економический ушерб от деятельности государства

[gunsNgold]

Been reading this - "Bourbon for the breakfast" by Tucker

My order at my favorite Chinese takeout was taking too long. I stopped into the men’s room. There I witnessed a common scene: the modern toilet disaster. An otherwise clean business had a restroom calamity on its hands, one so grim that I hesitate to describe it. The conjectural history is not difficult to reconstruct. The toilet apparently had trouble flushing. There was a plunger by the toilet, of course, as we see everywhere today. The toilet was plunged to get rid of the obstruction, while the obstruction itself spilled all over the floor and stuck to the plunger too.
The customer probably left the ghastly scene in a rush. Management knew nothing. But now customers were coming and going into this bathroom, surely losing all inspiration to eat or order food. It would be easy to blame the restaurant owners. What is with these people and why can’t they at least have a clean restroom? But reacting this way would be unjust. The hidden hand behind this unsanitary calamity is the U.S. government. The true origin of the mess was not in the hour before I arrived but back in 1994, after Congress passed the Energy Policy Act (passed in 1992).
This act, passed during an environmentalist hysteria, mandated that all toilets sold in the United States use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per
flush. This was a devastating setback in the progress of civilization. The conventional toilet in the U.S. ranges from 3.5 gallons to 5 gallons. The new law was enforced with fines and imprisonment.
For years, there was a vibrant black market for Canadian toilet tanks and a profitable smuggling operation in effect. This seems either to have
subsided or to have gone so far underground that it doesn’t make the news. I’ve searched the web in vain for evidence of any 3.5 or 5.0 gallon toilet tanks for sale through normal channels. I wonder what one of these fetches in the black market. This possible source has no prices and an uncertain locale.
The toilet manufacturers, meanwhile, are all touting their latest patented innovations as a reason for the reduced hysteria surrounding the
toilet disaster. I suspect something different. We have all gotten used to a reduced standard of living—just as the people living in the Soviet Union became accustomed to cold apartments, long bread lines, and poor dental care. There is nothing about our standard of living that is intrinsic to our sense of how things ought to be. Let enough time pass and people forget things.
So let us remember way back when:
• Toilets did not need plungers next to them, and thank goodness. Used plungers are nasty, disease carrying, and filthy. It doesn’t matter
how cute the manufacturer tries to make them or in how many colors you can buy them. In the old days, you would never have one exposed for guests. It was kept out in the garage for the rare occasion when someone threw a ham or something stranger down the toilet.
• Toilet paper was super thick and getting thicker. None of this one-ply nonsense.
• You never had any doubt about the capacity of the toilet to flush completely, with only one pull of the handle. The toilet stayed clean
thanks to five gallons of rushing water pouring through it after each flush.

[Абырвалг]

Полный маразм. Никаких проблем 1.6 галлонами, а бумагу покупай какая нравится на выбор.

[gunsNgold]

Crush the Sprinkler Guild

I suspected as much! What the lady at Home Depot called the “sprinkler repair cult” is an emerging guild seeking privileges and regulations from the government. That means a supply restriction, high prices, or another do-it-yourself project. But there is a way around it. I first began to smell a rat when the automatic irrigation system on my front yard needed work but I had unusual struggles in trying to find a repair guy.
The first place I called informed me that they could accept no more clients.
Clients? I just wanted a new sprinkler thing, for goodness sake. I don’t want to be a client; I want to be a customer. Is there no one who can put on a new sprayer or stick a screwdriver in there or whatever it needs?
Nope, all full.
The next call was not returned.
The next call ended with the person on the line fearfully saying that they do landscaping but will have nothing to do with sprinklers or “automated irrigation systems.” Umm, ok.
The next call seemed more promising. The secretary said they had an opening on the schedule in three weeks. Three weeks? In that period of time, my yard will be the color of a brown paper bag.
The next call failed. And the next one. And the next. Finally I was back to the off-putting secretary. I made the appointment but the guy never came.
Fortunately, in the meantime, a good rain came, and then at regular intervals for the whole season, and I was spared having to deal with this strangely maddening situation.
Why all the fuss? We aren’t talking brain surgery here. These are sprinklers, little spray nozzles connected to tubes connected to a water supply.
Why was everyone so touchy about the subject?
Why did all the power seem to be in their hands, and none in mine?
Must I crawl and beg?
Above all, I wonder why, with most all lawns in new subdivisions sporting these little things, why oh why are the people who repair them in such
sort supply?
Little did I know that I had stumbled onto the real existence of a most peculiar thing in our otherwise highly competitive economy: a guild.
It had all the earmarks. If you want your nails buffed, there are thousand people in town who stand ready. If you want someone to make you dinner, you can take your pick among a thousand restaurants. If you want to buy a beer, you can barely go a block without bumping into a merchant who is glad to sell you one. None of that is true with sprinkler repair.
What does a guild do? It attempts to restrict service. And why? To keep the price as high as possible. And how? By admitting only specialists, or supposed specialists, to the ranks of service providers, usually through the creation of some strange but largely artificial system of exams or payments or whatever.
Guilds don’t last in a free market. No one can blame producers for trying to pull it off. But they must always deal with defectors. Even the prospects of defectors can cause people who might not otherwise defect, to turn and attempt to beat others to the punch.
There is just no keeping a producer clique together for long when profits are at stake.
There is also the problem that temporarily successful guilds face: high profits attract new entrants into the field. They must either join the guild or go their own way. This creates an economically unviable situation in a market setting that is always driving toward a market-clearing rate of return.
Further evidence of the existence of a sprinkler guild came from the checkout lady at the Home Depot. I was buying a sprinkler head and she
said in passing that they didn’t used to carry these things, and the decision of the manufacturer to supply them in retail got some people mighty upset.
She spoke of the sprinkler repair people as a cult that should be smashed!
Now, does this guild really exist or is it an informal arrangement among
a handful of local suppliers? As best I can tell, here is the guild’s website (http://www.irrigation.org/default.aspx). The Irrigation Association is active in:
• Providing a voice for the industry on public policy issues related to standards, conservation and water-use on local, national and international levels
• Acting as a source of technical and public policy information within the industry
• Raising awareness of the benefits of professional irrigation services
• Offering professional training and certification
• Uniting irrigation professionals, including irrigation equipment manufacturers, distributors and dealers, irrigation system designers,
contractors, educators, researchers, and technicians from the public and private sectors.
Catch that? Certification. Unity. Standards! Public policy. These are all dangerous words, that come down to the same result: high prices and bad
service.
Why should anyone become certified? “Prestige and credibility among peers and customers”; “professional advancement opportunities”;
“Enhances the professional image of the industry—your industry.”
I thought I needed a sprinkler repairman but these people want me to hire a Certified Landscape Irrigation Manager, a CLIM. How do you
become a CLIM? Well you have to send in $400 plus a résumé that includes an “overview summary of how you plan to meet program criteria:
Two examples of project development... Project specifications... Two system audits or evaluations...Two construction and/or construction management projects...

[gunsNgold]

Никаких проблем 1.6 галлонами

дело не в том, есть проблемы или нет неважно - сделать все равно ничего нельзя. Раньше возили контрабандные унитазы из Канады, теперь и етой лазейки не стало. Полная победа Госплана