The choices Americans make about the products they use in their homes can seem trivial in comparison to matters like violent crime, diseases, and war. Yet, these choices are in fact very important. Consider the days of the Cold War when Americans were thankful that they could make many choices in this regard while the average person in the Soviet Union was limited to inferior conditions, scarcity, and limited choices.
Indeed, in the waning days of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin, who would become the leader of the Russia government after the Soviet Union breakup, marveled at the wide selection of items available for sale at a grocery store in Clear Lake, Texas near Johnson Space Center, which he had visited. The choices Americans had clearly provided them with an advantage.
“Even the Politburo doesn’t have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev,” remarked Yeltsin. Then — in 1989 — Mikhail Gorbachev was the leader of the Soviet Union government. Yeltsin further commented at the time that “there would be a revolution” if people in the Soviet Union saw such supermarkets.
An April of 2014 Houston Chronicle article by Craig Hlavaty about Yeltsin’s grocery store visit also relates what Yeltsin later wrote in his autobiography:
‘When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,’ Yeltsin wrote. ‘That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.’
Unfortunately, choice in regard to the products used in American homes has over the last few decades been progressively limited by actions of the United States government. (I provided a brief introduction to this development in my January of 2023 article “The US Government Versus Home Sweet Home.”) The US government has become increasingly the enemy of household choice, taking after the Soviet government of old.
One promising sign of the presidency of Donald Trump that began this week is an express desire to roll back much of the restrictions on these choices that have been imposed on Americans in the last few decades. This desire is clearly expressed in one of the executive orders Trump signed on Monday — his first day in office.
Included in Trump’s January 20 executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy” is this declaration in its subsection f of section 2: “It is the policy of the United States … to safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, gas stoves, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads, and to promote market competition and innovation within the manufacturing and appliance industries.”
Notably, businesses as well as homes should benefit from this government policy favorable to such freedom to choose.
Further aid for eliminating restrictions on choices at home can be expected to arise from the executive order in section four revoking and revising a slew of previous executive actions and regulations, many of which purported to counter “climate change.”
Here’s to Trump eliminating government restrictions on what products Americans may choose to use in their own homes. Let’s make home great again.
