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Here are several thoughts, you may disagree with them, but they attempt to convey why some people would oppose these sorts of regulations: An easier to see exa

Here are several thoughts, you may disagree with them, but they attempt to convey why some people would oppose these sorts of regulations: An easier to see example is with dishwashers and toilets. The new generation of toilets created by EPA regulations has made toilets that don't really flush very well and are more expensive than before; people end up flushing multiple times which then wastes water. You pay a premium for the privilege of a less effective toilet. Same thing happens with dishwashers; politicians aren't always very good at engineering constraints. Just because a law applies to all people in your country's market doesn't mean it is market friendly. You may be handicapping everyone equally, but still handicapping the engineering with regards to reality and physical constraints. If the US regulates itself into having a difficult time making or using working/economical cars, then other countries can more economically create better cars (which people would argue already happens; American cars have a terrible reputation) or having better transportation networks using better transportation. You could end up having really clean cars and horrifically expensive logistics. Maybe, maybe not, but just letting the market be more adaptive is usually a good course.

bpp 9y ago
Your toilet analogy is partially true but is incomplete. Toilets manufactured immediately after the regulations went into effect are in fact less effective. However, the industry innovated, improving previously inefficient bowl designs and creating other inventions that improve performance. Toilets manufactured today are at least as effective as those created before the regulations, and consume fewer natural resources (no small matter here in California where we're staring at drought again). Regulations may impose a cost, but they can often spur innovation and economic growth as well.
- coolso 9y ago
  > Toilets manufactured today are at least as effective as those created before the regulations I replaced my toilet with a new model 2 years ago. Was it the best of the best, no, but neither was my old one. Use of any amount of toilet paper with the new one = a mandatory double flush, every single time. Every so often a #1 with no TP will require a double flush as well. Yes I'm serious.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    You've explained that you have a broken toilet, not that regulations made a bad toilet. If your toilet can't even cycle a liquid through enough to even appear clean, you've got other problems.
    - coolso 9y ago
      It cycles the liquid just fine; it's getting rid of 100% of the bubbles that urinating sometimes creates (typically when it's concentrated, e.g., in the morning) that it has trouble with.
      - pwinnski 9y ago
        Your toilet is definitely broken. This is not a regulation problem. Seriously, that is not normal behavior for a new toilet.
        Izkata 9y ago
        It is normal behavior. The low-flow toilets seem to have been built assuming all waste is sitting at the bottom, but toilet paper can be held floating at the top due to surface tension. The first flush breaks that, then the second flush gets rid of it.
      - atomical 9y ago
        Bubble removal. That's a new one.
  - patentatt 9y ago
    Do you really think all toilets work this way? Like, everyone else in the entire country has that same experience? You bought a shitty (pun intended) product, it has nothing to do with the boogeyman of ‘regultion.’
  - TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
    We've replaced two toilets in the last two years, no problems like this with either.
coolso 9y ago
Another example is modern washing machines. A friend of mine lives in an apartment complex that just replaced an old machine from the late 80s / early 90s that finally died, with one of those new top-loading ones that has a load sensor and fills the basin accordingly with the "ideal" amount of water. He noticed that ever since the new machine was installed, his clothes and bed sheets often came out feeling soapy (yes, he was using detergent designed for HE machines, and the recommended amount). So one day he opened the lid mid-wash, and... the machine was so "efficient", the very stop of the clothes weren't even wet, even after they had been agitating for several minutes! This was with a medium sized load, with the basin less than half way full. He stuck around for the rinse cycle and noticed it doesn't even fill the basin up with clean rinse water; it just continually spins the basin and sprays water for a little while. No wonder everything came out feeling soapy. This was with a major name brand commercial/heavy duty machine by the way, introduced within the past 2-3 years.
- kw71 9y ago
  Sounds like a terribly designed machine with bad software. I bought a Korean machine in 2006 and still own it. However, unlike your friend's, mine is a front loader. Immediately I noticed a lower electricity bill because it's using much less hot water. It adds a small amount of water and tumbles the clothes. If the water level in the tub does not go down, the contents are saturated and no more water is needed. We are also using very little soap and softener - we buy soap once a year! We typically fill the scoop for soap halfway up to the first mark, and enough softener to just cover the bottom of the dispenser. I also feel better knowing there is less water and soap being drained into our septic tank. Our machine has an extra rinse option - it normally does two rinses anyway - and fills more water on certain cycles ("hand wash.")
- alphabettsy 9y ago
  The last two apartments I lived in had the same crappy machine. It’s the cheapest and it works like crap, but it seems the investors/property managers don’t care.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  Modern efficient washing machines are front loaders, so gravity does the work of water distribution.
abpavel 9y ago
Engineers and experts come up with regulation spec, politicians merely enact it. If your toilet design requires dropping a ton of water from one foot, it will naturally not work without one ton of water. However if the manufacturer would turn on their brain however, they could easily come up with efficient jet design that requires less than 1% of previously needed fuel. Market can't adapt in many cases, like plastic bags, subprime mortgage, dogs with bank accounts, Windows and Internet Explorer bundles, and on and on and on. You can have cars with 1.5x better fuel consumption, but 1500x worse emissions. They'll call it "clean emissions".
janoc 9y ago
Market never adapts to things that are more expensive short term - like cleaner energy sources. Why would you put yourself at a competitive disadvantage (and thus lose money) if you aren't forced to? Sometimes the regulation is needed for thing that are actually in higher (i.e. not only shareholders' but entire society's) interest. Such as clean air or not wasting non-renewable fuels. That is not to say we should go batshit crazy and e.g. ban all non-electric cars now but look what has happened with e.g. solar and wind after the regulations went into effect. At the start solar was several times more expensive than fossil fuels (e.g. coal), nobody would touch it as it simply wasn't competitive. After the regulations on coal and other "dirty" fuels went into effect making them more expensive to use along with subsidies for the solar panels and such, solar experienced a boom and now solar energy is almost at the same price level as fossil one and the costs are still going down. Even oil companies are investing in it now massively - simply because it became profitable (plus it is a good PR ...) All the while we have got a chance to breath cleaner air and have fewer cancers, for example. Free market is not a solution for everything and especially in the US you have plenty of good examples where it made the situation beyond fubar - e.g. the healthcare system.
- oftenwrong 9y ago
  The American healthcare system is far from a free market. It's a single payer system for the poor and the elderly. Outside of those groups, people have few choices about which plan they use, as they are generally provided by an employer. The cost of healthcare also leaves little room for price comparison - the price is not known until after care is provided. That said, "beyond fubar" is a completely accurate of description of American healthcare.
- CompelTechnic 9y ago
  I wish somebody here were highly knowledgeable about the CAFE standards that are potentially being rolled back. The details we should be focusing on are the details of the tradeoff: How much incremental cost is added to the vehicle due to the standard? How much fuel efficiency is gained? Are there other tradeoffs (safety, etc) due to engineering constraints? The environmental tradeoff has to be weighed as well, of course. I remember seeing articles in the past that indicated the fuel efficiency targets were essentially unrealistic, and unattainable without drastically altering the lineup of cars available from a given manufacturer. Hard to dig them up though. Here are some (admittedly biased) links: Against CAFE: CAFE standards increase vehicle deaths due to lighter vehicle weights: https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/why-the-governments-cafe-standards-fuel-efficiency-should-berepealed-not https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/why-the-governme... A more neutral article cheerleading CAFE: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/can-cars-meet-the-new-54-mpg-cafe-standards-yes-they-can/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/can-cars-m... The more neutral article does mention a handful of technologies that help reach the fuel efficiency targets. Seemed like a lot of engineering (and therefore cost).
XorNot 9y ago
The thing is American toilets are bizarre to start with. You guys have an insanely high water level, and accomplish flushing by basically just draining it. Australian toilets are very different - the water level is low, and the flush is accomplished by violently dumping water from the tank into the bowl from a rim - which, having experienced both - effectively washes it clean with the percussive action. Australian toilet flush example (work safe, nothing in it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RWoJ2VNd3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RWoJ2VNd3o
- jey 9y ago
  Just speculation, but I suspect the American design is better at containing smells. Sure, that's also solvable by just promptly flushing, but I wonder if this is a calculated decision by manufacturers to avoid getting a reputation for "smelly toilets" caused by people sitting on the throne reading the day's paper or whatever.
  - fiblye 9y ago
