Washington's Dim Bulbs

With Congress and the White House engaged in an epic debate over the proper size, scope and cost of the federal government, a legislative tussle over light bulbs would seem to be the proverbial flea on the elephant's hide.

Nevertheless, regulation that limits consumers' choice of lighting is an illuminating insight into the paternalistic mindset that fuels myriad other government attempts to exert control over Americans. Those costs are measured not just in dollars, but in lost freedoms.

Tuesday night, the House was scheduled to vote on whether to repeal a 2007 law that requires incandescent light bulbs to be 30 percent more efficient by 2012 (even if the repeal passed, President Obama would veto it). That sounded the death knell for traditional, so-called "Edison" bulbs. Those inexpensive and easy-to-dispose-of light sources fall short of the new standard, so they will be off the store shelves by the end of December.

The idea is to force consumers to switch to compact fluorescent lights, or CFLs, those pigtailed bulbs that cost more than traditional incandescents but use less energy and are supposed to last longer than the old Edisons.

Many consumers have resisted the change. They don't like that CFLs cost more upfront than Edisons. They don't like the different glow that CFLs emit. They don't like the fact that the bulbs contain mercury, which can be hazardous to clean up if one breaks. CFLs don't work well in rooms with dimmer switches. They take longer than Edisons to reach their maximum brightness.

For some Americans, the tradeoffs don't warrant the potential savings in energy bills the CFLs are supposed to produce.

To which the government says: Tough.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently defended the new light bulb standard by telling The Wall Street Journal, "We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money."

That's nanny statism in a nutshell.

Where in the Constitution is government empowered to save people from wasting their own money? For that matter, who are the feds to judge what is wasteful? And where else is the bureaucracy looking to prevent what it considers to be foolish spending?

We will pause for a moment to allow the irony of Washington chastising others for wasting money to sink in.

People can't be trusted to make their own choices. Government knows what is best for us — despite a glaring lack of evidence that centralized bureaucracies consistently make wise and efficient choices, or even abide by the same rules they foist on the proles.

The human nature often conflicts with this paternalism. Just in the past week, one study found that providing better access to supermarkets — long considered a way to reduce obesity in poor neighborhoods — doesn't improve people's diets. Another confirmed that customers at fast-food restaurants ignore calorie information that is posted; they still consume the most fattening fare.

This independence infuriates statists — "Why won't these lugs do what's best for them!" — and drives them to seek more coercive policies to achieve their desired results. The Steven Chus of the world couch it in terms of them doing us a favor — saving us from ourselves. The benighted need the Smart Class to lead them to the approved source of water, and to make them drink.

REPRINTED FROM THE PANAMA CITY NEWS HERALD

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