| I would hope that there are limits to the nanny-state legislation, but that's not to say there aren't situations in which it's appropriate.
There is no more "wild frontier" in most of the lower 48 states. We live in fairly close proximity to one another now, and what one person does affects entire neighborhoods, sometimes entire cities. Why shouldn't the society as a whole enact controls on the usage of common utilities? If a person generated their own electricity, I'd agree that no one else could tell them how they could use it. But as long as an individual is on the common grid, the rules should encourage conservative use of those utilities by everyone on the grid. Of course, if everyone voluntarily adopted energy-conserving habits, there wouldn't be a need to legislate it. |