WEBVTT NOTE 4. The Relentless Misery of 1.6 Gallons 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.040 Chapter 4. The Relentless Misery of 1.6 Gallons. January 5, 2010. 2 00:00:10.040 --> 00:00:15.680 My order at my favorite Chinese take-out was taking too long. I stopped into the men's 3 00:00:15.680 --> 00:00:23.000 room. There I witnessed a common scene, the modern toilet disaster. An otherwise clean 4 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:29.720 business had a restroom calamity on its hands, one so grim that I hesitate to describe it. 5 00:00:29.720 --> 00:00:49.720 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. 6 00:00:49.720 --> 00:00:55.000 The customer probably left the ghastly scene in a rush. 7 00:00:55.000 --> 00:00:56.360 Management knew nothing. 8 00:00:56.360 --> 00:01:01.540 But now customers were coming and going into this bathroom, surely losing all inspiration 9 00:01:01.540 --> 00:01:04.400 to eat or order food. 10 00:01:04.400 --> 00:01:07.560 It would be easy to blame the restaurant owners. 11 00:01:07.560 --> 00:01:12.240 What is with these people and why can't they at least have a clean restroom? 12 00:01:12.240 --> 00:01:15.280 But reacting this way would be unjust. 13 00:01:15.280 --> 00:01:20.600 The hidden hand behind this unsanitary calamity is the U.S. government. 14 00:01:20.600 --> 00:01:27.840 The true origin of the mess was not in the hour before I arrived, but back in 1994, after 15 00:01:27.840 --> 00:01:33.620 Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, passed in 1992. 16 00:01:33.620 --> 00:01:39.320 This act, passed during an environmentalist hysteria, mandated that all toilets sold in 17 00:01:39.320 --> 00:01:44.920 the United States use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush. 18 00:01:44.920 --> 00:01:49.320 This was a devastating setback in the progress of civilization. 19 00:01:49.320 --> 00:01:55.100 The conventional toilet in the US ranges from 3.5 gallons to 5 gallons. 20 00:01:55.100 --> 00:01:59.220 The new law was enforced with fines and imprisonment. 21 00:01:59.220 --> 00:02:04.120 For years there was a vibrant black market for Canadian toilet tanks and a profitable 22 00:02:04.120 --> 00:02:06.780 smuggling operation in effect. 23 00:02:06.780 --> 00:02:11.680 This seems either to have subsided or to have gone so far underground that it doesn't 24 00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:13.320 make the news. 25 00:02:13.320 --> 00:02:19.040 I've searched the web in vain for evidence of any 3.5 or 5 gallon toilet tanks for sale 26 00:02:19.040 --> 00:02:21.360 through normal channels. 27 00:02:21.360 --> 00:02:24.840 I wonder what one of these fetches in the black market. 28 00:02:24.840 --> 00:02:30.280 This possible source has no prices and an uncertain locale. 29 00:02:30.280 --> 00:02:34.920 The toilet manufacturers meanwhile are all touting their latest patented innovations 30 00:02:34.920 --> 00:02:39.720 as a reason for the reduced hysteria surrounding the toilet disaster. 31 00:02:39.720 --> 00:02:42.560 I suspect something different. 32 00:02:42.560 --> 00:02:47.060 We have all gotten used to a reduced standard of living just as people living in the Soviet 33 00:02:47.060 --> 00:02:52.960 Union became accustomed to cold apartments, long bread lines and poor dental care. 34 00:02:52.960 --> 00:02:57.040 There is nothing about our standard of living that is intrinsic to our sense of how things 35 00:02:57.040 --> 00:02:58.700 ought to be. 36 00:02:58.700 --> 00:03:02.300 Let enough time pass and people forget things. 37 00:03:02.300 --> 00:03:09.260 So let us remember way back when toilets did not need plungers next to them and thank goodness 38 00:03:09.260 --> 00:03:13.500 Used plunders are nasty, disease-carrying and filthy. 39 00:03:13.500 --> 00:03:17.820 It doesn't matter how cute the manufacturer tries to make them or in how many colors you 40 00:03:17.820 --> 00:03:19.220 can buy them. 41 00:03:19.220 --> 00:03:23.100 In the old days, you would never have one exposed for guests. 42 00:03:23.100 --> 00:03:27.860 It was kept out in the garage for the rare occasion when someone threw a ham or something 43 00:03:27.860 --> 00:03:30.820 stranger down the toilet. 44 00:03:30.820 --> 00:03:37.260 Toilet paper was super-thick in getting thicker, none of this one-ply nonsense. 45 00:03:37.260 --> 00:03:41.740 You never had any doubt about the capacity of the toilet to flush completely, with only 46 00:03:41.740 --> 00:03:43.640 one pull of the handle. 47 00:03:43.640 --> 00:03:48.380 The toilet stayed clean thanks to five gallons of Russian water pouring through it after 48 00:03:48.380 --> 00:03:50.640 each flush. 49 00:03:50.640 --> 00:03:54.720 These were great cultural and civilizational achievements. 50 00:03:54.720 --> 00:04:00.800 In a state of nature, the problem of human waste and what to do about it is persistent. 51 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:06.220 Do the wrong thing and you spread disease and misery. 52 00:04:06.220 --> 00:04:10.940 Indoor plumbing since the time of the ancient world has been a sign of prosperity and human 53 00:04:10.940 --> 00:04:12.700 well-being. 54 00:04:12.700 --> 00:04:18.860 Indoor toilets that flow into a sewer have been around since 1500 BC, but every new settlement 55 00:04:18.860 --> 00:04:22.960 of people in a new area presents the problem anew. 56 00:04:22.960 --> 00:04:28.220 In rural America, indoor toilets weren't common until the 1930s. 57 00:04:28.220 --> 00:04:32.560 That today everyone assumes them to be part of life is a testament to the creative power 58 00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:35.740 of economic progress. 