What's wrong with this light bulb?

It's inexpensive, provides great light quality, and has been used for a century.  It's also soon to be illegal. Congress, that collection of Solons, has decided in its wisdom that the Republic is at risk not from out of control government debt, but from the energy use of incandescent light bulbs.

Fear not, citizen.  Congress is in session.

And so it's been mandated that you use this.  It's almost ten times as expensive as the incandescent bulb.  It was claimed to last for years and years, but people have discovered that they don't last much longer than the old style bulbs.  They take a lot less electricity, true, but the quality of the light they put out is horrible.

But that isn't the biggest problem with the bulbs.  This is:

Oman Observer reported that more than 140 countries have agreed on the first global treaty to cut mercury pollution through a blacklist of household items and controls on power plants and small scale mines

United Nations said that the legally binding agreement aims to phase out many products that use the toxic liquid metal such as batteries, thermometers and some fluorescent lamps, through banning global import and exports by 2020.

So Congress passes a law that makes us buy replacement bulbs that don't work as well and are ten times and expensive, then then the President gets all International and goes and bans them.  Observe your Philosopher Kings in action.  Why people still give these people credit for being smart when they act in such an unambiguously dumb manner is quite a mystery to me.

IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot's activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but "pervades and regulates the whole." He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.

- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary