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Only half joking prediction: The start of the coming bird flu pandemic that could dwarf covid's damages done, will be traced back to heedless budget cuts from DOGE. Testing? Who needs it.
Cynical response: imagine if DOGE eight years ago had instead cut US grant funding the EcoHealth Alliance for gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China that was already banned by Congress. I'm sure they'd be whining like there was when they cut their funding in 2020, reinstated it after "prominent scientists" complained, and then finally banned it again after the OIG of HHS reported significant compliance problems.
I'm not completely certain of the lab leak hypothesis, but it seems a pretty plausible and concrete harm to consider. And I'm not going to Stan for the cuts more generally, because it doesn't really seem like they're neutrally considering value proposition either.
This is a good example of a bigger point, which is that "efficiency" isn't just referring to the direct costs of spending. When you get rid of the guy that's in charge of regulating showerhead flow, you don't just save the $100K per year on the useless regulator, you also save compliance costs for every company that makes showerheads and create additional consumer surplus for people that can get showerheads they actually like. To not put a thumb on the scale, it's worth mentioning that you also (putatively) increase costs for water and whatever environmental costs are associated with it. Each choice when it comes to getting rid of regulators has significant externality impacts, both positive and negative, that are part of the picture of "efficiency".
Every time I'm outside the US I remark at how awesome the showers are. Probably largely a function of the flow rate. I'm sympathetic to the idea that saving water is good, especially in Western states that are quite arid, but residential water use is pretty small compared to everything else anyway. IMO it'd be better if we let the flow restrictions be required only in California and Nevada.
Yeah, it's why I use that example. Anyone that's experienced a decent shower hates these stupid trickle flow showerheads. I can barely think of a better example of what I mean when I say that we pay federal employees to make our lives slightly worse in pointless, annoying ways that no one would ever have considered a federal issue in the past.
They're also a fantastic example of how the rules are only for the hoi polloi. Anyone with resources is going to just get a rainfall shower or other high-end fixture, not buy a showerhead off Amazon and strip out the regulator.
Showers are annoying but what’s way worse is water saving dishwashers. They run for way longer, and do bad job cleaning.
What we need there is repeal of anti-backsliding legislation, or a Supreme Court ruling that anti-backsliding legislation violates the constitution.
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