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NOTE 51. Three More Attacks on Civilization

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3 More Attacks on Civilization

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Thank goodness we've got a global marketplace where banned and nearly banned products can

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be purchased with a click.

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This is how I obtained a box of savorgran trisodium phosphate, which sounds like an

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explosive but is really just a cleanser that was in every dishwashing soap until last year.

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It is made of phosphorus, an element from bone ash or urine, that was discovered in

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Germany in the 17th century.

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It is also the reason that dishwashers once cleaned dishes perfectly, leaving no residue

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or spots.

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Remember the old Calgon commercial that showed food falling off plates, and glasses left

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gleaming at the end of a wash?

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That was phosphorus at work.

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It is still a must in commercial establishments like restaurants and hotels, but 17 states

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have already banned the product for consumers, causing most all-makers of the detergent to

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remove it from their products, which vastly degraded their value.

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The detergent makers saw the writing on the wall, and this time decided to get out in

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front of the regulatory machine, anticipating a federal ban before it actually takes place.

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Most consumers are clueless as to how, sometime in the last year, their dishwashers stopped

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working properly.

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They call in the repairman, who fiddles with things and announces a fix.

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But it is not fixed.

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The glasses are gritty and the plates often need to be rinsed again after washing.

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Many households have bought new machines or resorted to just running the dishes through

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twice.

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The creation of the phosphorus-free detergent is the real reason.

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As Jonathan last explains in the Weekly Standard, the anti-phosphate frenzy began in Washington

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State, which was attempting to comply with a Clean Water Act mandate that a certain river

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be swimmable and fishable.

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This was a problem, because tests found inordinate amounts of phosphate in the river.

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As part of the effort to comply, the state banned phosphates from detergents.

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That was in 2008.

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But the way politics works these days, the banning spread to state after state, again

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with the backing of federal law.

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Now it is clear that the law's proponents knew exactly what the results would be.

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It would increase dishwasher use, and even end up leading people to abandon dishwashers

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altogether, and either solution leads to much more water and energy use.

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In other words, even by the goofy environmentalists' own standards, this is no saving – it might

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end up in the reverse.

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Studies since the ban have even shown that phosphorus reduction in the Washington State

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River is entirely due to a new filtering system, and further that it turns out that the phosphorus

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in the River was not even a problem in the first place.

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Of course, the facts don't matter.

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Our conveniences, like clean plates and the machines that make them so, must be sacrificed

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to the false gods of environmentalism.

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One of the great innovations in human history must be reverted because governments are enthralled

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by the witch-doctors of Mother Earth.

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Thus must mankind take yet another step back on the path of social progress.

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and to heck with your fetish for clean things.

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A similar impulse is driving the new attack on ice makers.

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Jeffrey Kluger writes in Time magazine a typically hectoring piece that claims that one way to

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save the earth is to buy a couple of ice trays to the long list of human inventions that

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are wrecking global climate, the internal combustion engine, the industrial era factory

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and the automatic ice maker.

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Of course, we don't use ice makers for completely arbitrary reasons.

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It is because it is a pain in the neck to carry a full tray across the room, spill a

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bit here and there, and then balance it carefully in the freezer.

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And then when you take it out, your fingers stick to the trays and you have to break the

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tray and dump the cubes into something and refreeze what you do not use, and then the

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cubes stick together and so on.

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That's why we use ice makers.

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But still, the Department of Energy hates them, and so it has warned all makers of freezers

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that it will lower the energy compliance rating of any freezer that keeps them.

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Or another way to make a freezer with an ice maker is to degrade the refrigerator and freezer

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itself, leaving most of the energy use for the ice maker.

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This whole model forgets a perfectly obvious point.

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Having an ice maker often means that you have an ice dispenser on the outside of the fridge,

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meaning that you do not have to open the door to get your ice.

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This is surely an energy saver.

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Having to open the freezer far more often only ends up wasting energy, which is another

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reason for the ice maker in the first place – saves on electrical bills.

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Here again, facts don't matter.

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If there is something you like, something that makes your life better, you can bet that

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some bureaucrat somewhere has targeted it for destruction.

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Saving the planet is the most convenient excuse around.

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Time magazine would contribute more to saving the planet by putting an end to its print

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publication.

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We can see where this is headed.

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Just as people hoard old toilet tanks and old washing machines that actually use water

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We are becoming like the Cubans with their 1950s model cars, holding onto them for dear life, if only to preserve some elements of civilization in the face of government attacks.

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Now, let's talk drain openers.

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Everyone knows that the best chemical drain opener is lye, or sodium hydroxide.

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It is wicked stuff that cuts through grease, hair or just about anything else.

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It will burn right through human flesh and leave terrible scarring.

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But for drains, nothing else compares.

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Now that less and less water is flowing through our homes, thanks to regulatory attacks on

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water use, and the water we use is ever more tepid, thanks to regulatory attacks on hot

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If you can get it.

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The mainstream hardware stores have stopped carrying the stuff.

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So have the grocery stores.

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When I asked around, I thought I would hear stories involving liability for injuries,

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but no.

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Instead, the excuse is the drug war.

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It turns out that this stuff is an ingredient in the making of methamphetamine, and hence

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it too is on the regulatory hit list.

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Fortunately, you can still buy it through Amazon, but how many people know this?

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How many people are buying liquid drain openers only to discover that they don't actually

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work?

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Surely millions are doing this.

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So far as I can tell, there is nothing but hush-hush about the strange disappearance

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So there we go.

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We must also live with clogged drains, so that not even the pathetic drizzles of tepid

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water that come out of our faucets can flow down the drain, and we must stand in pools

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of bacteria breeding water as we take our short, cold showers.

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It's back to the 19th century for all of us!

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In these three examples, we can see the model at work.

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Puritans and paranoid work with bureaucrats to unravel all the gains that markets have

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made for civilization.

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And they do this not with persuasion or an attempt to convert us to their primitive faith.

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Instead, they do it by force, driving us back to the compost pile, the river for cleaning,

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and eventually having to hunt and gather for food that we take back to our caves, which

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serve as domestic environs for those lucky enough to survive their regime of coerced

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poverty.