policy to an extent. And many think unwise decisions have been prompted by this insecurity.

Many unwise energy policy decisions have been made during the last 2 1/2 years. They've taken a bad situation and made it worse. The light bulb scenario is a fraction of the overall political correctness masquerading as "energy policy" for the elites in DC. Yes, I know, it passed under Bush.

Energy insecurity has also had many other negative results, some of which I've alluded to... In times of national emergency your nation has resorted to strict rationing...
The ability of national economies to compete with the US, Taipei, Japan, South Korea, China, etc. has generally been because their national governments have been able to coordinate strategies within the economy. Entire industries were built as part of national strategies, and in some cases these industries now dominate in the world. Industries that were once dominated by the US) When and where a national economy can be guided by long term policies, including industry standards (Korean standards for internet connectivity for instance) they have often had very positive effects.

If our government wasn't so busy restricting business, we would be crushing (economically) all the countries you mention. We don't need 5-year plans, comrade. What we need is the government to allow growth.

So why would a light bulb standardization have similar benefits? The energy saving and material saving and avoided cost of maintenance seems positive. The problems of inadequate infrastructure to handle waste does seem to be a problem. (But isn't it a problem for more than just this particular product?)

This is a joke. We're going to get great economic benefit by, in effect, slapping a tax on Americans and shipping the jobs overseas? Incandescent light bulbs are not made here because they've been outlawed. Repeal the ban and watch what happens. Instead, we'll be paying a huge increase in bulb prices with the profits going to China, etc. The energy savings are, I'm afraid, overstated and the health costs are unknown, but they won't be zero. The recycling costs are unknown, but they won't be zero either. And, btw, recycling/disposing of these bulbs takes energy too.

I don't know the answer in this case B. I just don't believe that Steve's drive by demonization of standardization has much reasoning or knowledge behind it, and thats why I commented.

Without facts, which is no surprise.

Standardization is not the issue, as Brad pointed out. It's not like making sure all railroad tracks are compatible. The old bulbs are compatible with the same lamps as the new ones. This is not "standardization." It is the government choosing winners and losers.

Other fine examples where standardization benefited society immensely. Railroads, Modern flush toilet, acid rain eliminated, thousands of deaths and injuries avoided by seat belt laws and required enhancements to safe vehicular design...

Are you seriously comparing seat belts and airbags with CFL's? How many lives will CFL's save?

These are foolish comparisons. So, is the railroad analogy--that facilitated travel and shipping. CFL's will facilitate nothing but hazardous waste.

Ricky, based on your comments above, would you support this legislation? Would you support the US drilling more oil within the US and its waterways.

Always have, with the proviso that the regulation for enviromental and safety problems always be maintained as global industry best practice at a minimum. (And for the record, the offshore drilling regulations in Norway are much tougher than in the US.. Had they been practiced by Horizon it might never have happened.)
Nothing is perfect, but the cost of prevention is generally less than the cost of a disaster. And in the case of domestic energy, the cost of prevention of spills and other calamities is at least a domestic cost.

CFL's will facilitate nothing but hazardous waste.

Actually the production of CFLs has created hundreds of thousands of jobs. In China. However they could easily have been in the US because the CFL was a GE invention. At the time the company couldn't understand the benefit in selling a product that lasted so long. They preferred to sell incandescent's because they had a short life and the company could have many repeat sales.
Energy consumption wasn't a concern, though the oil crisis in the 70's came about the time they decided to pass on the products development. One would have though that if the govenrment had decided to pick GE as a winner in CFS production then...how many jobs could have been created in the US and how much energy saved...
And there is hazardous waste. Yes. However if the bulbs last as long as they appear to last, there is less than the old bulb waste. (Getting rid of incandescents with household waste is not a good idea either.)

If our government wasn't so busy restricting business, we would be crushing (economically) all the countries you mention. We don't need 5-year plans, comrade. What we need is the government to allow growth

.
Yes, because thats magical. We'll just "allow growth".
Does that include making easier the exporting of industries because the profit margins are a little better this quarter or year?
The difference is that most corporations measure growth in quarters or years and have a difficult time thinking too far ahead. Kinda like how GE lost the CFS business.
By the way. Picking winners and losers?
You know anything of the development of the computer and the winners that were created by the decisions made in Washington? IBM, Microsoft etc. If it weren't for picking those winners and losers there wouldn't be a SIlicon Valley.

