This illustrates an important point about leftism that everyone should be aware of. Control by totalitarian government cannot operate when there is an *abundance* of *anything*.
An essential tenet of Marxism is that government must control “the means of production.” But Marxists later realized that anything that exists in abundance can thwart their control by becoming an alternative form of currency.
Therefore, *everything* must be rationed. By them. And to do so, *everything* must be in shortage, real or imagined.
My first illustration of this was many years ago, in school, when posters were put up about “home water conservation”. On the surface it seemed a very mild thing indeed. But then I found an interesting statistic. In my state, mining, agriculture and industry used about 95% of the available fresh water. Residential use was only 5%. But this made no sense: why ask a tiny minority to shoulder all the burden?
Almost immediately afterward, the mining industry announced that to save money, it was going to recycle its water, instead of using all fresh. Overnight, this increased the available fresh water in the state by ONE THIRD.
I pointed this out to the “adults” running the residential home conservation program, and their response gave me a superb indicator of scoundrels in action.
“We must continue this home conservation program, to RAISE PUBLIC AWARENESS.”
This was a valuable lesson about leftists. The approximate phrase of “raising public awareness” means that convincing people there is a shortage is more important to leftists than that there actually is a shortage.
The epilogue to this is that leftists were able to convince Washington, D.C. that because fresh water was in shortage, the government had to regulate the toilets in people’s homes. People no longer had control over their own toilets.
Finally, after years of gradually increasing their control over America’s fresh water, the EPA has made the “grand power grab” of taking control over all open water in our entire country. No matter who “technically” owns that water, the EPA controls it.
This shows how even their simple efforts at “raising public awareness” have some truly hideous ends. Always, *always* ending with vast government control over our lives.
And these efforts are happening in a broad front. Light bulbs, automobiles, appliances, the Internet, food, literally *everything*, they want under their control.
An example of how this ends up is to look at old East Germany. So obsessed was their government with totalitarian control, that even color and music was rationed, reserved “to honor the state”. So their people lived with horrible pollution, decaying infrastructure, and perpetual near starvation and deprivation, with only black, white and gray paint available, and the only color and music permitted was for the elites to honor themselves.
That, to leftists, is “paradise”. That is their goal.
Today, in the United States of America, they no longer want Americans to have bright, warm lights. With truly vast energy resources, why is that?
Well said!
The only winners are the Chinese.
They make other items of importance: sexual drugs that cause a person to run around with an eight hour woodie.
Not that I can't see making the public aware of potentially lethal hazards, but more often than not, industry can do that without extra bureaucrats or legislation.