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Efficiency Gains Could Prove Proposed Plasma Ban Shortsighted
hihopes writes "As the EU calls for a ban on plasma TVs, a leading Harvey Norman executive said that the issue should be left to vendors, who at the recent CES Show in the USA showed an array of low-powered TV display screens."
First, the idea that watching TV doesn't constitute "real wealth" is false. The very manufacturing plants you admit are valuable exist solely to provide goods and services that consumers demand. No, TVs aren't necessities, but that doesn't mean they aren't of economic value. Value is in the eye of the beholder, and lots of people quite clearly get utility from their television sets. So televisions are just as much a form of wealth as any other good.
TV's don't generate wealth for their owners. You won't get rich, no matter how much TV you watch. While they may create something you want (such as cheap access to episodes of House) they aren't themselves a source of increased wealth. Therefore, they aren't "real wealth" and should not be viewed as "assets" but rather as "possessions".
Second, power plants are in almost all cases privately funded, at least in the U.S. The money you pay each month to your local electricity provider is going to a privately owned firm, albeit one that likely enjoys rate-of-return protection granted by government.
When a "private company" is given a regulated monopoly by a government, it's no longer private. Especially when tax dollars have been spent in its construction, which is almost always the case. See "government regulated monopoly" since this concept is apparently foreign to you.
Power is not running out, either.
Guess you never heard of rolling blackouts, then? Explain that to my servers that were down for some 2 days as a result? /Sarcasm
Will the cost of energy today persist as fossil fuels become more difficult to obtain? Probably not, but lots of neat forms of energy become viable once prices rise. By the time oil, uranium, coal, and natural gas resources all begin to dwindle, new technologies will have made new forms of elecricity generation economically feasible.
Cool. So f-ck the commons, as it disappears, we'll get more desperate. Sounds like a good long term stradegy! (er, strategy? tragedy?)
You claim that people tend to underestimate long-term costs and overestimate short-term gains. The LED example, however, actually shows that people are making the right decisions by sticking with plasma. The amount of electricity required to power a TV is still quite inexpensive--around 3 to 5 cents per hours--and so it'd take years to make up for a $300 price difference.
That is, until it ain't cheap. Then f-ck you! Thanks for helping out, eh, raping the commons?
And since pretty much any TV currently sold is going far past its obsolescence, it's fairly unimportant how long a TV will last. 8 years of 12 years are both very long timeframes among the modern consumer.
So... consumers are short sighted? Thanks for making my point!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It's one thing to care about the environment. It's another thing entirely to use the force of criminal law to impose your conservationist concerns on the rest of society.
Oh cry me a river. Hyperbole much? A little regulation on power consumption is not criminal law you stupid fucking whiner.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
"They love to present the EU as the creator of "loony rules" and regulations."
[rant]
And that happens for a reason. We could start with the very basic fact that the EU maintains two parliaments approximately 350 km apart and moves between these two parliaments (one in France and one in Belgium) every month. This would correspond to the US Congress moving between Washington and New Jersey every month. Do you consider such a decision to be sane?
Well more to the point. I am a scientist and I have had the unfortunate experience of participating in several EU efforts to build a EU capacity (Soviet style socialism with centrally issued 5 year plans with the goal of building government owned comglomerates in areas that are currently served by a mixture of private and public players) in different areas. It is clear at least from my experience that the EU Commission viewpoint is focused on expanding the influence of the EU in the member countries and not on what is best for the EU citizens as a whole.
But you are of course right that most EU regulation is not insane. It is simply the amount and pervasiveness of regulation that makes it easy to pick the insane parts.
[/rant]