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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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In my latest essay, I try to list the major points I'm aware of that puncture the progressive narrative on economics, without trying to directly touch on the Culture War's social fronts.

Reality Has a Poorly Recognized Classical Liberal Bias

I think most people here have enough exposure to libertarianism that they are at least aware of these issues (even if they don't agree with them). If you think I missed one or I'm somehow dead wrong please do indicate so.

and with no air conditioning

that is a small aside - but large reason for that is that USA is much hotter and until recently it would be not-so-needed

article you linked even mentions it

Well, yes. That was true of much of the northern U.S. until more recent times.

The problem is that the Europeans can't quite seem to get AC now that they probably ought to have it. It's kind of banned in many places.

That is a citation needed moment. Source - I am from Europe. AC is quite popular and widespread. And treated as necessity during summer. We just don't try to achieve polar temperatures and usually put it to 20-22 C (don't ask me why AC units became such pussies lately)

(don't ask me why AC units became such pussies lately)

I have been assured by top conspiracist minds that the refrigerant chemical companies ensure their regulatorily captured lawmakers’ outlaw refrigerants as soon as they go out of patent, purely for environmental reasons of course.

From a purely physical/technical perspective, modern refrigerants are fine.

Even refrigerants that completely satisfy our modem sensibilities (low global warming potential, zero ozone depletion potential) work as well as they always did. There's no magic sauce in those old fluorocarbons. Hell, even propane and CO2 are basically ideal refrigerants (but require a complete redesign of the cooling circuit, with much beefier parts to allow for much higher pressures).

If legacy AC systems seem to have more power, I'd assume they come with a more powerful compressor, and without pesky electronics that limit that power in any way.

Even refrigerants that completely satisfy our modem sensibilities (low global warming potential, zero ozone depletion potential) work as well as they always did. There's no magic sauce in those old fluorocarbons.

Part of the magic sauce is that they work at lower pressures. Other magic things include that they don't form HF if there's any water in the system, they're compatible with less expensive non-hygroscopic (remember that HF?) oils, they're single component so there's no need to replace all the refrigerant if there's a leak, and the very fact that the environmentalists hate them most makes them cool better. OK, maybe the last one is a myth.

Hell, even propane and CO2 are basically ideal refrigerants (but require a complete redesign of the cooling circuit, with much beefier parts to allow for much higher pressures).

Propane runs fine in a system designed for R-12. The issue with it is flammability.

Propane runs fine in a system designed for R-12. The issue with it is flammability.

While propane's flammability makes repairing systems using it more dangerous, it doesn't make much difference in running the system. It's a significantly better refrigerant than r-134a(the main thing it's replacing now) or r-410a(which, along with 404, it's likely to displace a lot of in the coming years) but a slightly worse one with similar drawbacks to r22(which has been banned/in phaseout for a while).