All of life is politics. Humans are social animals that only survive by cooperating and working together, that is all politics and always has been.
What distresses me is that it seems to be impossible to discuss any such topic without getting in to a partisan mud slinging. Democrat vs Republican, socialist vs conservative, communist vs capitalist. Before you know it it's all devolved into name calling and Goodwin's Law is invoked with the mention of Hitler and Nazzis. Great job guys. Not.
Sure libertarians want their freedom to use whatever devices they like and consume whatever resources they can afford. Scratch "libertarians" we all want such freedoms. On the other hand if your activity is causing harm to others, creating pollution or wasting resources then society want's the freedom to stop you. Quite rightly so.
It's all about a balance between the freedom of the individual and the well being of the rest of society.
We as engineers, scientists or just technically savvy hobbyists should be able to discuss these issues from a technical, measurable perspective not knee jerk political preferences. We should be concerned with facts and figures as best we can ascertain them. There is a reality in this huge and complex world that we have a responsibility to tease out and show to society.
At the end of the day reality wins, like it or not, no matter what your politics are.
Perhaps it's hopeless, perhaps I'm expecting too much.
The fact that the afore mentioned engineers, scientists or just technically savvy hobbyists cannot discuss these issues on their technical forums in a rational way is a great loss I believe.
Well said.
From a technical standpoint, WELL MADE LEDs and CLFs are better in every spec that I can think of.
Please note that I said WELL MADE....most of what manufacturers offer are not WELL MADE and consumers want the CHEAPEST.
It all boils down to an old fashioned word... Liberty. I will not be told what I will illuminate my house with. If I want to light my house with kerosene, I will. I have stainless oil lamps just incase the power goes out and I run out of diesel for the generator. I do not want white gas inside the house because it is so volatile.
Joe
I completely concur. There are any number of things that simple incandescent lights were incidentally useful for where the replacement is far more costly or over-complicated. I now despise CFL's after being a cheerleader of them early on. The old ones that lasted forever are now gone, and replaced by only slightly less costly ones that last 1/4 of the older gen. LED while interesting to replace low wattage fixtures is ENORMOUSLY expensive to get the same lumens in 60+ watt situations. The quality ones cost even more and the low-cost versions, if they don't last 10 years are going to be tens or hundreds of times more expensive for a given lighting situation. Soon the cherry-picked studies will be trotted out to tell how this has saved x number of million barrels of oil (making sure to never express that in a percentage) and backs will be self patted and we'll move on to telling me what I can eat for lunch too. There are people who simply can not stand for choices to be made any other way then how they would make them, and assume there can be no rational reason for doing so.
LED is the only future there is for lighting now. More and more people are coming to hate CFLs and I see little hope for them to make much progress. But the price of LEDs is going to remain an order of magnitude higher than incandescent lighting and if you are not upper middle-class, buying a home and finding all the light sockets empty is going to eat a damn paycheck now even if you settle for CFLs.
I used to look for fish fillets in my local grocery store - they don't have the fish available every day. Fresh fish (supposedly), but in plastic wrapping. So one day about four years ago I noticed they had fish again, the date on the plastic wrap indicated that it was packed the same day. Good. So I bought it, brought it home, and cooked it - turned out it was not fresh. Must have been several days old. It hadn't turned _bad_, but it was not good. Around here we like _fresh_ fish (frozen fresh is also OK, but unfrozen fish must be _fresh_, and that means same-day catch).
The result? I have not bought fish from the shop since then. The date label was faked, and every time I see plastic-wrapped fish there I remember my previous experience and the idea of buying again is repulsive. Won't happen, ever.
How can that possibly be cost-effective for the shop? On the radio I heard a woman from a big grocery chain arguing that it was right to re-define 'fresh' to mean 'several days old', and to use the date when it arrived in the shop as 'origin date'. Again: How can that possibly be cost-effective? One bad experience for a customer is enough to counter a thousand good ones. I know that the shop has lost me as a fish customer. No money from me. And I'm not alone I'm sure.
-Tor
Many companies will do ANYTHING to cut costs.
In the United States the floor sweepings of beef were being processed with nasty chemicals and then offered to the public...without their knowledge of course.
Only until "pink slime" was exposed did it hit the fan...and suddenly companies were wondering why no one wanted to eat it.
I suspect the so-called information age creates as many problems though compelling fear as it resolves via enlightened sharing of factual information. It is really challenging to not get caught up in all the things that one might perceive as newly discovered hazards or pressing 'save the 'xxx'' agendas.
