The latest government mandate is the 35 mpg CAFE standard that is percolating through Congress, but may face a veto because it doesn't contain enough alternative fuel mandates to satisfy the President.
The thing about government mandates is that they are pushed by special interests who have no funding liability. They mandate; we pay.The thing about mandates is that they run counter to all marketplace dynamics. The incentive of mandates is to avoid punishment rather than gain reward.
When you look at all great advances in human commerce, science, and technology, you rarely... if ever... find the motive to be one of avoiding punishment.Yet, the government approach is the source that doles out all sorts of money to special interest cronies while costing other businesses and consumers billions of dollars in needless expense. In this latest example, automobile manufacturers have to spend vast sums guessing which unproven technology strategy to pursue to avoid punishment... rather than responding to a marketplace that demands the optimum combination of low cost, high performance and greatest efficiency.
In this case, efficiency is the only factor mandated by the government... and done in a way that is certain to maximize cost and minimize performance.In other news, the education mandate "No child left behind" continues to disrupt schools systems already achieving high standards and excellent results by measuring those systems with faulty, illogical metrics....
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