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Comment by yborg | Hacker News Reader

That's probably the main reason they want to do away with it. Eliminating any semblance of independent factual information across the board means that the truth becomes whatever the best bankrolled says it is. I could see them eliminating the MPG/eMPG ratings on vehicles next.

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It's easy and more direct for Consumer Reports style companies to measure energy consumption themselves, instead of assuming that the producer's self-reports are fully accurate because there's a regulator who may or may not be paying attention.

CR only reviews products after they are available on the market, it does not review all products on the market, and access to the reviews require a subscription.

How do you compare three hot water heaters when all three brands are "refreshed" each year, so the specific models aren't listed on CR?

It's easier for consumer groups like CR to back-stop the regulatory agencies by identifying and reporting fraudulent self-reports.

Access to the Energy Star reviews requires a 'subscription' too, in the form of a tax. The difference is that people who aren't in the market and don't want to buy it are forced to, for which there is no moral basis.

If there are products that don't have reviews at all, just don't buy them in favor of those that do. In markets where consumers are choosy (e.g. films) companies often ensure reviewers have early access to products to ensure reviews are plentiful.

> Access to the Energy Star reviews requires a 'subscription' too, in the form of a tax.

You're failing to consider the alternative no-EnergyStar scenario -- higher aggregate electricity demand, requiring more power plants, so everyone pays more for power.

Either you pay pennies to promote efficiency, or you pay quarters for energy infrastructure.

Efficiency savings make no difference to aggregated demand so that is irrelevant. See Jevon's Paradox, which absolutely applies to electricity.

So you're saying people will install two water heaters if they buy a more efficient one?

Not sure this is the elastic droid that paradox is looking for.

No, that's not what I'm saying. Jevon's Paradox has a good Wikipedia page that describes the problem. Efficiency improvements don't reduce consumption in aggregate, because the lower demand causes lower prices that then unlock new use cases that create more demand that pushes up usage again.

As the wikipedia page points out, this assumes a highly price elastic good.

Household energy use is not such a good, because most uses have fixed utility.

Very few people are going to cool their house down to 10C because the price of cooling to 15C decreased.

Nor is their overall energy use budget-capped. (Outside of low income AC and/or heating use cases)

You started by talking about electricity usage, which is fungible and elastic. There's no dedicated grid for household electricity so Jevons Paradox certainly applies.

> Nor is their overall energy use budget-capped. (Outside of low income AC and/or heating use cases)

Requiring more power plants doesn’t mean that power will be more expensive. Power will only be more expensive if we get more demand and less supply. If supply (power plants) increases linearly with demand there won’t be a price difference.

Power doesn't work as simply as that.

Example: as a regulated utility it will often cost more per unit if underused vs optimal generating supply (which has already been passed through into rates)

Additionally, the generating source heavily influences ultimate cost.

If you want to go that route, money is immoral because it doesn't exist unless people are threatened by force to use it.

When you need to pay the king's taxes with the king's money as otherwise the king's men will beat you up, which is why you'll give the king's soldiers food in exchange for the king's money.

> companies often ensure reviewers

LOL! Of course they do! Companies pick reviewers who give good reviews, and spurn those who are critical. You every wonder why most game reviewers are so fawning?

Consumer Reports knows this, which is why they buy their products on the market, which is why they can't have reviews with the product first comes out.

Which is why when a product is first released you'll rarely find honest negative reviews.

Who rates the reviewers? Are they shilling for the manufacturer? Are they the marketing arm of the manufacturer? How do you know?

Nobody is threatened into using cryptocurrencies, yet they exist and can be used as money.

Yes, companies can choose who gets to review pre-release products. Negative pre-release reviews come out anyway, and if you don't trust them you can wait, as you say. Reviewers who aren't trusted by people looking for reviews rapidly lose their audience and stop being given product access.

You guys are talking as if product reviews are some theoretical thing that don't exist today, that only a government can supply. Reviews obviously do exist and billions of people rely on them every month. There is just no problem that specifically requires the US government to step in here.

> and can be used as money

Yes, and so can Canadian Tire money, but try paying your taxes in scrip or Bitcoin.

> and if you don't trust them you can wait

Nope. Models numbers are cheap. Each chain can get their own model number, updated every six months. You wait and the numbers all change.

> Reviewers who aren't trusted by people

You're smoking the good stuff!

"Up to 30% of online reviews are fake and consumers can't tell the difference", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33472922

"Big media publishers are inundating the web with subpar product recommendations", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39433451

See also the comments of HNers who find it hard to find trusted reviewers.

How do you find a trusted reviewer for air purifiers, which that last link concerns?

Consumer Reports is great. I love them. They inherently have a limited testing capacity, and are not even able to look at a quarter of current products in the categories I'm usually looking at.

They're just no substitute for things like Energy Star

There are lots of companies offering product reviews. There is no requirement that every single product be reviewed by all of them. And, there are a million things someone might want to know about a product, there's nothing special about energy usage that justifies a whole special government programme. Otherwise where does it end? Why not demand new taxes to pay for reviews of the GUI friendliness of every single electronic product? Or movies? The arguments being made in this thread would apply to an enormous number of questions someone might ask about a product.

Sure it is, but that's not going to happen in reality. Private ventures are almost always more efficient, however they are only efficient if they exist, and they only exist if they make enough money to exist. They can't test all the models of all the products out there, especially not "independently", it's not commercially viable.

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