I still think calculating these things is harder than you think. One point: I didn’t mean to talk only about consumer use of electricity, but rather any electrical use resulting from the regulations, similarly for CO2 emissions. So, for instance, electricity and CO2 emissions relating to a factory for making compact fluorescent bulbs that went bankrupt, and so never recovered its costs from consumers, would count, as would things paid for by government subsidies rather than consumers.
You’re right that you can put an upper bound on total electricity usage in making the bulb if you know the relevant cost of electricity, and the cost of the bulb. If we look at an “Amazon basics” 9 Watt, 800 lumen (60 Watt incandescent equivalent), 10000 hour lifetime bulb, currently $2.50US at amazon.com, the power savings of 510 Kilowatt-hours is indeed much greater than the maximum 31.5 Kilowatt-hours for manufacturing the bulb—provided all those numbers are actually correct (which is quite doubtful—lifetime might be one-tenth what is claimed), and there are no subsidies involved, and we don’t count some amortization of the electricity cost of previous failed attempts at improving on incandescent bulbs.
But maybe there now are good LED bulbs, that should usually be preferred to incandescent bulbs. But if so, why are regulations needed?
In that regard, it’s interesting that the Amazon basics listing says “Not eligible for shipments to California”. A comment at the link you give quotes one manufacturer as saying “(redacted) 10 watt A19 lamps were designed with flicker-free light output as the first and foremost concern, and unfortunately we were only able to achieve a power factor rating of 0.6. Consequently, these lamps are currently banned for sale in California and we are unable to ship them to our California customers.”
Could it be that California’s regulations are actually counterproductive? More fundamentally, why would one have any confidence that these regulations are not counterproductive? What’s your “gears level” theory of how regulations end up being designed as well as possible for the common good, rather as an attempt to get the votes of uninformed electors, or as an outright corrupt mechanism of enriching well-connected businesses?
Could it be that California’s regulations are actually counterproductive? More fundamentally, why would one have any confidence that these regulations are not counterproductive? What’s your “gears level” theory of how regulations end up being designed as well as possible for the common good, rather as an attempt to get the votes of uninformed electors, or as an outright corrupt mechanism of enriching well-connected businesses?
Here’s the gears level model:
(1) there is no guarantee, and regulations can be counterproductive
(2) there are many problems where the incentives are misaligned, and so capitalistic forces CANNOT solve the problem. The government is a critical piece of the system, like an organ in a human. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)
You can also observationally notice that places with lots of government intervention can be either extremely nice (parts of Europe) or highly productive with the strongest economic growth known to history (China).
The undertone I am sensing is you have accepted political propaganda that generally says “government is bad”. This is not correct. Bad government is bad, but more good government is almost always better than a capitalist Moloch equilibrium.
Along those lines, what, for example, do you think of Drax wood pellets
Well, the math says every ton of pellets has a certain amount of CO2 you avoided releasing, but you have to correct for the harvesting, shipping, processing, and just the general scalability issues. There is only so much land in the world that can support a forest, it probably isn’t a viable large scale strategy.
Care to explain why rather than making this claim without an argument.
“It’s not a gears level model because.”
If I read the above, I claim:
1. There are no guarantees of government goodness
2. There are large classes of things only government can do, thus anarchy or limited government fails
3. We do not have examples of successful countries that did anarchy/limited government in human history, and modern day successes had large and very expensive governments, including the united states.
Seems like I acknowledged the point, gave a reason why government is necessary, and gave empirical evidence that government is necessary and it must be large. How much detail do you demand.
It’s not about detail, it’s just that what you gave is not a gears-level model.
Sorry, I feel kinda rude just leaving it like that, but… if that link doesn’t help, I feel like it would take a lot of effort to explain in depth, and I don’t think I want to put that effort in.
I made the specific claim that government is a critical part of a modern economy and well chosen policies make a country highly successful.
I give a mechanical reason—those policies cause availability of “public goods”, which multiply the performance of the economy. For example, China building high speed rail and large power networks and large sea ports and mass training thousands of engineers, refusing to fund liberal arts training, and mass training thousands of doctors rather than allowing a medical cartel to restrict supply—these are all government actions with consequences, and they all fit in the class of public goods. None of these things would happen organically from private industry for a number of a reasons that won’t fit in this post.
For this to be untrue—for this claim to be falsified—there would need to exist a counter example. There is not. People advocating for anarchy or various levels of libertarianism are simply scammers, they want their personal taxes lowered and plan to die from aging before the severe negative consequences affect them.
