Do European Social Engineers Know More About Products Than Their Actual Engineers?

Socialists love central planning, but they hate another type – planned obsolescence. According to the report “EU aims to abolish planned obsolescence,” they have banned the practice before they identified what it is.

The European Parliament now wants the European Commission to create a clear definition of the term “planned obsolescence" and to develop a system to track that aging process. It also wants longer warranty periods and criteria to measure a product’s strength. Each and every device should also have a mention of its minimal life expectancy.

Devices should also be easier to repair: batteries and other components should be freely accessible for replacement, unless safety dictates otherwise. Manufacturers will also need to give other companies access to their components so that consumers can visit those companies for repairs.

The resolution should prevent situations like Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. The battery proved to be an explosion hazard and seeing how it could not be replaced, the South Korean company was forced to recall every single device.

The European Parliament also hopes the resolution will also stimulate job creation, because it should result in more independent repair services. The second-hand market should also benefit from the resolution, because products will get a new lease on life.

Macronomics will not save France

Anatole Kaletsky wrote in “A ‘Macroneconomic’ Revolution?” that the new French President has figured out the golden mean of economic policy that will lead France out of the swamp of despair into which its economy has sunk for a decade.

Typical of socialists, Kaletsky blames Europe’s lost decade on too much capitalism, or as he says, market fundamentalism. In the great film Casablanca, the Police Chief tells his deputy to “round up the usual suspects” after a crime has been committed. There was no effort to investigate or search for evidence. He had a standard set of criminal types that he harassed on a regular basis in order to appear to be doing something. Socialists respond to every economic crisis by rounding up one usual suspect – capitalism.

The US had become increasingly socialist since the election of Wilson. A nation that takes 45% of GDP for all levels of government, has over three million pages of business regulations that grow at the rate of 100,000 pages per year, and most of its citizens get their income from the government cannot be considered a capitalist or market fundamentalist nation. Europe has been socialist much longer. See Hayek’s Counter-Revolution in Science and Bastiat’s essays for evidence from the 19th century France. Germany was completely socialist by 1918 and still indicted capitalism for its problems.

Brexit! The UK's independence day!

Last week the Brits voted for independence from the European Union. Maybe now they better grasp why we colonists divorced King George over 200 years ago.

The Adam Smith Institute has the best pieces on Brexit here and here and with the video Brexit: The Movie.

I had hoped to avoid writing about the British exit from the European Union because I never saw it as an important event, but the hysteria drummed up by the media has made it difficult for me to keep silent. So here are my two bits.

First, why the hysteria? There are two reasons for it. One is that the media have but one purpose and that is to create hysteria. Fear keeps people tuned in and more people paying attention means greater advertising revenues. The great newspaper editor Mencken once wrote, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” Because he was in the business, he blinded himself to the fact that the media is an accomplice of politicians in crime.