Social engineering is social engineering, whichever flag you do it under.

Sure this is a crooked strategy. But “leave alone” is unacceptable, too.

Your post is an example one of the reasons, I think, many conservatives are very wary of “moderates” and “centrists”. Somebody proposes a ban, which has no chance of passing. Conservatives scream about the market, to make sure to kill the idea before it gains traction. Then a moderate says “hey, instead of banning, let’s just tax it!” Compared to banning, this sounds almost kind of reasonable, so more people jump on board, even people who never would have supported a ban to begin with. This is frustrating because, had the subject come up originally as a proposal to tax, and the two options were “tax” or “leave alone”, again “leave alone” would have prevailed.

In other words, just offering “tax” as a compromise acquiesces in the idea that something must be done. The discussion is no longer, “should the government intervene in this problem”, it becomes “how should the government intervene in this problem”. Once the debate is framed in those terms, the market-based solution which involves no government intervention is going to lose, because it’s not even on the table.

It’s also the essence of the German economical system, the ‘sotiale Marktwirtschaft’. The idea is to couple the dynamic of capitalism with a legal framework that ensures that the economy is enhancing the welfare of the nation. Laws shall give incentives for the preferred behaviour. In many instances, subsidies or tax reductuions aren’t necessary to achieve this, an obligation for producers to present more informations about their goods is enough. For instance regarding the contents of food products or the actual rates of life insurance policies. Outright banning something should be only the ‘ultima ratio’.

Indeed! The marketing campaign here focused on the point of total costs of lighting. Simple (yet correct) calculations where presented in the stores, showing price, life expectancy, and electricity costs for both kinds of bulbs. Themessage to be relayed was, in the medium run, the small investment in the modern products pays off. For convincing customers, the combination of showing cost advantages plus the good feeling of doing the ecologically right thing did the trick.

Imho silly is too harsh a word, but I agree that criminalizing regular light bulbs seems like a huge overreaction. Again, in Germany, a marketing campaign for energy saving bulbs, supported by federal agencies, had great results. The heavy handed approach is totally unnecessary. Authorities should start by making energy saving lighting obligatory for public buildings. And they should start a task force with the industry for finding a catchy name. Customers won’t buy stuff when they can’t understand what its good for.
CF, COLS, really! How about the iLight?

Even for California, this is pretty silly.