The digital revolution relentlessly enables consumer products to become better, faster and cheaper. But environmental regulation has for decades been making household tasks more difficult, time-consuming and expensive. A new effort to rewrite some old rules suggests a consumer backlash may be brewing.
“Make dishwashers great again. It should not take 2-3 hours to clean a dishwasher full of dirty dishes,” writes consumer Laurelle Hess in one of more than 2,000 public comments collected by the Department of Energy in response to a rule-making petition from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The free-market think tank is asking the feds to reconsider their long-term campaign to degrade the kitchen appliance.
Ms. Hess seems to be making a reasonable case for simply restoring the functionality that used to exist.
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