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$60 Light Bulb Debuts On Earth Day
theodp writes "How much would you pay for an amazing light bulb? On Sunday — Earth Day — Philips' $60 LED light bulb goes on sale at Home Depot and other outlets. The bulb, which lasts 20 years, won a $10 million DOE contest that stipulated the winning bulb should cost consumers $22 in its first year on the market. Ed Crawford, the head of Philips' U.S. lighting division, said it was always part of the plan to have utility rebates bring the price down to the $22 range."
Reading lights on the bus I ride have been replaced with multi-LED cluster bulbs - in less than 18 months most have several dead LEDs in the cluster.
Yeah, I'd consider 60 bucks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hopefully it comes closer to these claims than the CFLs, which claimed 5 year lives, but often failed within a few weeks.
21
1 person to change the bulb
20 taxpayers to subsidize him.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Don't worry, the LEDs will still have tens of thousands of hours left in them when a $.02 capacitor blows its guts out and terminates the driver board because a $.05 capacitor would have bloated the BOM too much...
Cthulhu doesn't exist, however we can all agree that an Eldritch Abdomination is bad.
While I'd never wish to submit to the invisible hand of a free eldritch abomination, the idea of a regulated abomination, it's hands carefully controlled, might be something I'd be interested in entertaining.
They're there affecting their effect.
Funny how they advertise 20 years but promise only 3.
At a $60 price tag, that doesn't boost my confidence in their product. If they are going to claim 20 years, they should have a warranty of at least between 10 and 15 years.
This:
"I'm still paying the full price of the bulb"
means almost the exact opposite of this:
"that $60 cost has to come from *somewhere*"
Yes. The money comes from somewhere: it comes from somewhere other than from you. No, you don't pay the full price of the bulb, you pay $22/60, plus maybe another ten cents, and the rest of society pays for the rest. Congratulations, you just benefited from a transfer program which society set up because society thinks the world is better with it, than without it. Society wants people like you to have a bit of their money, which is why we voted for leaders to give us such programs. If you don't want the money, that's okay too, you don't have to bother with the rebates.
I object when I hear people say that all market distortions are bad. No, they aren't Many market distortions are good. Some are bad. Obviously these are judgement calls, but to equate oil subsidies with LED subsidies is absurd and does a dis-service to everyone. It is culpably simplistic reasoning. (Let me be perfectly explicitly clear: it's still okay if you think this particular market distortion is bad, but it is not okay to thus conclude that all market distortions are bad.)
I'm glad you would buy the bulbs un-subsidized. Me too, probably. But that's not the question, the question is would other people buy them, large numbers of people. If the answer is yes, then perhaps no market distortion is necessary; but apparently the people who set it up thought the answer was no, and I tend to agree with them.
20 years at only 4 hours per day is what they advertise. 3 years at 24 hours a day is the equivalent of 18 years at 4 hours a day. Their warranty must be counting on a worst-case usage model. I wouldn't call that entirely unfair.
What free market? America has never been a country with zero market regulations -- never. In fact, for the first couple hundred years our entire tax base was levied on imports.
It seems to me that tmosley doesn't know what a free market is. That isn't surprising, today's proponents of free markets rely on people having no understanding of what a free market is, and simply having a knee-jerk attraction to anything with "free" in it.
Look it up. You might blow your own mind. "ZERO market regulations!? Who would want that?!" An incredibly tiny minority of industrialists would want that, tmosley. It's the job of the rest of us to stop them.
Who the fuck gave anyone else the right to dictacte how efficient my lightbulbs are? Keep your useless feel-good regulaitons to yourself.
Who the fuck gave anyone else the right to dictacte how efficient my toilet and shower are? Keep your useless feel-good regulaitons to yourself.
These laws take away freedom, and do nothing practical to make the world a better place. The only reason to support these laws is a love of government power. A rational approach would be to limit regulaiton like this to:
* Where there's an actual crisis
* Affecting the most significant practical use of the resource
* In some way that would be the least possibly intrusive.
The bathroom fixtures are particularly absurd: most places have no water shortage, most water is used in power geeration, and most of the rest is used in agriculture, and most of the rest is used in home irrigation, so the % of water that enters the bathroom in the first place is trivial. It's regulating quite intimate activities, in a way that produces no savings, to solve a "problem" that doesn't exist in most places. You don't have to be a libertarian to object to this.
Power used by light bubls in the home is similar: it's a small percentage of all power used (and if you're heating your house anyway, I'm not sure how inefficient the old bulbs are), it's a choice that consumers are perfectly capable of making on their own, and for many people this has a direct and negative effect on their quality of life. You don't have to be a libertarian to object to this.
This is government power for the sake of government power. We should be outraged by this overreach, but apparantly we're so conditioned to obey authority that it just slides by.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
/. - Where more inefficient toilets means losing personal freedoms.
Idiot.
" so the % of water that enters the bathroom in the first place is trivial."
uh, no it isn't. Also, it's water used in the home times everyone tapped into the supply; which is a lot.
"It's regulating quite intimate activities,"
no. No one is telling you how much too poop. Only a standard of the amount of water it takes to push that turd into the system. No one is telling you how to hold your dick.
Changing water amount in a toilet is a minimal impact.
And don't act like industry and agriculture isn't also regulated.
Of course, you clearly have no grasp of time. Growth, weather patterns, cleaning, and many other things to do with water; which by the way isn't 'Yours'. The bit you get into the home is yours, but not the systems and storage.
It's everyone's.
You just can't grasp anything bigger the what you personally use, can you? A small percentage of power, over million and million of home sis a lot of power.
And people don't change without a driving force. Society is more then just you.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" so the % of water that enters the bathroom in the first place is trivial."
uh, no it isn't. Also, it's water used in the home times everyone tapped into the supply; which is a lot.
Uh, yes it is! Livermore Labs did an extensive study of national water flows about 10 years back - sadly I can't find a link to the materials online any more (anyone?).
About 50% of all water used is used for power generation.
More than half of what's left is used in agriculture.
About half of what's used outside of industry if user for irrigation (watering your lawn).
So it was only something like 10% of total water usage that ever enters the home. It's the smallest and most intrusive target for regulation.
And why at the national level? A particular city with recurring drought (or drainage) issues - sure, I can see that. But there's no nation-wide problem to be solved here.
And you know what? That water isn't free - price is a great motivator for people to use less. Regulation like this seem to spring up where there's no genuine reason to conserve - if the resource were actually scarce, it would be expensive, and people would naturally use less. Funny old world.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.