Shower Czars

Mises.org reports that an Arizona company named Zoe Industries Manufacturing is selling (among other things) shower fixtures that hearken back to the days of actually feeling like you're getting a real shower.

Believe it or not, Federal law restricts water flow from faucets (including showers) to 2.5 gallons per minute. That's perfectly fine for the bathroom sink but let's face, it makes for a pretty lousy shower. Zoe Industries Manufacturing gets around the law by selling shower fixtures with more than one head on them since the law specifies 2.5 gpm per shower head.

This blatent use of a loophole has Al Deitemann, head of conservation for the Seattle Water Board wetting his pants and complaining to FedGov about it.

Make all the arguments you want about the need for conservation but there is absolutely no Constitutional authority for the Federal Government to determine how much water comes out of my shower head.

Let's take a little ride down the slippery slope and look at some other areas of our personal lives that FedGov could regulate and possible justifications for it.

• Television and Stereo Volume - People are damaging their hearing by having the their televisions and stereos up too loud and it creates noise pollution. This law would apply to car stereos and even portable audio players like the iPod. We must have Federal volume limits.
• Book Ownership - We need limits on the number of books people can own. Trees are a precious resource and hoarding books is WRONG. No person should be allowed to own more than ten books at one time. There could be exemptions for professional reference works but that would require licensing and approval. You must prove that you either sold or recycled one of your books before you're allowed to purchase another.
• Food Consumption - We clearly need regulations on how much food we're allowed to purchase, what type, how many calories, etc. We're too fat and it's creating a national crisis. Perhaps each person would have a limit of calories per month. Certain foods, such as chocolate would of course be outlawed immediately. We might as well just nationalize the food industry.
• Computer Use - No one needs more than one computer. They take up way too much electricity and their manufacture consumes far too many resources. Besides all of that, people are sitting around at the computer getting too fat and anti-social.

If FedGov can regulate our showers, do you see any reason why they can't regulate the things I mentioned? The scary part is that when stuff like this is regulated bad laws are piled on bad laws in order to either carve out exemptions or close loop holes based on what is politically favorable at the time.