Postrel: Need a Light Bulb? Uncle Sam Chooses. in Cal­i­for­nia, where I live, this plen­i­tude no longer includes what most shop­pers want: an inex­pen­sive, plain-vanilla 100-watt incan­des­cent bulb. Sell­ing them is now ille­gal here. The rest of the coun­try has until the end of the year to stock up before a fed­eral ban kicks in. (I have a stash in stor­age.) Over the next two years, most lower-wattage incan­des­cents will also disappear.

[…]

The bulb ban makes sense only one of two ways: either as an expres­sion of cul­tural sanc­ti­mony, with a lit­tle technophilia thrown in for added glam­our, or as a round­about way to trans­fer wealth from the gen­eral pub­lic to the few busi­nesses with the know-how to pro­duce the light bulbs con­sumers don’t really want to buy.

Or, of course, as both. [Bloomberg]

Not con­tent with ban­ning cap­i­tal­ism, agri­cul­ture, and chem­istry (aka “the War on Drugs”), the Evil Empire is now ban­ning light bulbs. Of course, this is the same coun­try that pre­vi­ously banned toilets–there’s really noth­ing so minor or silly that the gov­ern­ment won’t threaten to mur­der peo­ple over it.