Wouldn’t even need laws demanding the oversight. Like with Underwriters Labs (a private company) you get a stamp or something on your product showing you’ve been through the testing or other oversight system. Customers would look for that. Wouldn’t you? A product with stamps from more than one consumer protection company would be more marketable. You could have specialization. Maybe some companies certify for organic. Others for resource use, or health effects. The more, the merrier. And as with any private endeavor, the ones who do the best job make the most money. Make market forces work FOR you. You’re a sailor. You know how to deal with wind to make it work for you rather than against you.

I should think this out completely and write it up someday. Maybe in the form of a fiction story to make the point in an entertaining manner…

Any regulatory process must, of necessity, be adversarial. What’s needed is a way for people to make money by being effective regulators. As with any other business, being open to competition is essential.

If you mistake a healthy distrust of business with a total faith in government, then it’s already too late for you.

I have spent some time tracking the amazing technological developments that have allowed us to wring years more oil out of old fields. Currently, we are also entering a whole new technological era of natural gas development, too. Some people predicted in 1972 that we would be running out of oil ten years ago.

As fossil fuels become more expensive to develop, prices will go up, and have. The curve is not steady, and there are other issues besides worldwide supply that drive it in both directions, but the market does respond.

Every idea on government control of buying and selling is based on the theory that politicians are smarter, less greedy, and less corrupt than the rest of us. This does not stand up to close examination.

The government does a lot of “marketing” too. When people someday have the same skepticism about what the political ruling class is trying to sell us as they do about what a corporation is trying to sell them, I’ll call it a win.

Energy consumption is an addiction. People don’t stop using junk just because they learn it is not good for them. Any pusher can tell you that. Addicts are afraid to admit it to themselves.

“We don’t put a gun to their head and make them do anything. We are only giving people what they want.”

We all need energy, just like junkies need their fix, but using too much is toxic AND expensive. And I am VERY skeptical about conservation advice from those who sell the poison. They have everything to gain by “managing” the price and the demand to maximize the profit until the commodity runs out. Just because they haven’t figured out how to do this perfectly yet doesn’t mean they have no incentive to keep trying. And they have nothing to gain by having their customers learn the commodity will run out in some indefinite future.

They teach courses in college on how to do that, it’s called “marketing”, and they have nothing to do with free markets, except maybe how to pervert them.

I’m not asking you to accept my position TB, I’m just asking you to recognize it is not solely based on the media feeding me lies that I am too stupid to see through. I am capable of independent thought, and my Mom even claimed I was fairly bright.

If prices of a commodity are low in a free market, it’s possible you’re being lied to about the scarcity of the resource by people who have their own “profit” in mind.

Profit is not always measured in money.

You’d think people would be at least slightly skeptical about a government/industry joint action that forces very expensive – and incidentally, toxic – products on us. Remember, I’m a veteran of the Great MTBE Flap out here in California. We’re still cleaning that crap up.

People buy small cars when gas prices go up, and big cars when it goes down. But when gas becomes expensive enough, or runs out altogether, it won’t matter what kind of car you’ve got or used to own. In fact, everything you buy will cost more, even if you don’t drive at all.

Of course, for those who sell gas, or sell big cars, it doesn’t really matter, does it?

The lightbulb law is a symbol. By itself, it’s certainly not the fall of civilization, but it represents a governing philosophy that declares the individual incompetent to run their own affairs on even the most trivial level.

Energy efficiency does not have to be “enforced.” Energy costs money, and it will cost more as time goes on. Look at the record. People buy small cars when gas gets expensive. When prices go down, they stop. Before the lightbulb law, people were starting to buy CFL bulbs when the technology and prices got to the point where they actually did save money over time. I was buying them.

We need to be smart about a lot of things. I am not willing to accept the premise that some boob in Washington is, by some divine anointment, going to be smarter about them than the rest of us. The record, in fact, seems to show exactly the opposite.

The article doesn’t blame Bush for anything. It merely mentions the fact that he had a legislative hand in this.

It is amusing to watch, though, as potential bans on abortion and gay marriage (which would be profoundly deep intrusions into personal lives) are dismissed as “the full measure of conservative social engineering,” but a move to enforce greater energy efficiency is repeatedly touted as the work of the devil.

For conservatives, apparently, there’s no need to be smart about America’s energy future…there’s just a need to “drill baby drill.”