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Biden admin moving forward with light bulb bans in coming weeks
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KaneTW:
The ban will change nothing, just like it changed nothing in the EU.

"Incandescent light bulb for industrial use, not suitable for home use" Seems plenty suitable to me/
SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: Monkeh on April 08, 2023, 01:40:12 pm ---
--- Quote from: coppice on April 08, 2023, 01:25:17 pm ---
--- Quote from: Monkeh on April 08, 2023, 01:21:05 pm ---Your stubbornness is merely proof that change on meaningful scale cannot be made quickly without using force.

--- End quote ---
The age old justification used by authoritarians everywhere. If you can't get the vast majority to consent to a good idea well explained, maybe it wasn't so great after all.

--- End quote ---

I think you overestimate the intelligence of the vast majority.

--- End quote ---

True, but you in turn are probably overestimating the intelligence of the people "in charge".
coppice:

--- Quote from: nctnico on April 08, 2023, 09:51:29 pm ---Free markets don't work at all! And mainly due to the vast majority of the people not having all the knowledge required to make the best decissions in today's complex world. Let alone, the lesser educated part of the population.

--- End quote ---
Free markets aren't perfect, but nothing is. The best approximations to free markets have worked better than anything else the human race has tried.

--- Quote from: nctnico on April 08, 2023, 09:51:29 pm ---So yes, decisions need to be made for the public with a long term plan in mind. Even though those plans might need adjustments along the way. Or may even seem unlogical to some.

History is riddled with bans and requirements that save lives every day. Think about airbags, seatbelts, anti-skid, unleaded fuel, emission limits on cars. All things that don't make a car better in any way to get from A to B, but these government mandated requirements are a huge improvement for the society in the big picture.

--- End quote ---
History is just as riddled with bans and requirements that utterly failed. Things like drink driving. It was illegal for decades, with little effect. It was a shift in social norms that eventually got that under control. I didn't suggest we don't need regulation, but they are always risky. Unbalanced regulations, and ones that lead to massive gaming of the system, have been very destructive. Regulations like "all cars must have seat belts that meet these standards" can be a very free market thing to introduce, if done with care. If everyone has to do it, and the details of the rules are not twisted in one group's favour, it can actually help level the competitive playing field.

--- Quote from: nctnico on April 08, 2023, 09:51:29 pm ---Especially big companies have the empathy level of a 4 year old kid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed

--- End quote ---
That's the very reason we need free markets. The only thing we've found to keep people like that reasonably honest has been to make them compete. They don't like that, so they try their best to form cartels, and other twisted organisations, that limit competition and let them get back to their 4 year old activities. Governments and corporations are very similar in this regard. None of them should be trusted too much. My God, they are run by people. What fool trusts those creeps.

tooki:

--- Quote from: Zero999 on April 08, 2023, 12:40:49 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on April 07, 2023, 09:27:45 pm ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on April 07, 2023, 09:00:52 pm ---Politics is no longer separate from science.

--- End quote ---
When has this not been the case? I mean, back when politics and religion were one and the same, they literally murdered, banished, or imprisoned scientists under the guise of “heresy”.


--- Quote from: Zero999 on April 07, 2023, 09:00:52 pm ---Universities have become breeding grounds for political activism.
--- End quote ---
Aside from the fact that political activism has always been one aspect of academia, since both academia and politics exist in the same universe, I don’t think there’s actually any evidence to support claims of this being more so now than in the past (as the wording “have become” implies). The only thing I see as having changed is that now a certain segment of the population has their knickers in a twist about it, having been whipped to a froth by disingenuous “news”casters and social media fearmongers.

--- End quote ---
The difference is now it's skewed to one side of the political spectrum. Academic freedom in countries such as the US and UK has been in severe decline over the last few years. It's a worldwide problem, but the decline in the previously most free countries is the most concerning aspect of this trend.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/significant-declines-us-and-uk-academic-freedom-ranking

--- End quote ---
I don’t think the skew has moved at all. Again, look at the history of politics and activism in academia and it’s always been on the left, often far left (far more left than today, in many cases). The loss of academic freedom thing is orthogonal to this — that change (which I consider to be negative) can happen without any change in the typical political slant. (Which, frankly, is just innate in education anyway, since secular academia is all about studying objective reality: as they say, “reality has a liberal bias”.)
coppice:

--- Quote from: tooki on April 08, 2023, 11:43:43 pm ---as they say, “reality has a liberal bias”.)

--- End quote ---
Reality seems to have a classically liberal bias. Look at places like the UK in the industrial revolution, or Japan, Singapore, Korea, or Taiwan in the late 20th century. I only hear people who equate liberal with left say "reality has a liberal bias" when they are a leftist who has lost all touch with reality.
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