I still think calculating these things is harder than you think. One point: I didn’t mean to talk only about consumer use of electricity, but rather any electrical use resulting from the regulations, similarly for CO2 emissions. So, for instance, electricity and CO2 emissions relating to a factory for making compact fluorescent bulbs that went bankrupt, and so never recovered its costs from consumers, would count, as would things paid for by government subsidies rather than consumers.
You’re right that you can put an upper bound on total electricity usage in making the bulb if you know the relevant cost of electricity, and the cost of the bulb. If we look at an “Amazon basics” 9 Watt, 800 lumen (60 Watt incandescent equivalent), 10000 hour lifetime bulb, currently $2.50US at amazon.com, the power savings of 510 Kilowatt-hours is indeed much greater than the maximum 31.5 Kilowatt-hours for manufacturing the bulb—provided all those numbers are actually correct (which is quite doubtful—lifetime might be one-tenth what is claimed), and there are no subsidies involved, and we don’t count some amortization of the electricity cost of previous failed attempts at improving on incandescent bulbs.
But maybe there now are good LED bulbs, that should usually be preferred to incandescent bulbs. But if so, why are regulations needed?
In that regard, it’s interesting that the Amazon basics listing says “Not eligible for shipments to California”. A comment at the link you give quotes one manufacturer as saying “(redacted) 10 watt A19 lamps were designed with flicker-free light output as the first and foremost concern, and unfortunately we were only able to achieve a power factor rating of 0.6. Consequently, these lamps are currently banned for sale in California and we are unable to ship them to our California customers.”
Could it be that California’s regulations are actually counterproductive? More fundamentally, why would one have any confidence that these regulations are not counterproductive? What’s your “gears level” theory of how regulations end up being designed as well as possible for the common good, rather as an attempt to get the votes of uninformed electors, or as an outright corrupt mechanism of enriching well-connected businesses?
Along those lines, what, for example, do you think of Drax wood pellets? See https://www.clientearth.org/projects/the-greenwashing-files/drax/#:~:text=Drax%20says%20energy%20from%20biomass,when%20the%20pellets%20are%20burned.
Could it be that California’s regulations are actually counterproductive? More fundamentally, why would one have any confidence that these regulations are not counterproductive? What’s your “gears level” theory of how regulations end up being designed as well as possible for the common good, rather as an attempt to get the votes of uninformed electors, or as an outright corrupt mechanism of enriching well-connected businesses?
Here’s the gears level model:
(1) there is no guarantee, and regulations can be counterproductive
(2) there are many problems where the incentives are misaligned, and so capitalistic forces CANNOT solve the problem. The government is a critical piece of the system, like an organ in a human. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)
You can also observationally notice that places with lots of government intervention can be either extremely nice (parts of Europe) or highly productive with the strongest economic growth known to history (China).
The undertone I am sensing is you have accepted political propaganda that generally says “government is bad”. This is not correct. Bad government is bad, but more good government is almost always better than a capitalist Moloch equilibrium.
Along those lines, what, for example, do you think of Drax wood pellets
Well, the math says every ton of pellets has a certain amount of CO2 you avoided releasing, but you have to correct for the harvesting, shipping, processing, and just the general scalability issues. There is only so much land in the world that can support a forest, it probably isn’t a viable large scale strategy.
I note that what you’ve offered is not remotely a gears level model.
Care to explain why rather than making this claim without an argument.
“It’s not a gears level model because.”
If I read the above, I claim:
1. There are no guarantees of government goodness
2. There are large classes of things only government can do, thus anarchy or limited government fails
3. We do not have examples of successful countries that did anarchy/limited government in human history, and modern day successes had large and very expensive governments, including the united states.
Seems like I acknowledged the point, gave a reason why government is necessary, and gave empirical evidence that government is necessary and it must be large. How much detail do you demand.
It’s not about detail, it’s just that what you gave is not a gears-level model.
Sorry, I feel kinda rude just leaving it like that, but… if that link doesn’t help, I feel like it would take a lot of effort to explain in depth, and I don’t think I want to put that effort in.
It satisfies the criteria.
I made the specific claim that government is a critical part of a modern economy and well chosen policies make a country highly successful.
I give a mechanical reason—those policies cause availability of “public goods”, which multiply the performance of the economy. For example, China building high speed rail and large power networks and large sea ports and mass training thousands of engineers, refusing to fund liberal arts training, and mass training thousands of doctors rather than allowing a medical cartel to restrict supply—these are all government actions with consequences, and they all fit in the class of public goods. None of these things would happen organically from private industry for a number of a reasons that won’t fit in this post.
For this to be untrue—for this claim to be falsified—there would need to exist a counter example. There is not. People advocating for anarchy or various levels of libertarianism are simply scammers, they want their personal taxes lowered and plan to die from aging before the severe negative consequences affect them.