I just think the market place should drive the change over to better light devices rather than government mandates that are likely lobbied by special interests. I really can't see why I have to order a razor and razor blades from outside Taiwan as the current stuff is neither as good for shaving or good for the environment, and cost a bundle more to use.
There are obvious forces in play that decide what a regional market can and should have.. without concern for the enduser wanting to participate in what is really the best choice.
Being accosted on some many fronts about so many things that I can no longer use is getting a bit annoying.
Recycling was supposed to benefit the environment, but as near as I can tell the automotive industry has happily made it the mechanism to remove 2nd hand parts from salvage and to press people to buy new cars sooner. Less service jobs for mechanics keeping older cars on the road.. and so forth.
Supermarkets are supposed to be more cost effective for groceries, but meat and fish were fresher and safer when purchased from a butcher. Now items are mass processed, frozen and set out under plastic wrap so that one cannot easily tell how fresh (except for the date stamp).
People are less and less in a position to sort out things and decide for themselves. We just read the news and hope someone has gotten things right this time.
I have doubts.. Butchers used to grind an order of hamburger right in front of you as that was the safest way to assure freshness. The grinder was broken down and cleaned every day. The bacteria count goes way up when you mince meat as tons of air are introduced into the mix. Leave in in plastic wrap in a cold case is just not as good a solution. This is just one example of 'modern progress'.
Well said...it is just one example of "modern business"...one of many.
There is an ongoing fight about noting on any food label where the source of the food came from..guess what side industry is on?
@Tor
My local supermarket is a Carrefour, a French hypermart that is global. In the USA, the general rule of thumb is any supermarket is only as good as its meat and fish. After all, just about everything else that counts is in a box, bottle, or frozen. Fresh produce is not as sensitive about freshness.
Nonetheless, I have entirely given up on eating beef because there is so much red dye in it that I've no idea how fresh it is.
Big supermarkets are some of the lowest profit margin retail outlets on the planet; so they are very cost sensitive in their buying and management of freshness. But the reality is that cost sensitivity is winning out over quality. I see this as a general trend in big retailers, where they demand the low wholesale prices possible. Quality producers either are driven out of busniess or find a different channel for distribution.
Big retail is an evolution out of military commisary retail that got started at the end of WWII. Slowly it has driven the small retail shop keeper out of business except in places like German and Japan where the government demands that these retail channels have an opportunity to survive. Amazon and EBay have pretty much even bypassed a lot of those measures.
I am just deeply concerned that efficency in the market place has completely ignored that all the complexity of retail distribution was a major provider of occupations for independent people that did not rely on their government to provide a social welfare safety net.
In the 19 years of living in Taiwan, I have watched the transistion occur here from lots of small interesting vendors to a few big retailers. Costco and Ikea have been the most recent entries. Everyone loves the shopping, but wonders what has happened to the economy.
I just keep wondering when economist are going to accept that economist is indeed a social science and its biggest concern should be shaping markets to provide people with opportunities to take care of themselves. It seems that shifting the light bulb market to a new technology has next to nothing to do with that kind of thinking. It just seems to be big enterprise pushing out another older established big enterprise by a public relations campaign of saving the energy and environment. These promises may or may not be kept.
They recently did a sting operation on the seafood industry in the US...using DNA testing to determine fish species to determine whether you were being sold what they said you were getting.
Wanna to guess what the result is when an industry isn't government regulated?
Heh, lighten up, prices will drop.
The first blue LED I bought back in the mid 90s, cost about $4.00 from Digi-Key, I may still have the bag it came in.
It was made by Cree by the way.
Please note that I said WELL MADE....most of what manufacturers offer are not WELL MADE and consumers want the CHEAPEST.
Guess what the result will be?
Of course they do. If I showed you a car that outperformed your car in every measurable aspect (well expect payload capacity, and towing) and told you that this car cost 10 times what yours does would you disregard that and immediately purchase this vehicle? I mean it generates far less pollution, uses 1/2 of the fuel, needs less maintenance so it IS the best car to be had so why not? If the public does not adopt this car then perhaps I need to force them too evolve. After all pollution affects us all. They just need to scale back life a bit and buy the good stuff that I'm pushing. What, you need to tow something, well, most people don't so I'm not going to listen to you on that point.