    Having used both American-style toilets and first world-style toilets, I'd say the former is stinkier simply because there are often remnants left behind after people give up/toilets get clogged. Throughout my life in America, I saw clogged and filthy toilets more times per year than I could possibly count. Honestly, I was always a little afraid using the toilet when I ate a little too much the day before since there was a good chance of being clogged. Clogged toilets are comparatively rare in other countries I've been to, and I've never personally clogged one outside of America (yet).
    - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
      I've had the same experience. I've never had a toilet clog while living in Norway. I even asked where the plunger was (I moved to Norway through marriage, so I could ask all sorts of questions).
    - paganel 9y ago
      I have pretty much the same opinion about US-like toilets: I don't get them. There's only one public US-like toilet that I know of in the entire European city where I'm currently living (inside of a KFC restaurant) and it's always strange when you use it. I actively prefer the toilet from the McDonald's restaurant that is just 50 meters away. If it matters my post about the public toilets from my city was chosen as one of the 2 posts of the year on my country-specific sub-reddit, I even had my best friend message me with a link to it telling me about how his co-workers were talking about how they had found "the local George Constanza" on that sub-reddit, so suffice is to say that I know a thing or two about public toilets :)
Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
I'm not much of a car expert (I don't even have one), but as far as I know from what I hear people say, one of the main reasons that American cars have a bad reputation in Europe is that they are seen as gas guzzlers. So to counter that bad reputation, maybe more care for environmental issues is needed, not less...
- short_sells_poo 9y ago
  I am a car enthusiast. I'd compare American cars to Nickelback (apologies for the meme). Technically not terrible, but for the same price you can get better quality, performance and style. Mind you, they are not all terrible. Ford makes some good cars that are lovely to drive. The Tesla is technically interesting, but for a purported higher end car, the finish is again dreadful. It is a shame because I'm rooting for Tesla, they are the first big shakeup of the motor industry in a very long time.
davidgould 9y ago
I'm old enough to remember what cars were like both to drive and to maintain before the bulk of the air pollution controls went in and am still interested enough to care about current cars. At the time there was a big (probably astro-turfed) outcry that the smog standards would ruin cars performance and driveability. Yet, we now live in an golden age of efficient reliable cars with excellent performance. Have you ever changed spark plugs? set the points gap? rebuilt a carburetor [0]? Had to use starting fluid on a cold day? let the car warm up for minutes before it could be driven? Cars back then were considered worn out at 100,000 miles, now that is the first major service interval. As for performance, most hot hatches and sports sedans will blow away the muscle cars from the 60s: 1969 Pontiac GTO Convertible Ram Air IV 0-60: 5.8 Quarter Mile: 14.5 mpg: 8-13 2013 Honda Accord Coupe EX-L (Manual) 0-60: 5.5 Quarter Mile: 13.8 mpg: 18-28 Serious fast modern cars are at levels that would have been unimaginable then. The same sort of foot dragging and complaining about over-regulation happened with safety features in cars. Cars then are deathtraps compared to modern cars. Every day people walk away unharmed from accidents that would have been 100% fatal in 1970. My point here is that despite the resistance at the time the air pollution and safety standards are the best thing that ever happened to cars and to the public and to the auto industry overall. [0] "carburetor" French colloquial, "don't fuck with it".
- yostrovs 9y ago
  Companies spent billions on adjusting to regulations while trying to improve performance. Perhaps we'd be all electric by now, or perhaps we would have cars that fly, considering the money spent on efficiency and pollution control instead. Do read Bastiat's "What is seen and what is not seen" essay on squandered potential.
  - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
    No. This is America. We'd all be wearing masks to filter out particulate matter in the air. Companies are beholden to stockholders and they would charge ever more for ever less if we let them. Regulations are a good thing in some instances. Especially when it keeps our air clean.
davidgould 9y ago
Sorry to pick on you again, but missed the other fork of your argument that it is not economical to have more regulation than other countries: > If the US regulates itself into having a difficult time making or using working/economical cars, then other countries can more economically create better cars ... The problem is that global companies will build to suit the local regulation or that there will be a race to the bottom. Either leads to atrocities like this: "A car-to-car test between a 2015 Nissan Tsuru, the least expensive sedan sold by Nissan in Mexico, and a 2016 Nissan Versa, the least expensive sedan sold by Nissan in the United States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OysZ_4lp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OysZ_4lp0 "
fyfy18 9y ago