Neither IBM nor Microsoft is based in Silicon Valley ...

Neither IBM nor Microsoft is based in Silicon Valley ...

Okay.. Physically not. . But they are part of the foundation for the computer industry in the US, no?

I believe that the computer industry has been great in the US despite government intervention. If government intervention is so important, why wasn't the computer revolution primarily developed in Europe?

Twhe US had a single governent while Europe had dozens. Some were less enthusiastic than others and cross-border co-operation was not that extensive - less than we have now, and that isn't massive. In the UK it was largely led by financial services companies in the private sector rather than tech companies working with the military and academia/government. Still,we had Manchester Mk1 (the first programmable computer) built upon the pioneering at Bletchley. In the 50's a British company developed LEO, the first computer used for commercial purposes. That company became part of ICL. Packet switching, which is key to how networks up to the internet work, was invented at our National Physics Laboratory.

Elsewhere in Europe you had the advances in mobile technology in Scandinavia, and of course the WWW was developed at CERN. As I may have mentioned to you before, the phpBB platform that Redscape and many forums use was developed in Europe. LINUX, the Open Source operaring system, was developed in Europe.

IBM and Bell Labs are the source of most of the advances we would recognise, but scale and access to funding and expertise fro m government helped them a lot.

Yes, there has been technological development throughout the western world. I did say "primarily".

I just got involved because I thought it was funny that Ricky listed 2 companies to make a point, and neither is located where he said.

But the main point still holds. So you think the advancement in computer technology and computer companies is primarily attributable to government policy? Did the government pick Google, Facebook and Apple too? That seems to be Ricky's point.

Frankly, I ducked out because Ricky was so ridiculous. For example, when he writes:

Yes, because thats magical. We'll just "allow growth".

That's a very "fiscal conservative" position to take, yet he dismisses it. When he claims to be a "fiscal conservative," and cannot wrap his head around a simple truth like that, it speaks volumes.

Ray Jay, my response included factors I believe explain why US stated aid in computing was more influential than European. In case you missed them:

1) The US Federal government had a scale and scope that an assortment of competing European governments did not. Even now the EU has nothing like the budget or reach that the US government has on such development.

2) There was one US government acting. European governments were not really working together, and some did little or nothing.

3) The US made advances through military investment. The UK made advances in commercial applications. The former tended to be more varied and complex. And more likely to be state funded and commissioned.

The rest was to show that the Europe still made some important strides, despite these differences.

Steve:

Frankly, I ducked out because Ricky was so ridiculous.

Yeah, sometimes I let you do the heavy lifting in combating his innocuous insanity.

But there is one point that deserves more mention. Per Ricky

The difference is that most corporations measure growth in quarters or years and have a difficult time thinking too far ahead.

It is true that public corporations overly focus on their quarterly numbers. However, governments are known to continue with the same insanity year after year. There are numerous examples of laws that have been on the books since the 30's that make no sense. There are government programs that are duplicative, expensive, unnecessary, and resulting in unintended consequences that continue year after year. There's just insufficient ability to reign in a government program once it gets started. I'll take an over focus on quarterly results over year after year insanity for decades no matter what.

danivon wrote:Ray Jay, my response included factors I believe explain why US stated aid in computing was more influential than European. In case you missed them:

1) The US Federal government had a scale and scope that an assortment of competing European governments did not. Even now the EU has nothing like the budget or reach that the US government has on such development.

2) There was one US government acting. European governments were not really working together, and some did little or nothing.

3) The US made advances through military investment. The UK made advances in commercial applications. The former tended to be more varied and complex. And more likely to be state funded and commissioned.

The rest was to show that the Europe still made some important strides, despite these differences.

Sure, but my central point is that the private sector deserves the lion share of the credit for the success of the computer industry. Why pretend that the government should get credit for Microsoft, Google, Apple, or Facebook? This is capitalism at its best. Let's celebrate human ingenuity and its ability to flourish with incentive and the absence of the heavy hand of government. We are all better off for it. We need to recognize that as the central principle of our economy (with allowable exceptions for needed regulation).