So here’s how a free market for, I don’t know, say, light bulbs works: Smart consumers look to get the most for their money. Light bulb makers, battling for the consumer’s business in the open market, will hire the brightest minds to devise a better bulb—that they can sell at a profit—ahead of the competition. If one introduces an energy-saving bulb that management believes customers will pay up for, and they turn out to be wrong, it’s back to the drawing board. Competition is a beautiful thing, it assures that you and I get the absolute best of what modern science can profitably deliver.
Sadly, that’s not all too often how it plays out. Here’s how it indeed all too often plays out: Bulb maker hires bright minds to invent an energy efficient, profit-producing, bulb, which they—in terms of energy efficiency—do. Smart consumers don’t buy them—they just don’t pencil. Rather than going back to the drawing board and inventing a legitimate product, light bulb makers put their millions behind regulations that would eliminate the old, less-profitable, bulbs. Result: cronies (bureaucrats and businessmen) gain politically and monetarily, consumers lose money and liberty.
Of course only a far-left administration would support such a thing. Oh wait! It was George W. Bush who signed that legislation. Don’t kid yourselves, my “conservative” friends…
Next up:
*Banning whole milk because non-fat is better for the consumer.
*Banning regular beer because light ” ” “
*Banning regular chewing gum because sugarless ” ” “
*Banning white bread because whole grain ” ” “
*Banning frosted flakes because…you know…
*Banning thin-soled shoes because cushioned are ” ” “
*Banning you name it because some substitute is ” ” “
Think me ridiculous? Really? Think again: Our no-brighter-than-you-and-me elected officials—at the behest of their sponsors—have determined that we consumers need further limitations they need more control over our personal choices (save for recreational marijuana use in Colorado, gender-identity bathrooms in California, and I presume a few other bestowments) to the tune of some 40,000 newly enacted laws in 2013 alone.