I recently had a string of lights die on me in various locations. Floods, cans, track lights, outdoor, garage, and bathroom. All within a week or two. Drive up to the store and remember that no, I can't replace the 100watts I used in my workshop. LEDs of less lumens are jaw-droppingly expensive. I'll have to use CFLs but the fixtures insure that the lifetime will be short. The bathroom can use LEDs the cost will be $30 for the several lights needed. The garage lights will have to be CFL but they will suck in this because of the garage temp being near freezing. The outdoor lights.... well there will be no good options left there. Floods are still halogen so that's good. CFL floods are a joke. LED floods require a bar of gold to pay for.
The result.... over $70 spent to replace a few lights. I can't even imagine what it would cost to outfit every bulb in LED or CFL in that house if I had to buy them all at once as I did when we moved in. Previous owners had lots of CFLs and predictably.... they took them all with when they moved.
By a possibly amusing coincidence I ended up changing out three light fixtures a couple of days ago. We had a bulb that wouldn't light and it wasn't the bulb. When I took the fixture down I discovered that the wire nuts had disintegrated and the insulation was caking off the wires. Since I installed ceiling fans in most of the other rooms when we moved in, these are among the last of the original 40-year-old fixtures installed when the house was built, and the only ones that are used for a significant amount of time each day.
When I went to the home improvement store I noticed that a significant fraction of the stock for fixtures are already fixed LED without conventional sockets. Considering that LED's do fail I'm not sure I like this development. I got the only fixture they had similar to the bad ones -- it features a pull chain switch, which I don't need, but they didn't have any other similar drum globe form factor two-bulb fixtures. Now with daylight CFL's installed my kitchen looks like the ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind is getting ready to land in there.
Can you imagine. When we modernised the wiring in my house, built in 1867, we pulled out a lot of cabling that was sheathed with lead!
Of course the old lead water pipes came out at the same time.
If you ever wonder about my sanity, then that is my excuse:)
The reason you don't see mortgages longer than 30 years is due to simple math, not to the expected lifetime of the house. For example, a $165K mortgage financed at 7% over 30 years results in a monthly payment of $1097. The same mortgage financed over 40 years yields a monthly payment of $1025. So there really is no point in extending it for the extra 10 years, unless you just feel like paying a whole bunch of extra interest.
In the same sense that the customer does not pay the real price of gasoline.
Direct and indirect government subsidies that if eliminated would allow the price of gasoline to rise much higher levels.
I wonder what would happen if the government eliminated 1 penny of taxes for every penny of subsidies. Would the government eventually get out of the petroleum industry, and the companies would make the same profits?
I wonder what would happen if the government eliminated 1 penny of taxes for every penny of subsidies. Would the government eventually get out of the petroleum industry, and the companies would make the same profits?
Well, if the government first taxes and then subsidizes; there is a time delay in the flow of money. That is an interest free loan. Also, the whole process of taxing and subsidizing makes jobs. I suspect we better stay with what we have got.
Personally, I think we are blessed with a world that has lots of inefficiencies. It we didn't have inefficiencies, people would have nothing to do and 'idle hands make devil's work'.
Tax and then subsidize may be better than paying people to not work.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Has anyone else tried using 240VAC incandescent bulbs on 120VAC. The screw in bases are the same, you have to figure out which wattage you prefer; but they darn near last forever. Maybe one could set up an import scheme from Europe and sell them on EBay. One might make a lot of people happy smuggling these into the USA.
Well, when a government collects taxes generally the overwhelming burden falls on those with lower salaries.
Conversely when the government gives subsidies to industry a big chunk of that goes the bosses.
In this way we move money from poor people to rich people.
Of course industry lobbies for as many subsidies as it can get...
Has anyone else tried using 240VAC incandescent bulbs on 120VAC. The screw in bases are the same, you have to figure out which wattage you prefer; but they darn near last forever.
240V bulbs operated at 120V would be daylight bulbs for people who live on a planet orbiting a red giant star. What's a bit more practical is to use 130V bulbs that have a more normal (though still a bit yellow) color temperature and also last much longer at 120V...
240V bulbs operated at 120V would be daylight bulbs for people who live on a planet orbiting a red giant star. What's a bit more practical is to use 130V bulbs that have a more normal (though still a bit yellow) color temperature and also last much longer at 120V...
That article says nothing we have not already brought up here. Except of course that they can sell us light bulbs.
On the contrary, no one has supplied any information with evidence to back it up, outside of Phil's link in post #129. Which makes it anecdotal. I'm just helping bring the evidence to the table.
