No disagreement here. It wasn’t intended to be an optimistic comparison; but healthcare struck me as the most visible example of another area of American life where you get profoundly perverse outcomes from a system that looks kind of capitalist in terms of the existence of profit motives and a willingness to let the poor die; but which is far too dysfunctional to actually be either described or modeled as anything resembling a market capitalist system.
I suspect that the intrusion of the finance guys into water allocation will lead to more examples of people outright being denied water(since, in absence of some sort of legally defined ‘x amount per person is free’ allocation, it’s entirely likely that poor people in drought areas simply will not be able to pay the market equilibrium price for water); but it will, if it manages to chip away at some of the legacy allocations, potentially mop up a number of the most visibly wasteful uses; since many of those aren’t actually that profitable; and absolutely aren’t profitable enough to pay anything like the market equilibrium rate for the water they need.
My back-of-the-envelope best case would probably involve the definition of the minimum amount of water needed for the aqueous equivalent of ‘living wage’ conditions, and the exemption of that amount, per person, from market pricing; along with similar exemptions from market pricing for lakes, wetlands, aquifers, etc. that have water requirements to remain ecologically sound; but wouldn’t be against market pricing, in principle, as a replacement for the hodgepodge of legacy allocations that are effectively massive subsidies for specific legacy users. That’s what always irks me about the ‘should we fine golf courses in drought areas’/‘what to do about people watering their lawn in the middle of an environmental catastrophe’ stuff. In absence of better options I’d certainly rather do that than not; but I’d prefer it if being in a drought area made it so that obtaining water in excess of the ‘living wage’ amount was sufficiently expensive that frivolous use would be largely priced out even before we identify and legislate against specific instances of it.
Something like a golf course or a mcmansion lawn in the southwest certainly doesn’t deserve water; but the fact that we need to talk about bans or fines suggests that part of the problem is that they are getting their water at absurdly low rates. Because we have grotesque levels of inequality and wealth concentration there would still be some people who would be golfing on lovingly nurtured green right out to the point where the rest of us are wearing stillsuits; but at non-nonsense prices that sort of behavior would be a lot less accessible to the low-mid 6 figures set; and closer to being confined to the genuinely plutocratic.
I suspect that this change would lead to intense opposition from the sort of people who also fiercely guard the tax advantages given to mortgage holders but not renters; but were it to be rammed through I suspect it would be good for them: it’s easy to pretend that drought isn’t a real problem if it’s still cheap to water your lawn and the only obstacle is narrowly tailored ‘don’t water your damn lawn’ ordnances; while being technically allowed to water your lawn, if you can deal with it costing more than sending a couple of your spawn to a good private school, would give the impression that you are dealing with a scarce commodity.
