Edison Would Have Loved New Light Bulb Law, Says His Great-Grandson

New submitter futuristic writes with a link to Thomas Edison's great-grandson's take on Thomas Edison and the alleged demise of the incandescent light bulb. From the article: "My great grandfather's 100-watt incandescent will be replaced with new energy-efficient versions, including CFLs, LEDs, and — yes — new and improved incandescent bulbs. ... And my great-grandfather wouldn't have it any other way."

Comments

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolute bullshit. As much as any sensible man should support the new lightbulb law, Edison was *not* a sensible man. All you need to know to figure out his stance on old outdated technology versus new, superior technology is this: DC vs. AC, Edison vs. Tesla.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't old vs new technology, it was where he could make the most. I'm sure he'd love the new laws....if he could make a buck from them.

Re:Bullshit

[Forty Two Tenfold]

You mean Washington, DC? Because you can't do half of the things with direct current that are possible with AC. And I don't mean Anonymous Cowards. AND DC is in fact way more dangerous than AC, especially if the AC frequency is very high.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, that's why every single device in my house has an AC/DC converter, to convert that superior AC to something that they can actually fucking use.

Puts out a ton of waste heat in the process too, although since it's winter now, I suppose that's just as well.

Re:Bullshit

[Adriax]

Lets drop all environmental laws while we're at it. Why should I have to pay a city sewage utility when I can just connect a pipe to my toilet and dump it all in my neighbor's yard, or even better the river.

These laws are put in to stop idiots from doing stuff now that will com back to hurt them and others later.
I can dump my sewage in my neighbor's yard now, but really damn quickly that neighbor will pop over to my place and pop me one in the face. I can guarantee you there are a LOT of people who do not understand dumping your sewage on someone else's property might be objectionable and might cause that response.
Just as there's a bunch of people who don't know those more expensive bulbs easily save you more than they cost, and using less efficient bulbs just hastens rising power costs.

Re:Bullshit

[icebraining]

You mean, my light bulbs composed of LEDs? Yes, they're DC.

Re:Bullshit

[bunratty]

The same reason there are building codes. People would just buy cheap houses that fall down and have all sorts of other hazards otherwise. People are pretty dumb and cheap. We're doing all sorts of other things to reduce energy use, also, including having new standards (laws) for energy efficiency for cars and applicances. We should also update building codes to require more insulation.

Re:Bullshit

[submain]

IMHO, this law has nothing to do with the environment. Most likely, its a corporate lobby to give them an excuse to raise the price of incandescent bulbs. In other words, legalized price fixing.

Re:Bullshit

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

What bullshit. Anybody who wants to pay more in taxes can at any time do so, without be compelled to do so. ... The only fucking reason this hypocrite pays less taxes is because he sets out to do so from the beginning.

No, THAT is the real bullshit. There is no contradiction between using "loopholes" and simultaneously wanting the loopholes to be taken out of the system because the simple fact of it is that there is no such thing as a loophole - only legal and illegal actions. Buffet explicitly wants the capital gains tax rate to be increased such that taking his income as dividends instead of earned income won't save him or his cronies from the higher tax rates that regular people pay.

Re:Bullshit

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So it seems that your answer is that yes, yes it really is too hard.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing how numbers are meaningless without the proper context. For example, that "60% of taxes come from the top 5% of tax payers" is pretty misleading if you don't also include how much of the nation's wealth that 5% control.

Re:Bullshit

[sulimma]

Things might work fine at your place, but they work better at other places.

I am living in Germany and per capita we use only 50% of the energy that the US does to create 90% of the wealth.
(Or even more wealth if you remove eastern Germany from the equation which still needs some time to catch up.)
Stricter regulations for cars, buildings, etc. are a big part of what makes this possible.

Imagine what would happen to the oil price if the US would get their efficiency up to the level of the other industrialised countries.

 

Re:Bullshit

[roman_mir]

No, THAT is the real bullshit.

