[HiTech RedNeck]

A free people ought to be able to choose any or all of these items for their personal use if they wish. They purport to save on bills, and if they work as advertised they do. However they probably will never work quite as well as they would had market competition been the only reason for their existence.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

You are correct, a free people ought to be able to chose. There is an argument for “neighborhood effects”, for instance, the reason we need to control emissions from automobiles. The emissions from a single automobile are insignificant and someone voluntarily taking the steps needed to control them makes no sense. The emissions from millions of vehicles makes places like Los Angeles and New York City very unpleasant.

While there are neighborhood effects from energy and water consumption, the case is not made. I have private water and sewer in a relatively rural area. My water usage has no neighborhood effect, I and all my neighbors could use all the water we wanted without affecting the environment. The amount of effluent we produce is negibly affected by the amount of ground water we mix it with before returning the water back to the ground. In a septic system, rainwater mixes with the wastewater in the leaching feild regardless. We are just pre-mixing a little more or less rainwater.