I am fan of LED lighting (typing this in a room illuminated by a pair of Philips LED bulbs), but let's not kid ourselves. One of the big corporate pushers of the law in the USA is part owner of my current employer (and partnering on lighting controls with one of my former employers). This was a push to move the industry away from commoditization, which allowed low-tech companies to drive price and margin down. Now, a few large companies are dominating the shelf space, allowing them to hold more attractive market share and margins. Sorry, but this is the best law that money could buy.
I am fan of LED lighting (typing this in a room illuminated by a pair of Philips LED bulbs), but let's not kid ourselves. One of the big corporate pushers of the law in the USA is part owner of my current employer (and partnering on lighting controls with one of my former employers). This was a push to move the industry away from commoditization, which allowed low-tech companies to drive price and margin down. Now, a few large companies are dominating the shelf space, allowing them to hold more attractive market share and margins. Sorry, but this is the best law that money could buy.
As is almost always the case. The large players have the resources to lobby for the details that allow them to move into compliance and be first to market while the regulatory environment is an additional barrier to entry for the small company who can't possibly bring a product to market that is price competitive. Everybody and their brother can make a filament light and there was little profit margin to be had. Now with $20 bulbs there is a lot more room. Phillips and GE are very happy campers about the situation I'm sure.
I am fan of LED lighting (typing this in a room illuminated by a pair of Philips LED bulbs), but let's not kid ourselves. One of the big corporate pushers of the law in the USA is part owner of my current employer (and partnering on lighting controls with one of my former employers). This was a push to move the industry away from commoditization, which allowed low-tech companies to drive price and margin down. Now, a few large companies are dominating the shelf space, allowing them to hold more attractive market share and margins. Sorry, but this is the best law that money could buy.
LOL..well you might be right.
Who controlled the White House and Congress when this bill was signed?
Comments
rotflmao ;<)
Well said.
From a technical standpoint, WELL MADE LEDs and CLFs are better in every spec that I can think of.
Please note that I said WELL MADE....most of what manufacturers offer are not WELL MADE and consumers want the CHEAPEST.
Guess what the result will be?
I completely concur. There are any number of things that simple incandescent lights were incidentally useful for where the replacement is far more costly or over-complicated. I now despise CFL's after being a cheerleader of them early on. The old ones that lasted forever are now gone, and replaced by only slightly less costly ones that last 1/4 of the older gen. LED while interesting to replace low wattage fixtures is ENORMOUSLY expensive to get the same lumens in 60+ watt situations. The quality ones cost even more and the low-cost versions, if they don't last 10 years are going to be tens or hundreds of times more expensive for a given lighting situation. Soon the cherry-picked studies will be trotted out to tell how this has saved x number of million barrels of oil (making sure to never express that in a percentage) and backs will be self patted and we'll move on to telling me what I can eat for lunch too. There are people who simply can not stand for choices to be made any other way then how they would make them, and assume there can be no rational reason for doing so.
LED is the only future there is for lighting now. More and more people are coming to hate CFLs and I see little hope for them to make much progress. But the price of LEDs is going to remain an order of magnitude higher than incandescent lighting and if you are not upper middle-class, buying a home and finding all the light sockets empty is going to eat a damn paycheck now even if you settle for CFLs.
Many companies will do ANYTHING to cut costs.
In the United States the floor sweepings of beef were being processed with nasty chemicals and then offered to the public...without their knowledge of course.
Only until "pink slime" was exposed did it hit the fan...and suddenly companies were wondering why no one wanted to eat it.
Well said...it is just one example of "modern business"...one of many.
There is an ongoing fight about noting on any food label where the source of the food came from..guess what side industry is on?
They recently did a sting operation on the seafood industry in the US...using DNA testing to determine fish species to determine whether you were being sold what they said you were getting.
Wanna to guess what the result is when an industry isn't government regulated?
http://io9.com/5969856/do-you-really-know-what-kind-of-fish-you-are-eating
The first blue LED I bought back in the mid 90s, cost about $4.00 from Digi-Key, I may still have the bag it came in.
It was made by Cree by the way.
Hmm, later, off to buy some stock
Where do you think those LED lams are made?
Never buy a fish that does not have it's head and tail still on.
