Rice County Republicans

Our second favorite micromodel of the battle between Big Government and Big Freedom has to be California, where we see the world’s 8th largest economy (7th-10th, depending on source, who says numbers never lie?) struggling with itself in a large scale version of politics as seen in Northfield.  An astute reader pointed out to us that California (motto: “If you think you understand us, you’ve never been here.“)  is looking to effectively rule out big screen TVs. In an on-line article we read:

As part of its effort to combat global warming, California is considering a proposal to regulate big-screen TVs off the market. …[because] Big-screen televisions require more energy than smaller ones, and really big plasma TVs can suck more power than your refrigerator.

Well, this is instructive. In a variation on the “too big to fail” that we have seen used recently to beat the taxpayer into submission, we see the natural consequence of being on a power grid that is run by a single entity (the state, acting through it’s un-holy un-owned subsidiaries, the power companies operating under state licenses). That consequence is that market forces once again are decoupled from demand (the true price of having electricity is distributed over us all, making it hard to benefit from wise choices and suffer from bad).  Everything from power plant location (NIMBY) , to health care (how about giving some teeth to those Doctor’s recommendations that we all lose weight), to the size of our TV (40 inches is too big) is driven by political power, not economic forces.

Apparently, Californians have given up their freedoms for security. The result is a valuable lesson for us all.