Milton Friedman famously claimed monopolies/cartels would not exist without government assistance and that there are only 2 examples of private monopolies that lasted long period of time (De Beers and NYSE). I suppose he was very wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdLBzfFGFQU
The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)
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Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)
#42Milton Friedman famously claimed monopolies/cartels would not exist without government assistance and that there are only 2 examples of private monopolies that lasted longer period of time. I suppose he was very wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdLBzfFGFQU
Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)
#43I miss the times when every light fitting was the same (one size, bayonet style). I don't know how many different types and sizes of fittng we have. It's a pain replacing bulbs now. I preferred the light from the old incandescent bulbs too and if they give off a little heat, well living in the temperate zone we need a little heat after dark.
The light is better, but the heat is usually not where you want it.
Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)
#44Milton Friedman famously claimed monopolies/cartels would not exist without government assistance and that there are only 2 examples of private monopolies that lasted long period of time (De Beers and NYSE). I suppose he was very wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdLBzfFGFQU
The article suggests Friedman was right - this cartel was very short lived.
"Powerful and influential though it was, the Phoebus cartel was short-lived. Within six years of its formation, the cartel was already starting to struggle."
Friedman was also right that the cartel existed primarily due to government assistance:
"GE’s licensing of its basic lightbulb patents gave rise to yet more alliances, most notably the powerful Patentgemeinschaft (“patent pool”)..."
Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)
#45I miss the times when every light fitting was the same (one size, bayonet style). I don't know how many different types and sizes of fittng we have. It's a pain replacing bulbs now. I preferred the light from the old incandescent bulbs too and if they give off a little heat, well living in the temperate zone we need a little heat after dark.
The light is better, but the heat is usually not where you want it.
Won't it amount to the same thing as a heat source anywhere else in a room, with convection and radiation?
Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go to Ikea. They have about four bulbs for each socket (pear and candle, dim and bright), and the ones I bought a year ago are very good. I think they have more incentive to sell good quality bulbs than the average store, since they sell the fitting and market being environmentally friendly. Of the ones I bought, some were made in China and some in Germany.
There are some US states whithout an IKEA, such as Maine. Incidentally, in Maine, incandescent light bulbs are almost 100% efficient for much of the year as they produce both light and heat.
When using electricity for heating, a heat pump is more than 100% efficient.
I live in Denmark, where regulations mean new buildings can't have simple electric heaters installed.
Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
except that many LEDs flicker horribly because they have bad electronics, and the consumer has no way to judge quality.
This really is the crux, unlike fluorescent (including CFL) and traditional incandescent lamps LED's are a lot more sensitive to having consistent DC power, a crappy little capacitive dropper is not appropriate to power them, yet a lot of manufacturers decided to cheap out on an additional diode to build a proper bridge rectifier. The amount of electronics to properly drive an chain of LED's is so simple and cheap I…
I really wish there was someone like bigclive that just tore down LED lamps sold in the US and posted reviews
There is such a guy "electronupdate", but I think he's from north of the border. Close enough. His older teardowns were better, because the bulbs themselves were better. Now there's a race to the bottom (of course).
If you watch his teardowns you will see that the older Philips bulbs are superior to all others.
E.g. here's a very good review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWKAub54sLU
He's also done teardowns of some real crap bulbs.
There are also some "bigclive" LED bulb reviews on Youtube but I haven't watched them.
Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)
#48The longest running light bulb is in Livermore, CA and has been running since 1901. It's installed and maintained in a fire station. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light
Obviously an environmental disaster if everyone had these. But still, a quaint thing.
From the Wikipedia article
> The Centennial Light was originally a 30-watt or 60-watt bulb
Why? Everyone, where I'm from anyway, now has CFLs and LEDs, mostly, and the environmental disaster rolls on.
Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)
#49Related: I have noted over the years that incandescents with dimmer switches basically never burn out, and those with normal switches tend to break during the first second of being switched on. That's led me to the following thought: would it be possible to build a bulb with a built-in fade-in, either via bandpass/lowpass filtering or some sort of fading mechanism?
Re: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (2014)
#50I can't believe an LED that adapts the colour temperature to the time of the day like F.lux does isn't a standard yet.
LEDs are great but boy are they agressive to the eyes.
(Yes that's a bit unrelated, I figured I'd rant and hope some poeple starts mass proucing it thanks to my message)