Loneliness is widely quoted to be as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes daily. It increases the overall risk of death by 26%.
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In Feb, exports to China slumped by 12.4%, while exports to the US rose 19%. This means that the US is by far the most important export market, and France is also establishing itself as #2, far ahead of China.
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Turkey borders seven different countries all of which use different alphabets.
Lightbulbs
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Turkey borders seven different countries all of which use different alphabets.
Lightbulbs
Where freedom of choice comes from.
This article does not look very rewarding but it really is.
Competitive markets with low costs of entry mean businesses can’t raise prices without offering extra value to the consumer. Competition — even potential competition that would leap into the market for the right minimum price — keeps prices low. If an industry leader, or even a few large brands, “conspired to raise prices,” a startup would quickly gain market share. Market leaders, instead, protect themselves from competition and creative destruction by blocking new competitors through regulation.
In 2011, GE, Philips, and Sylvania manufactured more incandescent light bulbs than all other companies combined. But lightbulbs were 100-year-old technology with low material costs and little difference between manufacturers, so store brands and imports were flooding the market with indistinguishable 25-cent bulbs.
Alternative bulbs, now familiar as corkscrew-shaped compact fluorescents, use less energy and last longer for certain uses. Fluorescent lights were common in brightly-lit places where energy savings paid off and bulbs were changed very infrequently, like grocery stores and office buildings. But making them ‘compact’ wasn’t the barrier to practical household use: fluorescents give off tinted light, have to ‘warm up’ when switched on, and contain toxic mercury gas. Most people don’t live in the same home long enough to realize 20-year energy savings, and taking $20 light bulbs with us when we move is impractical. Consumers didn’t want CFLs even for a price comparable to traditional bulbs, and they were vastly more expensive.
CFLs had some remarkable advantages, however, for Philips, Sylvania, and GE. Higher technical barriers to engineering and manufacturing (compared to very simple traditional bulbs) and more expensive materials kept potential competitors out of specialty bulbs. But the barriers weren’t high enough that brands could hike prices, even for existing users of fluorescents, without inviting a start-up into the game. Here, where leading brands faced no serious competition, was where they wanted to ‘compete’ for customers.
Philips Electronics formed a coalition with environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, to lobby for “higher energy efficiency standards” — special regulation to ban traditional bulbs and force consumers to buy higher-cost bulbs that only the three market giants could make. Rather than offer consumers free choice in which bulbs made economic sense for their own homes, corporate interests authored regulation to choose for us.
Regulation passed by Congress, and worse, by unaccountable bureaucratic agencies, is subject to manipulation by those with the most to gain. A rapidly expanding lobbying industry exists solely to influence policymakers, and the still-shadowier public affairs and policy fields disguise that corporate influence as public good.
Such restrictions are rarely influenced by the priorities and relative values of average citizens. The costs of lobbying are simply too high for us, and the returns too small. Even if we were successful, the average American stands to gain less than $100 annually by having cheaper light bulbs available — major manufacturers can gain billions in market share by removing consumer choice.
No human, whether employed by the federal government or otherwise, possesses the cognitive empathy or emotional imagination to make good choices for hundreds of millions of citizens. Lobbying to limit access to lightbulbs is costly and frustrating, but it is trivial when compared to the catastrophes of mismanaged veterans’ care, a hogtied medical innovation, the disastrous housing bubble, or a lengthy foreign occupation.
Regulatory capture and rent-seeking trace for us explicitly the modern American mercantilists’ self-interest in limiting trade and replacing individual consumer choices with regulatory force. Licensing and tariffs, permits and inspections and certifications: elites have found many names for the permission we must seek to operate businesses and trade as we wish.--Williams
Competitive markets with low costs of entry mean businesses can’t raise prices without offering extra value to the consumer. Competition — even potential competition that would leap into the market for the right minimum price — keeps prices low. If an industry leader, or even a few large brands, “conspired to raise prices,” a startup would quickly gain market share. Market leaders, instead, protect themselves from competition and creative destruction by blocking new competitors through regulation.
In 2011, GE, Philips, and Sylvania manufactured more incandescent light bulbs than all other companies combined. But lightbulbs were 100-year-old technology with low material costs and little difference between manufacturers, so store brands and imports were flooding the market with indistinguishable 25-cent bulbs.
Alternative bulbs, now familiar as corkscrew-shaped compact fluorescents, use less energy and last longer for certain uses. Fluorescent lights were common in brightly-lit places where energy savings paid off and bulbs were changed very infrequently, like grocery stores and office buildings. But making them ‘compact’ wasn’t the barrier to practical household use: fluorescents give off tinted light, have to ‘warm up’ when switched on, and contain toxic mercury gas. Most people don’t live in the same home long enough to realize 20-year energy savings, and taking $20 light bulbs with us when we move is impractical. Consumers didn’t want CFLs even for a price comparable to traditional bulbs, and they were vastly more expensive.
CFLs had some remarkable advantages, however, for Philips, Sylvania, and GE. Higher technical barriers to engineering and manufacturing (compared to very simple traditional bulbs) and more expensive materials kept potential competitors out of specialty bulbs. But the barriers weren’t high enough that brands could hike prices, even for existing users of fluorescents, without inviting a start-up into the game. Here, where leading brands faced no serious competition, was where they wanted to ‘compete’ for customers.
Philips Electronics formed a coalition with environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, to lobby for “higher energy efficiency standards” — special regulation to ban traditional bulbs and force consumers to buy higher-cost bulbs that only the three market giants could make. Rather than offer consumers free choice in which bulbs made economic sense for their own homes, corporate interests authored regulation to choose for us.
Regulation passed by Congress, and worse, by unaccountable bureaucratic agencies, is subject to manipulation by those with the most to gain. A rapidly expanding lobbying industry exists solely to influence policymakers, and the still-shadowier public affairs and policy fields disguise that corporate influence as public good.
Such restrictions are rarely influenced by the priorities and relative values of average citizens. The costs of lobbying are simply too high for us, and the returns too small. Even if we were successful, the average American stands to gain less than $100 annually by having cheaper light bulbs available — major manufacturers can gain billions in market share by removing consumer choice.
No human, whether employed by the federal government or otherwise, possesses the cognitive empathy or emotional imagination to make good choices for hundreds of millions of citizens. Lobbying to limit access to lightbulbs is costly and frustrating, but it is trivial when compared to the catastrophes of mismanaged veterans’ care, a hogtied medical innovation, the disastrous housing bubble, or a lengthy foreign occupation.
Regulatory capture and rent-seeking trace for us explicitly the modern American mercantilists’ self-interest in limiting trade and replacing individual consumer choices with regulatory force. Licensing and tariffs, permits and inspections and certifications: elites have found many names for the permission we must seek to operate businesses and trade as we wish.--Williams
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