Life in the future
A topic I’ve touched on here a few times over the years is the government, generally, making our lives worse via bureaucratic fiat from people who are not accountable to anyone. For instance, your toilet sucks. My brand new, top of the line dishwasher takes two hours and nineteen minutes to do a load of dishes. My top of the line washing machine does a load of laundry in one hour and five minutes. Both used to accomplish their respective tasks in 30 minutes. Your default government-mandated water heater setting sucks but you can change it. Your showerhead also sucks thanks to government. And your household cleaners also suck thanks to government. You can also change that.
And don’t even get me started on car exhaust systems. Particularly, the Exhaust Gas Recirculation system in the F350. It is nothing but a pain in the nethers.
I’m glad to see this complaint of mine making it in print in other places: Your Shower Is Lame, Your Dishwasher Doesnt Work, and Your Clothes are Dirty:
If the public knew the whole truth about this, the anti-government feeling alive in the land would intensify beyond anything weve ever known. In the meantime, dont blame the manufacturers. They are the victims, along with the rest of the public. We are all trying to live better lives but the government wont allow that to happen.
The future is stupid. But if more people knew exactly how much non-elected bureaucrats were dicking up their day-to-day life, it might get a little less stupid.
Hopefully, some of these regulations Trump is going to target will be the kind I mentioned.
December 31st, 2016 at 2:59 pm
Capitalism interprets regulations as damage and routes around it. But it’s still damaged each time – it doesn’t make up the whole loss – and then gets blamed for “market failure” and more regulations are demanded.
December 31st, 2016 at 3:22 pm
Hmm. Uncle, you should probably list which brands you’re using so the rest of us never make your mistakes, because a) my Rinai water heater on demand is like a nuclear blast furnace—and it’s a current model, and b) my Kohler (or however the hell it’s spelled) shower head is awesome—gets me wet and keeps me wet while showering (no Navy showers here; water’s on all the time), and c) my Samsung clothes washer, also new, does a regular load in 30 minutes with less detergent than previous models and uses less water in the process, too, saving me money.
December 31st, 2016 at 3:50 pm
Oh, my hot water and shower head are great. But I had to fix what should never have been broken to begin with. Both washers suck and I don’t have a fix for them. I may look into the samsung washer though.
December 31st, 2016 at 3:53 pm
I checked. The washer is a Samsung direct drive. On the “normal” setting, it’s an hour plus. There is a quick wash that takes 30 minutes.
December 31st, 2016 at 4:18 pm
Install a new toilet lately? Sure it uses less water. Also takes five times the chemicals to keep clean.
December 31st, 2016 at 8:51 pm
New front load Kenmore washer takes 1.5 hours on a large load on normal setting. “quick wash” cuts that down to 35 to 50 minutes depending on load size. What I wouldn’t give for my 35 year old Kenmore back. Clothes looked like they were caught in a tornado in that thing….
December 31st, 2016 at 10:26 pm
I have always avoided the name brand new fancy stuff. I go to an appliance store (not a box store, a real appliance store) and ask what laundromats are using, and do they make a non-coin operated version.
Speed Queen washer and dryer. Bought 3 years ago. They are the last to use metal gears instead of plastic.
Both work like, well, tanks. Not that energy efficient compared to some of the really expensive ones out there, but they work. And were relatively cheap.
As to laundry soap, add 1/8th cup of Dawn to help strip out the grease if you are stuck in one of those places that have restrictions on evil phospates.
As to low volume showers, drilling out the restrictor works wonders, or go check out the building material re-user stores for ones made before all the restrictions.
Low volume flush toilets, well, I use a bucket and fill it off the bath-tub tap and supplement the weak-assed toilet flow.
January 1st, 2017 at 12:32 am
RE exhaust, my brother in law has similar issues with his chevy 3500. his warranty is about up. he is not, I repeat not, pricing exhaust modifications that will make the truck produce an additional 100 hp and up the mileage to 25MPG. Of course, he’s in rural GA, where no one would put a sniffer on his truck.
January 1st, 2017 at 11:54 am
Don’t forget about gas can spouts.
January 1st, 2017 at 2:02 pm
Only way to get outdoor power equipment with non-adjustable carburetors to work properly is to replace the carb with an adjustable one….while you still can.
Remember for engines, most of the problems are due to California. the C in CARB compliant stands for California.
January 1st, 2017 at 3:07 pm
The best fix for that truck is a pre-DEF engine. As soon as all that emissions crap starts failing, might be the cheapest and best solution.
BTW, I only use organic fuel. I am awesome that way.
January 2nd, 2017 at 3:19 am
Steve, I also use all-organic fuel. My organics died a long long time ago.
January 2nd, 2017 at 4:33 am
JK Brown (above) has the answer; the sooner we declare California a separate country requiring passports, border guards and import duties the sooner we’ll recover sanity (at which point we can move EPA HQ to Sacramento and let them inflict all their suffering there).
January 2nd, 2017 at 9:41 am
Andrew,
Mine too!
January 2nd, 2017 at 2:10 pm
Andrew
The only bad thing about the Speed Queens is that you have to bolt them to a concrete floor.
January 3rd, 2017 at 8:57 pm
Andrew
Speed Queen top loader +10
January 3rd, 2017 at 9:00 pm
Faceless regulators must die, but…
I remember when the new 2010 Republican Congress had a chance to repeal the incandescent light bulb ban.
They didn’t give a shit and moved on.