In its quest to make life more miserable for just about everyone, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy has rolled back the Trump administration’s rules on showerheads. Now, rather than being able to buy a showerhead that allows water to flow freely, the EPA is marching everyone back to the low-flow days of old:

The final rule released by President Joe Biden’s DOE…continues the regulatory seesaw by reinstating the 2013 rule. Whole shower units must again spew no more than 2.5 gallons per minute. This new rule goes into effect within 30 days of being published in the Federal Register, which should happen within a few days.

Energy efficiency groups cheered the changes.

Because cheering misery is what killjoys do for a living. But there’s also a strong corporate angle to going back to miserable showers: companies have sunk a lot of money into the bad shower experience, and they don’t want to lose it…

…trade associations representing appliance makers—alongside energy conservation and environmentalist groups—actively opposed the Trump administration’s deregulation on the grounds that they’d already spent money complying with existing regulations and the new rule would just open them up new competition.

Many manufacturers were singing a different tune when President Barack Obama first tried to regulate multiheaded showers off the market. Back then, they complained that Washington had no business telling them how to make a shower. But with millions sunk into compliance costs, their views on showerhead regulation have changed.

In other words, they have a vested interest — and sunk costs — in maintaining government-enforced misery.