Buffet is the owner of 1/3rd of all BH dividend paying shares, so any amount of money that BH pays in taxes is the amount of money that he does not receive as dividend payments.

When BH pays say 35% (if it does) in taxes, that's out of Buffet's pocket immediately. Then he pays 15% on his income, which is mostly dividends (he pays himself a small salary, around 100K or so, the rest is dividends).

Why is Buffet 'pro-taxes' discounting the fact that uncle Sam saved his company back in 08 by bailing out AIG, the end of which would have ruined BH (Buffet made insane leveraged bets through AIG in early 2008 for the mortgage market through AIG)?

It's because BH is in business of buying out companies and restructuring them. When death taxes are paid, to raise the money to pay off the gov't thieves via IRS, the heirs have to liquidate all sorts of assets, including income generating business holdings. That's when the vultures in form of BH descend upon the company to buy the ownership at a firesale.

The real economic growth in USA happened between 1870 and 1913 under 0 income, payroll, corporate tax.

Im sorry what a load of hogwash...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's also not forget that most old incandescent bulbs manufactured today are imports from China

From the article...

Where the hell do they think most of those CFL/LED bulbs are made? Sure as hell is not in the united states anymore... Lots of the incandescent were made here. They closed the plants. Not because they couldn't convert them. But because it was just cheaper to add to the ones in China/Mexico/Brazil...

To wave the patriot flag here is garbage. Its not. Its just business, of which Edison was one of the best of his time...

Fluff article. Just to toot how this is such a good thing. Where the jury is still out on that one. We will not know really for 10-15 years if this was a good idea or not. It looks on paper like a good idea. But as with many gov programs what looks good on paper in practice turns out to suck balls...

Re:FP?

[tomhudson]

He'd be shocking animals to death with the new lightbulbs, suing Westinghouse and Tesla and everyone else, and in general acting like any other a$$hole - because that's what he was, and that's what he did, as well as cheating Tesla out of $$$ - all putting the "Con" in "Con Edison."

Re:FP?

[JWSmythe]

    Heh. That's pretty much what I was going to say.. If he had the patent(s) on it, he'd praise it as the best thing since ... well ... the light bulb. If he didn't, he'd be pushing all the reasons that it was horrible and dangerous.

    That's the way he played.. Otherwise, we would be praising the successor to the Joseph Swan light bulb.

    Patents are a bitch, and Edison was the original patent troll.

Re:FP?

[hairyfeet]

He'd be shocking animals to death with the new lightbulbs, suing Westinghouse and Tesla and everyone else, and in general acting like any other a$$hole - because that's what he was, and that's what he did, as well as cheating Tesla out of $$$ - all putting the "Con" in "Con Edison."

Uhhh...how EXACTLY is that flamebait? doesn't anyone know their history anymore? it was Edison that was frying animals and pushing for the electric chair because he was sure it would discredit Tesla and AC power and since he had DC patented up the ass he stood to make a fortune if he pulled it off. its pretty common knowledge that even after it was proven that with the tech of the time DC just wouldn't scale Edison was pushing for "neighborhood generators' belching out coal smoke to power a couple of blocks rather than admit while DC had its uses it wasn't gonna work long distance.

Sorry to burst anyone's bubbles but while Edison was a brilliant man he was also as ruthless as they come and had NO problem with deep roasting animals and people just to try to ruin a competitor. Hell Gates and Jobs didn't have nothing on Edison as i can't really picture Jobs having someone bashed to death with an IBM PC to "prove" they were unsafe.

Re:Really?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

No, because it is impossible to prove. I call it the post-mortem fallacy: where someone argues a position is held by another who was dead long before he or she could have had any opinion on the topic. We don't know what opinion Edison would have had on the new law.

What is this doing on Slashdot?

[couchslug]

Who gives a flying fuck what a descendant of Edison thinks?

Why should we be even slightly interested in this shit?