I am not invested into any lighting companies either. Maybe I should be, I am sure they stand to make a fortune on mandated fancy technologies. I am not sure why you think I advocate CFLs. I advocate letting people keep using incandescent bulbs, since they are the best residential lighting technology available, and will be for a long time. They are also very environmentally friendly, once you account for their use of only the simplest materials and manufacturing techniques. And you don't need to put up new factories.
LEDs are a very expensive technology. People in this thread are getting sticker shock from the $20 LED light bulb. I am shocked that they claim to sell it for this little. IMO they will quickly go bust. $20 is roughly the price of all those LEDs in quantity, unless I am guessing wrong about what they use, and they also need a powerful and compact control system to step down from 120 volts and control the LEDs, plus the liquid cooling tubes, plus all the manufacturing to get the LEDs and electronics in that package. Put this kind of technology in a flashlight, and it's going to be a $400 flashlight at retail very easily. And you don't get Moore's law to make it all cheap in a couple of years; these are power electronics, you can't just shrink them to 22nm.
All this, and the consumer state-of-the-art in white LEDs is a fairly nasty blue LED with a yellow phosphor to add some longer wavelengths and make it look kind of white. This is what Switch uses, and it's not a good light for homes. Even fancier and better stuff is on the way, but it's ridiculous to force people to go that kind of expense to get something which is still not as good as what they have. And don't get me started on the failure modes of LEDs - they don't burn out like light bulbs, but they grow dimmer and shift their color quite noticeably, and the electronics can start to buzz or flicker or, better yet, burn.
I understand wherre you are coming from, and why you support sticking with incandescent bulbs. I just mentioned that I wasn't affiliated with any lighting companies so you would know i wasn't pushing an agenda of some sort. I agree that the ecological/net energy benefits of alternative lighting are questionable; on a business scale there's a stronger argument, although businesses have been using cheap ugly lighting for years to keep their bills down. But since the incandescent phase-out is happening anyway and opposing it is likely a waste of time, LEDs look like the best of the available alternatives.
LEDs are a very expensive technology. People in this thread are getting sticker shock from the $20 LED light bulb. I am shocked that they claim to sell it for this little. IMO they will quickly go bust. $20 is roughly the price of all those LEDs in quantity, unless I am guessing wrong about what they use, and they also need a powerful and compact control system to step down from 120 volts and control the LEDs, plus the liquid cooling tubes, plus all the manufacturing to get the LEDs and electronics in that package. Put this kind of technology in a flashlight, and it's going to be a $400 flashlight at retail very easily. And you don't get Moore's law to make it all cheap in a couple of years; these are power electronics, you can't just shrink them to 22nm.
All this, and the consumer state-of-the-art in white LEDs is a fairly nasty blue LED with a yellow phosphor to add some longer wavelengths and make it look kind of white. This is what Switch uses, and it's not a good light for homes. Even fancier and better stuff is on the way, but it's ridiculous to force people to go that kind of expense to get something which is still not as good as what they have. And don't get me started on the failure modes of LEDs - they don't burn out like light bulbs, but they grow dimmer and shift their color quite noticeably, and the electronics can start to buzz or flicker or, better yet, burn.