More than 72,000 restaurants were destroyed by misguided pandemic lockdowns. Thousands of these were in New York State, and many of those in the Big Apple, where restaurateurs must also contend with high rents and business-damaging “woke complaints.” Yet now they face another threat: a proposed ban on gas stoves that would reportedly cut their productivity 40 percent.
Along with the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC’s) consideration of a nationwide gas-stove prohibition, New York governor Kathy Hochul is proposing to make her state our country’s first to ban natural gas heating and appliances in all new buildings.
Unlike the CPSC, however, which justifies its unconstitutional desire as a public health matter — while also likely having global-warming-thesis-oriented motives — Hochul wears her greentopian climate badge openly.
“Buildings are the largest source of emissions in our state, accounting for a third of our greenhouse gas output,” Hochul said in her state-of-the-state address on Tuesday, reported Bloomberg. Her proposed ban would be fully in force by 2030.
Whatever the motivation, it’s not just that the prohibition could devastate the restaurant industry. The deeper issue is that the spirit behind it, the vain desire to regulate a civilization to perfection, can devastate a nation — and has already done so, many times.
As for restaurants, Fox News host Tucker Carlson had NYC hospitality king Stratis Morfogen, who owns a slew of city eateries, on as a guest Tuesday evening to discuss how a gas-stove ban would affect his industry.
“For 35 years, we’ve been attacked by everybody. We had organized crime in our industry in the 30s, 70s, 80s, and 90s; in the 2000s, we had corrupt Wall Street, and for the last three years we’ve had government overreach,” Morfogen explained to Carlson. “I mean, we’ve seen it during COVID, they did things and never followed the science and what’s going on; I heard a rumor about this last year, and what I’m hearing about today from the White House to Governor Hochul, that they want to make us for new restaurant construction, use electric stoves.”
“So let me explain it to you,” the restaurateur continued. “We lose 40 percent productivity by using electric…. If they inquire with small business owners, I’ll give them three pieces of advice: Get a stronger filtration system, get a hood system that works, and basically train your staff how to maintain it.”
We’re “vulnerable, and this is the crème de la crème,” Morfogen later added, “because I will tell you, this will destroy our industry just as bad as they attempted to do with COVID” (video below).
Yet the secondary effects of Hochul’s proposed ban go far beyond restaurateur woes. There have already been sometimes-deadly energy shortages in Europe and Texas due to greentopian schemes. Likewise, given that phasing out gas-powered appliances and furnaces means using far more electricity, we should ask: Where will all this extra juice come from?
We know where it currently comes from. Close to half the Empire State’s electricity is generated using — wait for it — natural gas!
Approximately a quarter is derived from nuclear, 22.6 percent from hydroelectric, and the rest from other sources. So even if the existing power plants can increase output, which they apparently can, this means burning more gas and emitting CO2 on that end. So would this scheme really reduce overall emissions?
Of course, NY could build more nuclear power plants (fat chance), implore God to create more rivers for hydroelectric, or import “green” power from out of state. Barring the divine intervention, for sure is that electric rates would rise as they have everywhere these schemes have been implemented.
Grinding Down a Civilization
Yet it’s not just paying more for power we have to fear. In reality, the utopia-via-regulation mentality reflected in gas-stove bans will, if not checked, impoverish our country as it already has others.
The reason for this is simple: Economic freedom sparks wealth-producing productivity. Squelching it does the opposite. Late economist Professor Walter E. Williams outlined this phenomenon in 2017:
Rank countries according to their economic systems. Conceptually, we could arrange them from those more capitalistic (having a large market sector and private property rights) to the more socialistic (with extensive state intervention, planning and weak private property rights). Then consult Amnesty International’s ranking of countries according to human rights abuses going from those with the greatest human rights protections to those with the least. Then get World Bank income statistics and rank countries from highest to lowest per capita income.
Having compiled those three lists, one would observe a very strong, though imperfect correlation: Those countries with greater economic liberty and private property rights tend also to have stronger protections of human rights. And as an important side benefit of that greater economic liberty and human rights protections, their people are wealthier.
Egypt is a good example of a bad example here, with regulation so oppressive that people cope by receding into an underground economy that’s by far the nation’s largest “employer.” Mentioning this, Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto explained years ago why Egypt is poor. “To open a small bakery, our investigators found, would take more than 500 days,” he wrote. “To get legal title to a vacant piece of land would take more than 10 years of dealing with red tape. To do business in Egypt, an aspiring poor entrepreneur would have to deal with 56 government agencies and repetitive government inspections.”
In a nutshell, make people jump through enough hoops, and they stop performing.
Seldom said is that this reflects profound lack of virtue. People supporting nanny-state politicians are, immaturely, voting to be treated as children while leaders who fancy they can micromanage us to utopia are arrogantly presuming to play God.
