1. how much mercury is in a CFL bulb vs. how much is safe exposure, vs. how much may be generated by electrical power plants
2. how to dispose of a CFL bulb when it is burnt out or broken?
non-mercury-related, but still important questions:
3. isn’t it wasteful to throw away the transformer along with the CFL bulb?
4. when does the increased cost of a CFL (upfront manufacturing costs) break-even with the energy savings?
5. should CFL vs. incandescent usage/sales be regulated and/or mandated? Or should we simply allow the competition in the free market economy to decide?
I subscribe to several newsletters and magazines, but my favorite financial publisher is http://www.stansberryresearch.com/ and here’s a snippet that isn’t exactly pure finance, but an example of the punchy style I admire so much. The below is in response to a reader writing in asking for career advice:
You’re unlikely to follow this advice, but here’s what I recommend. First, figure out what you want to do with your time. Not your life. Just your time. If you think really hard about what you want to do every day next week, you’ll stumble onto what you should be doing with your life. That’s actually the hard part, believe it or not. Most people don’t think this way. They have some idea of what they think they should be doing with their lives – and the ideas are usually pretty big and grandiose. In the meantime, they don’t stop and consider what the day to day will be like once they’ve “arrived.”
Take doctors. Lots of folks want to be doctors because it’s challenging to get through med school and because they believe they can get rich in medicine. Then… once they’ve racked up $50,000 in debt (or more) and completed 12 years of training, they suddenly realize they’re going to spend almost every day for the rest of their lives in a hospital, surrounded by sick and dying people. They discover that working every day with the public is simply retail. Wearing a white coat doesn’t actually make it all that much more enjoyable. (Obviously, some people love being doctors… but I’ve met lots and lots of people who didn’t love the long hours or constantly being subjected to the medical emergencies – real or imagined – of their patients.)
So you might think you want to be in finance – but what does that really mean to you, in terms of what you’ll be doing day to day? Lots of folks want to be investment bankers, until they spend five years doing that kind of work, which normally entails spending all night, several times a week, working a copying machine. Or spending days on end in front of a Bloomberg terminal. Or learning how to make love using an Excel spreadsheet.
Figure out the day-to-day stuff first, not last. And don’t kid yourself. You won’t be able to fake it. Here’s why this is so important: Eventually, you’re going to have to compete against people who actually love what they’re doing every single day. They love it so much they literally devote their entire lives to doing it. They will sacrifice everything just to be the best at this thing they do. You will meet people like this, no matter what field you end up in. And they will crush you if you don’t actually love what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis.
In the real world, there’s a huge difference between the 20% at the top and everyone else. If you don’t truly love what you do every day, you’ll never be in the top 20%. And you’ll never be very successful.
Once you’ve figured out what you want to do each day, find the 10 best people in the world at it. Don’t narrow your search to Chicago or New York. Chances are, the 10 best don’t live there. They’ll live in much, much nicer places, like Aspen or Miami or Newport Beach. And you’ll want to live there too, trust me.
Spend a while researching these guys. Get to know every single thing about them. Act like a private detective. Spend three months on each guy. Pay attention to how these guys actually spend their time. Make sure that’s what you want to do with your time, too. Finally… approach them.
The best way to do this is to compliment their work and to send them ideas that mirror their approach. Show them you love to do what they do and you’re good at it. Find a way to make their lives easier or better. Then, volunteer to work for them, for free, for as long as it takes to prove your value to them. Be prepared for them all to say “no” at least a dozen times. They’re just testing you. Very few people turn down a young, hard-working, bright person who is self-directed who volunteers to work for free – if he’s persistent.
I felt bad listening to the story of the LAUSD teacher who committed suicide this week. One of his alleged reasons was a negative score on the “Value Added” list published in the Los Angeles Times. One point that has been made multiple times is that there are multiple factors in judging a teacher “good” and test scores is only one of them. One question I have is what outcome other than public humiliation is to be expected from such a narrow rating system. Another is how does the average parent react to the score of their child’s teacher? But I’d like to step back even further and try to consider the “ratings game” situation from a Liberty perspective:
1. Maybe we should regard public education the same way we regard public retirement (Social Security) in other words as a last-resort safety net rather than the primary method of education. In other words don’t expect boutique creativity and stellar quality from a large-scale mass-produced education system.
2. How about returning to smaller districts with more local control and feedback? This more intimate setting allows both the administrators and the community to be more aware of which teachers have the right stuff.
3. Choice, choice, choice, and more free choice. By free, I mean free as in freedom to choose, not necessarily as in free lunch. Choice is the ultimate expression of a free society, and it spreads the “job” of evaluating the many factors (effectiveness/coolness/niceness) among the entire population and helps distinguish the good services from the acceptable, and eventually culls the least desirable.
If parents and students were allowed to choose, then the ones who cared the most would flock to the best school, even if they had to pay a distance fee. How would they figure out what are the best schools? I don’t know, and I’m proud to admit that I don’t know, unlike meddling bureaucrats who make it their life’s work to dream up arbitrary metrics then use them to perpetuate their jobs. My point is that people will find a way to evaluate the schools in a variety of ways that no one committee can foresee, anticipate, model or predict. So lets get out of the way of the market, and let the people be free to chose.
You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.
Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.
Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!
Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government.
– Milton Friedman, libertarian,
in a 2004 interview
