Sunday, September 02, 2007

We should ban the sun to protect lightbulb manufacturers

The EU's ridiculous attempt to make us all poor by banning cheap, safe incandescent lightbulbs and forcing us all to buy mercury-filled, harsh fluorescent lamps was bad enough.  That they then placed import tariffs on the energy-saving bulbs is beyond farce.

A commenter on "Devil's Kitchen" suggested that the reason might be because the EU's trade commissioner is an economic illiterate and suggested sending him some pointers.

So I did.

Commissioner Mandelson
DG Trade
European Commission
200 Rue de la Loi
B-1049 Brussels
Belgium

Dear Commissioner,

I was bemused by recent press reports that the EU is simultaneously banning incandescent lightbulbs and placing import tariffs on low-energy replacements being sent from China.

If the Chinese wish to send us cheap goods, we should open our arms and accept the gifts with gratitude. I resent your efforts to keep the people of Europe poorer than we otherwise would be.

I am enclosing a copy of an essay, written in 1845, by French economist Frédéric Bastiat. It is as relevant today as it was then and I hope it proves illuminating.

Yours sincerely,

Richard G Brown

http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

5 comments:

kyb said...

Good work. I always enjoy your letters.

Tristan said...

Let us know if you get a response. I sent him a copy too, and a German translation to the German commissioner (Industry or something who no doubt was lobbying hard for Osram)

Unknown said...

"...I hope it proves illuminating" - excellent :)

Quite ironic that when viewing this post on your blog Google Ads was offering me a whole range of different low energy lightbulbs :) A good demonstration of the fact that Google Ads obviously uses words in the post to determine which ads to show, but has no notion of context :)

kyb said...

That essay is cool. I especially like the sideways dig at British weather.

Richard Brown said...

""...I hope it proves illuminating" - excellent :)" :-)

I wrote it without thinking and then spotted the pun. Decided to leave it in.