> An easier to see example is with dishwashers and toilets. The new generation of toilets created by EPA regulations has made toilets that don't really flush very well and are more expensive than before; people end up flushing multiple times which then wastes water. A similar comparison is diesel cars. For the last 15 years or so, all diesel cars have come with a diesel particulate filter (DPF) that removes a lot of the soot and other nasty things that come out of a diesel engine. First of all, these systems mean the engine uses more fuel, as the components of the DPF need to be kept hot to operate properly (the same as a catalytic converter on petrol engines). However as the car gets older (~150,000km) the filter will end up getting pretty blocked up. This means the engine will produce less power, consume even more fuel, and if it becomes blocked enough, eventually damage the engine. At this point you will be faced with a bill of a few thousand euro to replace the system - on a car that's probably not worth much more. Or as is common in a lot of Eastern European countries, just remove it, and drive another 150,000km. This is illegal in quite a few European countries, but if the job has been done properly, it's basically impossible to tell. European emissions testing doesn't test for these type of emissions, so you won't have any problems there.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  > First of all, these systems mean the engine uses more fuel And yet small capacity modern turbo diesel engines power some of the most economical cars on the road. If I recall correctly there was a Citroen vehicle getting 3.6L / 100km.[1] 1. https://www.carshowroom.com.au/showrooms/citroen/c4%20cactus/2017/AA000G7LP0 https://www.carshowroom.com.au/showrooms/citroen/c4%20cactus...
maxerickson 9y ago
The early low flush toilets were bad but the newer ones supposedly work just fine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/its-time-to-replace-that-old-toilet-heres-how-much-you-could-save/2018/02/19/ebf235f4-1034-11e8-9570-29c9830535e5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/its-time-to-re... Also, it's not like automakers from outside the US are ignoring the US because of our emissions laws. They produce cars here and export cars for sale here.
nate_meurer 9y ago
I understand your point, but toilets are a really bad example. In my opinion, toilets, light bulbs and automobile fuel efficiency mandates are excellent examples of government rules spurring useful and necessary technological change. I think people forget how awful the old toilets were before water use restrictions were mandated. As late as early 90's, toilets were uniformly pieces of shit -- 5-6 gallons per flush, low velocity, little attention paid to flushway design, and they could flood your bathroom with a single stoppage. And this was really easy to do. It was easy (especially for a kid) to mistakenly believe a clog was resolved, flush the toilet to check, and end up with five gallons of water on your floor. Fuck that. I'm not going back. I'm not going back to the dark ages, fighting shitty toilets, constantly changing burned out incandescent light bulbs that might collectively suck up kilowatts of electricity and require metal fixtures lest they burn your house down, and constantly fueling up an inefficient car that repays me with noxious fumes. Toilet manufacturers were lazy. They had no reason to innovate, because there was no consumer demand for it. People simply didn't know what a better toilet would look like, and water was cheap enough that it was never going to happen without a law mandating it. I occasionally (not often) hear someone wax nostalgic about old toilets, saying that the new ones clog more. It's certainly true that there are bad low-flow toilets, and the technology took a little while to develop, but I also think these folks simply forget how often the old toilets clogged. I'm a real estate investor and I still encounter these monstrosities regularly. Old toilets are pretty much the first things I replace in a house. I started off years ago using American Standard Champion toilets, but I've switched over completely to Toto. I've installed dozens of Toto low-flow toilets. I have five Totos in my own two houses, and I've never once, in over a decade, had to flush twice due to toilet paper. And I have a wife who uses a lot of toilet paper. When these toilets do clog, you don't have to worry nearly as much about flooding. Toto's bowls are flushways are computer designed and very well tuned. When I do manage to clog one, it's never taken more than a couple strokes with a Korky Beehive plunger to release it, and I don't have to worry about an errant flush flooding my bathroom. Don't take my word for it though. Ask a plumber. Spend a little time on plumbing forums, hear what plumbers say about toilets. For example, here's a random quote I picked from a quick google search by Terry Love, who created the hugely active terrylove.com plumbing forums: > "The old five gallon toilets needed a plunger by them. I grew up with five gallons, and plunging was the order of the day. With the new bowls, most people would use a plunger so rarely, that "finding" the plunger is a problem. In my mothers home, three bathrooms and old toilets replaced with the new low water usage toilets and constantly 30-40 people on weekends, we went several years without needing a plunger. That's how good the new stuff is. The new low flow flush with so much power that they even have instructions about what high flow fittings should be used."