59 00:04:35.740 --> 00:04:41.380 What we have in these regulations passed since the 1990s is therefore a step backward from 60 00:04:41.380 --> 00:04:48.040 a central aspiration of mankind to dispose of human waste in the best possible way. 61 00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:55.800 We have here an instance of government having forced society into a lower stage of existence. 62 00:04:55.800 --> 00:04:59.980 Government has reduced us as people to the point that we either have to enter the black 63 00:04:59.980 --> 00:05:05.480 market to get good sewage or come to terms with living amidst periodic spreading of human 64 00:05:05.480 --> 00:05:29.280 Today, every toilet company touts its latest innovations to overcome the problem. 65 00:05:29.280 --> 00:05:34.200 There are high-pressure blasters that run off electricity designed to force a poultry 66 00:05:34.200 --> 00:05:39.640 1.6 gallons of water through fast enough to make the difference, they are shockingly loud 67 00:05:39.640 --> 00:05:41.360 and scary. 68 00:05:41.360 --> 00:05:45.560 There are new shapes of tanks and new flow mechanisms that are said to compensate for 69 00:05:45.560 --> 00:05:50.200 the calamity, but this works only some of the time. 70 00:05:50.200 --> 00:05:55.300 Each of these innovations is patented, meaning that a successful project cannot be copied 71 00:05:55.300 --> 00:05:57.880 and improved by other companies. 72 00:05:57.880 --> 00:06:03.840 So even if these are improvements, their distribution is limited and the successful aspects of them 73 00:06:03.840 --> 00:06:08.400 are not extended by others, for fear of patent lawsuits. 74 00:06:08.400 --> 00:06:10.760 The entire market is hobbled. 75 00:06:10.760 --> 00:06:15.820 The result is an entire society of poorly working toilets and the life of adjustment 76 00:06:15.820 --> 00:06:21.680 to the omnipresence of human feces, all in a short 15 years. 77 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:24.320 Thanks so much, Congress. 78 00:06:24.320 --> 00:06:28.480 Of course the environmentalists are in on the whole project. 79 00:06:28.480 --> 00:06:34.360 They started telling us back in the 1970s that our large tanks were sheer waste. 80 00:06:34.360 --> 00:06:37.880 We should put bricks in them to save and conserve. 81 00:06:37.880 --> 00:06:42.600 If you didn't have a brick in your toilet, you were considered irresponsible and a social 82 00:06:42.600 --> 00:06:43.600 misfit. 83 00:06:43.600 --> 00:06:49.600 Eventually, of course, the brick became, in effect, a mandate, and finally toilet tanks 84 00:06:49.600 --> 00:06:54.040 were reduced to one-third of their previous size. 85 00:06:54.040 --> 00:06:59.760 Back then, it was just assumed that toilet manufacturers cared nothing at all about wasting 86 00:06:59.760 --> 00:07:00.760 water. 87 00:07:00.760 --> 00:07:06.000 Surely, there was no rationale at all for why they consumed five gallons per flush as 88 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:08.840 opposed to 1.6 gallons. 89 00:07:08.840 --> 00:07:12.640 This is just capitalist excess and down with it. 90 00:07:12.640 --> 00:07:15.160 Well, think again. 91 00:07:15.160 --> 00:07:18.280 There was wisdom in those old designs. 92 00:07:18.280 --> 00:07:22.760 The environmentalists didn't account for the present reality in which people typically 93 00:07:22.760 --> 00:07:28.800 can be easily flushed twice, three times or even four times during a single toilet event. 94 00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:34.160 Whether this ends up using more or less in the long run is entirely an empirical question, 95 00:07:34.160 --> 00:07:39.220 but let us just suppose that the new micro-tanks do indeed save water. 96 00:07:39.220 --> 00:07:45.200 In the same way, letting people dive infections conserves antibiotics, not brushing teeth 97 00:07:45.200 --> 00:07:52.320 conserves toothpaste, and not using anesthesia during surgery conserves needles and syringes. 98 00:07:52.320 --> 00:07:57.120 Here is the truth that environmentalists do not face. 99 00:07:57.120 --> 00:08:00.520 Sometimes conserving is not a good idea. 100 00:08:00.520 --> 00:08:05.680 There are some life activities that cry out for the expenditure of resources, even in 101 00:08:05.680 --> 00:08:08.440 the most generous possible way. 102 00:08:08.440 --> 00:08:12.480 I would count waste disposal as one of those. 103 00:08:12.480 --> 00:08:17.440 It is also possible that some people just like to get their kicks out of spreading misery 104 00:08:17.440 --> 00:08:22.800 and making it impossible for us to enjoy a clean and prosperous life. 105 00:08:22.800 --> 00:08:28.940 Like Puritans of old, they see virtue in suffering and would like to see ever more of it. 106 00:08:28.940 --> 00:08:35.440 It sounds perverse, but such an ethos does exist, and clearly, government doesn't care 107 00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:37.700 in the slightest. 108 00:08:37.700 --> 00:08:41.400 There are many tragedies associated with the toilet calamity. 109 00:08:41.400 --> 00:08:46.780 There are private embarrassments at guest houses and disgust at every turn. 110 00:08:46.780 --> 00:08:51.220 Many of the customers at that Chinese takeout probably blame the owners, who themselves 111 00:08:51.220 --> 00:08:57.320 are probably misdefined as to why toilets in communist China probably work just fine, 112 00:08:57.320 --> 00:09:02.540 but in capitalist America are throwing filth all over their restaurant. 113 00:09:02.540 --> 00:09:07.420 It's the hidden hand of government that has mandated this leap back to barbarism.