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Banning Americans’ rights to buy things as innocuous as certain kinds of light bulbs is petty government overreach.

It's not innocuous. We are literally destroying our habitat with emissions and this helps prevent that:

222 million metric tons: Estimated emissions cut as a result of the DOE rules’ implementation over the next 30 years, equivalent to the emissions generated by 28 million homes in one year.

@burnedoutfordfiesta

[TL;DR: they already are, if you really can't afford them (and your local government isn't ran by shadow-fearing cavemen).]

Legit question, wrapped in incredibly ignorant, destructive, patriotic, inflammatory brainworms.

That is why you are getting downvoted, fyi.

Stop confusing innovation with government tyranny. Stop being a tool and using false dichotomies and other logical fallacies that always results in loss of innovation, enrichment of unethical companies, and biological and ecological damage and destruction.

The role of government is to enforce the will of the people for the good of the people, and finally forcing everybody to adopt superior lighting that is WAY more energy efficient AND way more durable is ABSOLUTELY the right thing to do.

However, to actually answer your ACTUAL question (why don't they subsidize LED bulbs?), that is a question of what you consider a need. The idea of subsidizing is one usually of need, and sometimes also to assist in adoption to push ideas people are hesitant on.

That being said: we aren't talking about cars, bruh. It's like a 2-3x increase in price, but will last 10000x longer and use 0.01x the electricity compared to an incandescent bulb. And basically everybody can afford them. And when they can't, they already have systems in place for that, such as the affordable care act (federally expanded medicaid) and other social net programs like welfare, set up poor people don't get fucked and have to buy stupid incandescent bulbs for all their lives, living incredibly inefficiently.

All the time, responsible governments implement shit like this to get people off of dummfuck ancient technology that people refuse to give up. And whether or not this is "government overreach" or simply forcing the hands of curmudgeons is a matter of purpose and perspective, and ignorance is often that perspective, and hollow-facetiousness and cynical plausible deniability in place of the "purpose".

"Stop eating lead. That is now illegal." - the government, when huge corporations refused to do the right thing.

"Why would I even need that? I've never needed that before" - the dumb monkey, looking at the the monkey using fire.

It doesn't ban any rights to buy, just to sell. It's no different than laws preventing bakeries from selling adulterated bread. Incandescent bulbs aren't as good at producing light as LEDs, and they are more expensive to operate. The law basically prevents people from falling prey to the boots theory. The main thing incandescent bulbs are good for is producing heat, and you can still buy them for that purpose.

They subsidize them by giving you back the extra $2 in your energy bill.