bpp 9y ago

Your toilet analogy is partially true but is incomplete. Toilets manufactured immediately after the regulations went into effect are in fact less effective. However, the industry innovated, improving previously inefficient bowl designs and creating other inventions that improve performance. Toilets manufactured today are at least as effective as those created before the regulations, and consume fewer natural resources (no small matter here in California where we're staring at drought again). Regulations may impose a cost, but they can often spur innovation and economic growth as well.

coolso 9y ago
> Toilets manufactured today are at least as effective as those created before the regulations I replaced my toilet with a new model 2 years ago. Was it the best of the best, no, but neither was my old one. Use of any amount of toilet paper with the new one = a mandatory double flush, every single time. Every so often a #1 with no TP will require a double flush as well. Yes I'm serious.
- kbenson 9y ago
  You've explained that you have a broken toilet, not that regulations made a bad toilet. If your toilet can't even cycle a liquid through enough to even appear clean, you've got other problems.
  - coolso 9y ago
    It cycles the liquid just fine; it's getting rid of 100% of the bubbles that urinating sometimes creates (typically when it's concentrated, e.g., in the morning) that it has trouble with.
    - pwinnski 9y ago
      Your toilet is definitely broken. This is not a regulation problem. Seriously, that is not normal behavior for a new toilet.
      - Izkata 9y ago
        It is normal behavior. The low-flow toilets seem to have been built assuming all waste is sitting at the bottom, but toilet paper can be held floating at the top due to surface tension. The first flush breaks that, then the second flush gets rid of it.
    - atomical 9y ago
      Bubble removal. That's a new one.
- patentatt 9y ago
  Do you really think all toilets work this way? Like, everyone else in the entire country has that same experience? You bought a shitty (pun intended) product, it has nothing to do with the boogeyman of ‘regultion.’
- TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
  We've replaced two toilets in the last two years, no problems like this with either.

coolso 9y ago

Another example is modern washing machines. A friend of mine lives in an apartment complex that just replaced an old machine from the late 80s / early 90s that finally died, with one of those new top-loading ones that has a load sensor and fills the basin accordingly with the "ideal" amount of water. He noticed that ever since the new machine was installed, his clothes and bed sheets often came out feeling soapy (yes, he was using detergent designed for HE machines, and the recommended amount). So one day he opened the lid mid-wash, and... the machine was so "efficient", the very stop of the clothes weren't even wet, even after they had been agitating for several minutes! This was with a medium sized load, with the basin less than half way full. He stuck around for the rinse cycle and noticed it doesn't even fill the basin up with clean rinse water; it just continually spins the basin and sprays water for a little while. No wonder everything came out feeling soapy. This was with a major name brand commercial/heavy duty machine by the way, introduced within the past 2-3 years.

kw71 9y ago
Sounds like a terribly designed machine with bad software. I bought a Korean machine in 2006 and still own it. However, unlike your friend's, mine is a front loader. Immediately I noticed a lower electricity bill because it's using much less hot water. It adds a small amount of water and tumbles the clothes. If the water level in the tub does not go down, the contents are saturated and no more water is needed. We are also using very little soap and softener - we buy soap once a year! We typically fill the scoop for soap halfway up to the first mark, and enough softener to just cover the bottom of the dispenser. I also feel better knowing there is less water and soap being drained into our septic tank. Our machine has an extra rinse option - it normally does two rinses anyway - and fills more water on certain cycles ("hand wash.")
alphabettsy 9y ago
The last two apartments I lived in had the same crappy machine. It’s the cheapest and it works like crap, but it seems the investors/property managers don’t care.
fjsolwmv 9y ago
Modern efficient washing machines are front loaders, so gravity does the work of water distribution.

