The Moderate Voice - Latest Comments in Regulation Spurs Innovation: Energy-Efficient Incandescent Light Bulb

Re: Regulation Spurs Innovation: Energy-Efficient Incandescent Light Bulb

DLS — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:52:29 -0000

"Indeed, the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation."

WRONG &#39LESSON&#39 [sic]. That&#39s just the idiocy we see now (along with other, starry-eyed, smaller-minded sentiment) behind "alternative energy" mandates, not to mention unrealistically high fuel efficiency requirements for automobiles. Government doesn&#39t deserve "credit" for "spurring innovation." The best it can hope to do is to be the convenient scapegoat (with a wink and a nudge by all concerned) when all know that there are cost-effective safety measures that can be added to automobiles, for example, but it doesn&#39t pay any producer to be the first to introduce them, making their products more expensive and losing sales.

A general, broad, ambitious inference from that extended to encompass all kinds of nice lib dreams is invalid. Not to mention often harmful.

Even nowadays, we aren&#39t rushing to buy curly compact fluorescent light bulbs. Nobody has any right to compel me to buy them, incidentally.

And if we had an advance where it really counts outside the home, in street lighting, the result is not necessarily going to be limited (stupidly and sickly, even) to retention of existing lighting levels outdoors with substantial reduction in power consumption. A real improvement would make it feasible to greatly increase the amount of illumination outdoors for the same costs we pay today. That direction is where real progress turns, just to name one example.

Re: Regulation Spurs Innovation: Energy-Efficient Incandescent Light Bulb

DLS — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:52:29 -0000

"Indeed, the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation."

WRONG 'LESSON' [sic]. That's just the idiocy we see now (along with other, starry-eyed, smaller-minded sentiment) behind "alternative energy" mandates, not to mention unrealistically high fuel efficiency requirements for automobiles. Government doesn't deserve "credit" for "spurring innovation." The best it can hope to do is to be the convenient scapegoat (with a wink and a nudge by all concerned) when all know that there are cost-effective safety measures that can be added to automobiles, for example, but it doesn't pay any producer to be the first to introduce them, making their products more expensive and losing sales.

A general, broad, ambitious inference from that extended to encompass all kinds of nice lib dreams is invalid. Not to mention often harmful.

Even nowadays, we aren't rushing to buy curly compact fluorescent light bulbs. Nobody has any right to compel me to buy them, incidentally.

And if we had an advance where it really counts outside the home, in street lighting, the result is not necessarily going to be limited (stupidly and sickly, even) to retention of existing lighting levels outdoors with substantial reduction in power consumption. A real improvement would make it feasible to greatly increase the amount of illumination outdoors for the same costs we pay today. That direction is where real progress turns, just to name one example.

Re: Regulation Spurs Innovation: Energy-Efficient Incandescent Light Bulb

Ian W Cumming — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:36:13 -0000

The big three have had that that incandescent lighting technology on the shelf for years, they were waiting for cfl and LED bulb technology to raise the consumers acceptance level of high bulb prices to over shadow the limited performance increase for the 3 times higher pricing in the same fragile package.

Re: Regulation Spurs Innovation: Energy-Efficient Incandescent Light Bulb

Ian W Cumming — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:36:10 -0000

Re: Regulation Spurs Innovation: Energy-Efficient Incandescent Light Bulb

Ian W Cumming — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:36:13 -0000

Re: Regulation Spurs Innovation: Energy-Efficient Incandescent Light Bulb

Ian W Cumming — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:36:10 -0000