How Government Wrecked the Gas Can | Hacker News Reader

How Government Wrecked the Gas Can

fee.org

29 pointsthatguy090070 comments

Took me a while to find a source that doesn't have such a blatant axe to grind, since they're evidently spamming this article everywhere. Turns out the spillage they're referring to isn't what we think of as spillage, but the fumes from the vents, which is why they're gone.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140816134507/http://www.turfma...

I rather suspect the real reason gas cans suck now is that this is the cheapest design that satisfies the requirements and nobody cares enough about gas cans to bother ordering one that works better.

For the record, I was watching Wranglerstar review videos on youtube and saw a gas can comparison which led me down a rabbit hole that I found interesting enough to share. The video itself is a few years old. It's funny seeing the conspiratorial comments on here about downvote brigades and spamming articles, because I tend to think that way about things too.

Yeah, I've heard people complain before about how gas cans suck now because California, but never cared enough to bother looking into it.

It makes sense though that the regulations would be about air quality, since that's a significant issue in a state with such densely-populated areas.

And the plasma TV. I have a backup Panasonic plasma sitting in storage for when my current one goes out.

It wasn't government that destroyed plasma TVs; it was LCDs being significantly cheaper to produce and sell, and now OLEDs having eliminated most of the drawbacks of every other format.

Show me an OLED that lasts 100k hours and I'll put my plasmas on the curb for trash pickup right now.

Also, it was definitely regulations that killed plasmas. I was working in retail when this all was going down.

https://eepower.com/news/california-approves-new-energy-effi...

Modern OLEDs do last over 100k hours.

http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2016/06/133_206377.htm...

California is a single state, and plasmas failed to keep traction anywhere, despite still being sold everywhere else. It was price that killed plasmas.

That said, I don't recommend throwing out your plasmas. They're a neat technical artifact, like CRTs (which many people would argue are better than both plasma TVs and LEDs). Hold onto them!

If you are Samsung or Panasonic, and the largest state economy in the wealthiest market on earth is talking about banning your products, you might start considering alternative strategies too, even if the other 49 economies don't care.

California banning something is effectively a national ban for a lot of products. There isnt a manufacturer that makes TVs just for the US plains market. This is economically infeasible from a manufacturing standpoint.

A national ban isn't a global ban. If plasmas are superior, why aren't they popular in Korea?

How big is the US economy compared to South Korea? Better yet, California alone vs South Korea?

I went back to riding a horse because a horse’s lifetime is 30 years and I was only getting about 10 from my last car.

Sarcasm aside, plasma TVs had horrible burn in, weighed a bunch, and suffered from reflection issues due to the glass screens. Not to mention LCDs quickly became much cheaper. The issues with OLEDs are either already solved or much better than when they first came out, such as burn in.

I just unscrew the nosel and end up spilling gas all over the ground in an attempt to fill my lawn mower.

Drill a hole in your gas can. Problem solved.

^ drill a whole a small hole and add a cap for pennies https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U7YLKNU/

I found it weird that a generic foundation with a generic website would post such an unexpectedly opinionated article. Sure enough, it's politically motivated.

> The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is a libertarian economic think-tank in the United States dedicated to the "economic, ethical and legal principles of a free society." FEE publishes books, daily articles, and hosts seminars and lectures. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Economic_Educat...

If you need further proof that the article is wildly biased, just look at the downvoted comments. At time of writing, all comments disagreeing with it are in the negative.

Most people agreeing with an article means that it's biased?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Having all comments that disagree down voted means that it's biasedand likely astro turfed.

If an article said 2+2 is 4, and people commented "no, it's 3", "no, it's 5", and "no, it's 6", they'd all get downvoted. Would you say that article is biased and astroturfed too?

For the record, I was watching Wranglerstar review videos on youtube in the background and saw a gas can comparison which led me down a rabbit hole that I found interesting enough to share. No astroturfing boogeyman here.

This article is unabashed pro-free-market, anti-government propaganda.

From the author bio at the bottom of the page:

>>> Jeffrey Tucker is a former Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education. He is the Editorial Director at the American Institute for Economic Research, the founder of Liberty.me, Distinguished Honorary Member of Mises Brazil, economics adviser to FreeSociety.com, research fellow at the Acton Institute, policy adviser of the Heartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, member of the editorial board of the Molinari Review, and author of five books.

FEE - libertarian economic think-tank

AIER - free-market think-tank with publications titled "The Real Reason Nobody Takes Environmental Activists Seriously" and "Brazilians Should Keep Slashing Their Rainforest", and recently promoted 'herd immunity' without lockdowns as a COVID strategy. [1]

freesociety.com - libertarian project

Acton Institute - promotes laissez-faire economics in Christian framework

Heartland Institute - conservative/libertarian think-tank known for working with Philip Morris to discredit the risks of "secondhand smoke" and promoting climate change denial. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Institute_for_Economi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_Institute#Policy_pos...

"This article is unabashed pro-free-market, anti-government propaganda."

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Propaganda is bad because it is irrational and hurts the conversation, regardless of which side of which topic the specific example is in support of (I don't know if this article qualifies - I'm just addressing your assertion).

Thankfully, I think a whole generation (and every one after) won't care about gas cans, or gasoline.

Thanks in part to government policy, research funding, and subsidies, that have enabled market-based innoavtion in solar, batteries, etc, to the point of being practical alternatives.

They might care about mega-corps blaming government for absolutely everything.

And that might be the biggest plot twist - a government-mandated switch from something that works, to something badly thought out with large unintended consequences.

Fossil fuels work if you want a big chunk of life on earth, and possibly humanity, to join them.

I suppose it depends what you think is the bigger calamity - CO2 emission, or energy scarcity.

There's no energy scarcity, only a choice of whether, and how, to produce or obtain it.

For example, open-cast coal mines, and coal-fired power stations fed by them, are among the cheapest (and most environmentally damaging) ways to generate electricity from fossil fuel.

it's now actually cheaper, over the lifetime of the installation, to cover that land with solar panels, than to dig it up and burn it.

Fossil fuel, as the name suggests, is dead.

The only way that it's possible for energy-containing raw materials to be more expensive than complex, manufactured sources of energy generation, is government interference (and the corresponding lack of in the places that the solar panels and the like are actually manufactured, as well as an abundant source of fossil fuels to power that manufacture).

The last I checked, the sun was rather abundant in stored energy, and quite good at releasing some of it.

It's 'simply' a case of capturing it.

Many panels are made in China. Not a place really known for it's uninvolved government, from what I hear.

The whole 'it's all powered by fossil fuels' argument is a bit old now, and was only really valid becuase so much of the energy mix was in fact fossil. As we switch, the argument increasingly no longer holds.

Indeed, which is why a careful examination needs to be made of the energy and resource cycles involved. It'll be interesting if we ever switch to an energy economy fuelled entirely by PV (or similar), and seeing how the energy economics plays out. This is aside from the various minerals needed to continually replenish our new green energy sources, and what we do with the complex and poisonous wastes produced.

As for your comments on China - they certainly don't have any issues allowing widespread pollution and industrial poisoning of their people and land.

>The whole 'it's all powered by fossil fuels' argument is a bit old now

It'll only be "old" when China reduces the amount of coal (and mostly brown coal) that it uses to manufacture all this stuff for us. They have enormous reserves, it won't happen any time soon.

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