abpavel 9y ago

Engineers and experts come up with regulation spec, politicians merely enact it. If your toilet design requires dropping a ton of water from one foot, it will naturally not work without one ton of water. However if the manufacturer would turn on their brain however, they could easily come up with efficient jet design that requires less than 1% of previously needed fuel. Market can't adapt in many cases, like plastic bags, subprime mortgage, dogs with bank accounts, Windows and Internet Explorer bundles, and on and on and on. You can have cars with 1.5x better fuel consumption, but 1500x worse emissions. They'll call it "clean emissions".

janoc 9y ago

Market never adapts to things that are more expensive short term - like cleaner energy sources. Why would you put yourself at a competitive disadvantage (and thus lose money) if you aren't forced to? Sometimes the regulation is needed for thing that are actually in higher (i.e. not only shareholders' but entire society's) interest. Such as clean air or not wasting non-renewable fuels. That is not to say we should go batshit crazy and e.g. ban all non-electric cars now but look what has happened with e.g. solar and wind after the regulations went into effect. At the start solar was several times more expensive than fossil fuels (e.g. coal), nobody would touch it as it simply wasn't competitive. After the regulations on coal and other "dirty" fuels went into effect making them more expensive to use along with subsidies for the solar panels and such, solar experienced a boom and now solar energy is almost at the same price level as fossil one and the costs are still going down. Even oil companies are investing in it now massively - simply because it became profitable (plus it is a good PR ...) All the while we have got a chance to breath cleaner air and have fewer cancers, for example. Free market is not a solution for everything and especially in the US you have plenty of good examples where it made the situation beyond fubar - e.g. the healthcare system.

oftenwrong 9y ago
The American healthcare system is far from a free market. It's a single payer system for the poor and the elderly. Outside of those groups, people have few choices about which plan they use, as they are generally provided by an employer. The cost of healthcare also leaves little room for price comparison - the price is not known until after care is provided. That said, "beyond fubar" is a completely accurate of description of American healthcare.
CompelTechnic 9y ago
I wish somebody here were highly knowledgeable about the CAFE standards that are potentially being rolled back. The details we should be focusing on are the details of the tradeoff: How much incremental cost is added to the vehicle due to the standard? How much fuel efficiency is gained? Are there other tradeoffs (safety, etc) due to engineering constraints? The environmental tradeoff has to be weighed as well, of course. I remember seeing articles in the past that indicated the fuel efficiency targets were essentially unrealistic, and unattainable without drastically altering the lineup of cars available from a given manufacturer. Hard to dig them up though. Here are some (admittedly biased) links: Against CAFE: CAFE standards increase vehicle deaths due to lighter vehicle weights: https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/why-the-governments-cafe-standards-fuel-efficiency-should-berepealed-not https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/why-the-governme... A more neutral article cheerleading CAFE: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/can-cars-meet-the-new-54-mpg-cafe-standards-yes-they-can/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/can-cars-m... The more neutral article does mention a handful of technologies that help reach the fuel efficiency targets. Seemed like a lot of engineering (and therefore cost).

XorNot 9y ago

The thing is American toilets are bizarre to start with. You guys have an insanely high water level, and accomplish flushing by basically just draining it. Australian toilets are very different - the water level is low, and the flush is accomplished by violently dumping water from the tank into the bowl from a rim - which, having experienced both - effectively washes it clean with the percussive action. Australian toilet flush example (work safe, nothing in it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RWoJ2VNd3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RWoJ2VNd3o