Of course they do. If I showed you a car that outperformed your car in every measurable aspect (well expect payload capacity, and towing) and told you that this car cost 10 times what yours does would you disregard that and immediately purchase this vehicle? I mean it generates far less pollution, uses 1/2 of the fuel, needs less maintenance so it IS the best car to be had so why not? If the public does not adopt this car then perhaps I need to force them too evolve. After all pollution affects us all. They just need to scale back life a bit and buy the good stuff that I'm pushing. What, you need to tow something, well, most people don't so I'm not going to listen to you on that point.
I recently had a string of lights die on me in various locations. Floods, cans, track lights, outdoor, garage, and bathroom. All within a week or two. Drive up to the store and remember that no, I can't replace the 100watts I used in my workshop. LEDs of less lumens are jaw-droppingly expensive. I'll have to use CFLs but the fixtures insure that the lifetime will be short. The bathroom can use LEDs the cost will be $30 for the several lights needed. The garage lights will have to be CFL but they will suck in this because of the garage temp being near freezing. The outdoor lights.... well there will be no good options left there. Floods are still halogen so that's good. CFL floods are a joke. LED floods require a bar of gold to pay for.
The result.... over $70 spent to replace a few lights. I can't even imagine what it would cost to outfit every bulb in LED or CFL in that house if I had to buy them all at once as I did when we moved in. Previous owners had lots of CFLs and predictably.... they took them all with when they moved.
When I went to the home improvement store I noticed that a significant fraction of the stock for fixtures are already fixed LED without conventional sockets. Considering that LED's do fail I'm not sure I like this development. I got the only fixture they had similar to the bad ones -- it features a pull chain switch, which I don't need, but they didn't have any other similar drum globe form factor two-bulb fixtures. Now with daylight CFL's installed my kitchen looks like the ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind is getting ready to land in there.
Of course the old lead water pipes came out at the same time.
If you ever wonder about my sanity, then that is my excuse:)
Mortgages are typically 30 years for any age home. I'd bet that there are millions of homes that are over 40 years old that are carrying mortgages.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0998.pdf
-Phil
In the same sense that the customer does not pay the real price of gasoline.
Direct and indirect government subsidies that if eliminated would allow the price of gasoline to rise much higher levels.
Round here the customer does not pay the true price of gasoline. No, they pay a lot more. There is a huge motor fuel tax in Europe.
I cannot believe the American government is buying gas for you.
It doesn't.
Well, if the government first taxes and then subsidizes; there is a time delay in the flow of money. That is an interest free loan. Also, the whole process of taxing and subsidizing makes jobs. I suspect we better stay with what we have got.
Personally, I think we are blessed with a world that has lots of inefficiencies. It we didn't have inefficiencies, people would have nothing to do and 'idle hands make devil's work'.
Tax and then subsidize may be better than paying people to not work.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Has anyone else tried using 240VAC incandescent bulbs on 120VAC. The screw in bases are the same, you have to figure out which wattage you prefer; but they darn near last forever. Maybe one could set up an import scheme from Europe and sell them on EBay. One might make a lot of people happy smuggling these into the USA.
Conversely when the government gives subsidies to industry a big chunk of that goes the bosses.
In this way we move money from poor people to rich people.
Of course industry lobbies for as many subsidies as it can get...
240V bulbs operated at 120V would be daylight bulbs for people who live on a planet orbiting a red giant star. What's a bit more practical is to use 130V bulbs that have a more normal (though still a bit yellow) color temperature and also last much longer at 120V...
http://blog.1000bulbs.com/why-buy-130-volt-light-bulbs/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ljKX9Om7Z4s
Just wonder if he is still alive? DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME KIDS!!
Browsing for a bit after reading that led me to this article which articulates the issue:
http://blog.1000bulbs.com/the-truth-about-eisa-light-bulb-ban/
On the contrary, no one has supplied any information with evidence to back it up, outside of Phil's link in post #129. Which makes it anecdotal. I'm just helping bring the evidence to the table.
For anyone that wants to wade through the 310-page House Bill: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-110hr6enr/pdf/BILLS-110hr6enr.pdf
As is almost always the case. The large players have the resources to lobby for the details that allow them to move into compliance and be first to market while the regulatory environment is an additional barrier to entry for the small company who can't possibly bring a product to market that is price competitive. Everybody and their brother can make a filament light and there was little profit margin to be had. Now with $20 bulbs there is a lot more room. Phillips and GE are very happy campers about the situation I'm sure.
LOL..well you might be right.
Who controlled the White House and Congress when this bill was signed?
What does it matter when they're all in collusion?
Or rather, they cater to the ones with the most speech. because after all speech == money.
and that's about as political as I'll get here.