How the Climate Hysteria Is Lowering Your Standard of Living
International Man: The carbon hysteria extends far beyond oil and gas companies.
One overlooked area is household appliances.
Politicians are implementing increasingly stringent regulations for dishwashers, washing machines, and other appliances. There have even been reports of a desire to phase out gas stoves.
What’s your take on all of this?
Doug Casey: As Der Schwabenklaus of the World Economic Forum boldly said some years ago, “You’ll own nothing and be happy.”
The fact that a prominent figure could actually say that, promote the idea, and not be pilloried gives you an idea of the spirit of the current century. The lack of outrage from the average man is even more sick than the idea itself.
Not owning appliances is a practical application of the meme, but just one tentacle of the global warming octopus. Appliances are constructed from resources that have to be mined and run with electricity; that makes them evil. It’s much more important in these people’s views to “save the planet”—a ridiculous concept—than to continue raising the standard of living.
The fact is that the self-righteous authoritarians who want to limit the use of appliances basically just hate people—especially middle-class people. They’d really like to revert to pre-capitalist times, when only the upper classes, the feudal aristocrats, could benefit from conveniences.
Ecowarriors, the Greens, are cut from the same cloth as socialists, communists, and fascists. Their totem fruit is the watermelon, green on the outside and red on the inside.
International Man: Many people have noticed that modern appliances are not the same quality as the ones produced decades ago. For one thing, modern appliances tend to require much more time to do the same thing an older model could do faster.
For example, today, it’s common to see a standard dish-washing cycle to take more than two hours.
Modern appliances also don’t perform as well and break down more frequently. Climate regulations are largely to blame for this regression.
What is really going on here?
Doug Casey: I don’t have a lot of personal experience with how appliances work, but I’ve certainly heard that modern appliances are designed to sacrifice convenience and time in order to possibly use less water or electricity.
One thing that I do recall is that several decades ago, the US government decided to regulate the amount of water that could be used to flush toilets. The devices are now less sanitary and often have to be flushed twice. The idea that politicians should mandate plumbing designs is absurd. But they do this with all products—cars, planes, houses, you name it. They destroy capital and slow technological progress, even while annoying and frustrating engineers.
But perhaps the average person doesn’t think about these things or care. The standard of living has gone up for so long that we tend to think it’s automatic and divinely ordaine
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