jey 9y ago
Just speculation, but I suspect the American design is better at containing smells. Sure, that's also solvable by just promptly flushing, but I wonder if this is a calculated decision by manufacturers to avoid getting a reputation for "smelly toilets" caused by people sitting on the throne reading the day's paper or whatever.
- fiblye 9y ago
  Having used both American-style toilets and first world-style toilets, I'd say the former is stinkier simply because there are often remnants left behind after people give up/toilets get clogged. Throughout my life in America, I saw clogged and filthy toilets more times per year than I could possibly count. Honestly, I was always a little afraid using the toilet when I ate a little too much the day before since there was a good chance of being clogged. Clogged toilets are comparatively rare in other countries I've been to, and I've never personally clogged one outside of America (yet).
  - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
    I've had the same experience. I've never had a toilet clog while living in Norway. I even asked where the plunger was (I moved to Norway through marriage, so I could ask all sorts of questions).
  - paganel 9y ago
    I have pretty much the same opinion about US-like toilets: I don't get them. There's only one public US-like toilet that I know of in the entire European city where I'm currently living (inside of a KFC restaurant) and it's always strange when you use it. I actively prefer the toilet from the McDonald's restaurant that is just 50 meters away. If it matters my post about the public toilets from my city was chosen as one of the 2 posts of the year on my country-specific sub-reddit, I even had my best friend message me with a link to it telling me about how his co-workers were talking about how they had found "the local George Constanza" on that sub-reddit, so suffice is to say that I know a thing or two about public toilets :)

Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago

I'm not much of a car expert (I don't even have one), but as far as I know from what I hear people say, one of the main reasons that American cars have a bad reputation in Europe is that they are seen as gas guzzlers. So to counter that bad reputation, maybe more care for environmental issues is needed, not less...

short_sells_poo 9y ago
I am a car enthusiast. I'd compare American cars to Nickelback (apologies for the meme). Technically not terrible, but for the same price you can get better quality, performance and style. Mind you, they are not all terrible. Ford makes some good cars that are lovely to drive. The Tesla is technically interesting, but for a purported higher end car, the finish is again dreadful. It is a shame because I'm rooting for Tesla, they are the first big shakeup of the motor industry in a very long time.

davidgould 9y ago

I'm old enough to remember what cars were like both to drive and to maintain before the bulk of the air pollution controls went in and am still interested enough to care about current cars. At the time there was a big (probably astro-turfed) outcry that the smog standards would ruin cars performance and driveability. Yet, we now live in an golden age of efficient reliable cars with excellent performance. Have you ever changed spark plugs? set the points gap? rebuilt a carburetor [0]? Had to use starting fluid on a cold day? let the car warm up for minutes before it could be driven? Cars back then were considered worn out at 100,000 miles, now that is the first major service interval. As for performance, most hot hatches and sports sedans will blow away the muscle cars from the 60s: 1969 Pontiac GTO Convertible Ram Air IV 0-60: 5.8 Quarter Mile: 14.5 mpg: 8-13 2013 Honda Accord Coupe EX-L (Manual) 0-60: 5.5 Quarter Mile: 13.8 mpg: 18-28 Serious fast modern cars are at levels that would have been unimaginable then. The same sort of foot dragging and complaining about over-regulation happened with safety features in cars. Cars then are deathtraps compared to modern cars. Every day people walk away unharmed from accidents that would have been 100% fatal in 1970. My point here is that despite the resistance at the time the air pollution and safety standards are the best thing that ever happened to cars and to the public and to the auto industry overall. [0] "carburetor" French colloquial, "don't fuck with it".

yostrovs 9y ago
Companies spent billions on adjusting to regulations while trying to improve performance. Perhaps we'd be all electric by now, or perhaps we would have cars that fly, considering the money spent on efficiency and pollution control instead. Do read Bastiat's "What is seen and what is not seen" essay on squandered potential.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  No. This is America. We'd all be wearing masks to filter out particulate matter in the air. Companies are beholden to stockholders and they would charge ever more for ever less if we let them. Regulations are a good thing in some instances. Especially when it keeps our air clean.

davidgould 9y ago

Sorry to pick on you again, but missed the other fork of your argument that it is not economical to have more regulation than other countries: > If the US regulates itself into having a difficult time making or using working/economical cars, then other countries can more economically create better cars ... The problem is that global companies will build to suit the local regulation or that there will be a race to the bottom. Either leads to atrocities like this: "A car-to-car test between a 2015 Nissan Tsuru, the least expensive sedan sold by Nissan in Mexico, and a 2016 Nissan Versa, the least expensive sedan sold by Nissan in the United States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OysZ_4lp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OysZ_4lp0 "

fyfy18 9y ago

> An easier to see example is with dishwashers and toilets. The new generation of toilets created by EPA regulations has made toilets that don't really flush very well and are more expensive than before; people end up flushing multiple times which then wastes water. A similar comparison is diesel cars. For the last 15 years or so, all diesel cars have come with a diesel particulate filter (DPF) that removes a lot of the soot and other nasty things that come out of a diesel engine. First of all, these systems mean the engine uses more fuel, as the components of the DPF need to be kept hot to operate properly (the same as a catalytic converter on petrol engines). However as the car gets older (~150,000km) the filter will end up getting pretty blocked up. This means the engine will produce less power, consume even more fuel, and if it becomes blocked enough, eventually damage the engine. At this point you will be faced with a bill of a few thousand euro to replace the system - on a car that's probably not worth much more. Or as is common in a lot of Eastern European countries, just remove it, and drive another 150,000km. This is illegal in quite a few European countries, but if the job has been done properly, it's basically impossible to tell. European emissions testing doesn't test for these type of emissions, so you won't have any problems there.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
> First of all, these systems mean the engine uses more fuel And yet small capacity modern turbo diesel engines power some of the most economical cars on the road. If I recall correctly there was a Citroen vehicle getting 3.6L / 100km.[1] 1. https://www.carshowroom.com.au/showrooms/citroen/c4%20cactus/2017/AA000G7LP0 https://www.carshowroom.com.au/showrooms/citroen/c4%20cactus...

maxerickson 9y ago

The early low flush toilets were bad but the newer ones supposedly work just fine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/its-time-to-replace-that-old-toilet-heres-how-much-you-could-save/2018/02/19/ebf235f4-1034-11e8-9570-29c9830535e5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/its-time-to-re... Also, it's not like automakers from outside the US are ignoring the US because of our emissions laws. They produce cars here and export cars for sale here.

nate_meurer 9y ago

I understand your point, but toilets are a really bad example. In my opinion, toilets, light bulbs and automobile fuel efficiency mandates are excellent examples of government rules spurring useful and necessary technological change. I think people forget how awful the old toilets were before water use restrictions were mandated. As late as early 90's, toilets were uniformly pieces of shit -- 5-6 gallons per flush, low velocity, little attention paid to flushway design, and they could flood your bathroom with a single stoppage. And this was really easy to do. It was easy (especially for a kid) to mistakenly believe a clog was resolved, flush the toilet to check, and end up with five gallons of water on your floor. Fuck that. I'm not going back. I'm not going back to the dark ages, fighting shitty toilets, constantly changing burned out incandescent light bulbs that might collectively suck up kilowatts of electricity and require metal fixtures lest they burn your house down, and constantly fueling up an inefficient car that repays me with noxious fumes. Toilet manufacturers were lazy. They had no reason to innovate, because there was no consumer demand for it. People simply didn't know what a better toilet would look like, and water was cheap enough that it was never going to happen without a law mandating it. I occasionally (not often) hear someone wax nostalgic about old toilets, saying that the new ones clog more. It's certainly true that there are bad low-flow toilets, and the technology took a little while to develop, but I also think these folks simply forget how often the old toilets clogged. I'm a real estate investor and I still encounter these monstrosities regularly. Old toilets are pretty much the first things I replace in a house. I started off years ago using American Standard Champion toilets, but I've switched over completely to Toto. I've installed dozens of Toto low-flow toilets. I have five Totos in my own two houses, and I've never once, in over a decade, had to flush twice due to toilet paper. And I have a wife who uses a lot of toilet paper. When these toilets do clog, you don't have to worry nearly as much about flooding. Toto's bowls are flushways are computer designed and very well tuned. When I do manage to clog one, it's never taken more than a couple strokes with a Korky Beehive plunger to release it, and I don't have to worry about an errant flush flooding my bathroom. Don't take my word for it though. Ask a plumber. Spend a little time on plumbing forums, hear what plumbers say about toilets. For example, here's a random quote I picked from a quick google search by Terry Love, who created the hugely active terrylove.com plumbing forums: > "The old five gallon toilets needed a plunger by them. I grew up with five gallons, and plunging was the order of the day. With the new bowls, most people would use a plunger so rarely, that "finding" the plunger is a problem. In my mothers home, three bathrooms and old toilets replaced with the new low water usage toilets and constantly 30-40 people on weekends, we went several years without needing a plunger. That's how good the new stuff is. The new low flow flush with so much power that they even have instructions about what high flow fittings should be used."