Lopsided Bureaucratic Rationing Won't Cure...

[amigocabal]

Lopsided Bureaucratic Rationing Won't Cure California's Water Crisis
What's needed is market pricing

Of the remainder, 80 percent goes to farmers, the next most favored group — even though their output is only 2 percent of the state's GDP. Farmers don't pay anywhere close to market prices because many of them have inherited their surface water rights from their ancestors, thanks to California's system of "first come, first served." Under those rules, farms that first drew water from a river or some primary source have the right to that amount of water in perpetuity. Newer users get the leftovers, depending on when their ancestors called dibs.

This wouldn't be so bad if senior users could sell their surplus water to those who needed it. But that's not how it works. Instead, what they don't use one year, they lose the next — creating a massive incentive for overuse.

What's more, many farmers and property owners pay nothing but the cost of a well to draw groundwater — and even that is sometimes subsidized. The upshot is the classic "tragedy of the commons," with farmers in the Central Valley able to suck out water to their heart's content, endangering aquifers.

Continue reading...

[madd0ct0r]

Rich person demands to use their advantage. News at ten.

[Irbis]

I like the very cheap shot the article takes at environmentalists right at the beginning then continues thorough. Yeah, how dare they stop extinction of local wild- and sealife, business and big lawn watering must go on!

[amigocabal]

Rich person demands to use their advantage. News at ten.

Which rich person are you writing about? The farmer who gets cheap water to grow water-intensive crops?

[Irbis]

Which rich person are you writing about? The farmer who gets cheap water to grow water-intensive crops?

The, let me quote, "rich folks in Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, Palos Verdes and other parts of Southern California" who are not allowed to willy-nilly extinct local species to water their poor huge lawns?

The author is paid shill to rich to such huge degree he doesn't even notice the system he wants is already in place - how fine for wasting water on lawn at noon is different from more expensive water? Both end up with the same result, it's just poor 1% who are not allowed to put it into current, tax deductible expenses and are left with vague notion that they maybe doing something wrong.

The system encouraging farmers to waste is bad, and perhaps should be changed, to say flat allocation per hectare encouraging growing less water wasting crops. Still, even worst crops are still more beneficial than dick-waving lawn moved by a servant every two days, so...

[Gerald Tarrant]

Which rich person are you writing about? The farmer who gets cheap water to grow water-intensive crops?

The, let me quote, "rich folks in Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, Palos Verdes and other parts of Southern California" who are not allowed to willy-nilly extinct local species to water their poor huge lawns?

The author is paid shill to rich to such huge degree he doesn't even notice the system he wants is already in place - how fine for wasting water on lawn at noon is different from more expensive water? Both end up with the same result, it's just poor 1% who are not allowed to put it into current, tax deductible expenses and are left with vague notion that they maybe doing something wrong.

So, first of all I question how much you can know about the author if you are incapable of recognizing her as a woman. Secondly, it's possible to reach a position which is favorable to a particular group without being bribed by that group (I know I wrote a three or four page position paper advocating against rent controls in high school, obviously I'm a paid shill). Accordingly you kind of need to prove that she is paid by people who would benefit from this (rich mansion owning Californians apparently). Additionally, you can read the rest of the article at the link. Let me note some of it.

From the article

Cheap agricultural water has led to the insanity of a desert like California becoming one of the world's chief producers of water-intensive crops, such as rice and alfalfa. George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok estimates that if farms used just 12.5 percent less water, California could increase the amount available for industrial and residential use by half.

And although residential users pay more for water than farmers, they still pay below-market prices. Sacramento homes pay a flat rate for their water, no matter how much they consume. They don't even have meters. In Fresno, which gets less than 11 inches of rain a year, monthly water bills for families are sometimes only a third of those in Boston, which gets four times more rain.

A big thing to note here, is that this is a fairly widespread belief among economists: that market based pricing is superior to non-market based. Here the argument that the author is making is that the old system provides gifts to the historically lucky (those with existing water rights, passed down from previous owners) or to the politically connected. That system provides no particular incentive to reduce water consumption, and so aquifers are pumped, water flows from reservoirs and we get here. Her argument is that market prices encourage consumers to change behavior whereas the method they're currently using got California into this mess.

Your ad hominem is distracting from the core argument here

From the Article

California is engaging in counterproductive favoritism based on totally subjective value judgments of which type of water use is right and which is wrong that have little to do with people's real needs. It's time to let the market make these decisions instead.

The system encouraging farmers to waste is bad, and perhaps should be changed, to say flat allocation per hectare encouraging growing less water wasting crops. Still, even worst crops are still more beneficial than dick-waving lawn moved by a servant every two days, so...

Why? Why not just charge a market rate to farmers? It's worth noting about the lawn comment, that the article claims city users (lawns) are consuming less than farm users, so.... your comment seems irrelevant, and unrelated, so.....

[amigocabal]

The system encouraging farmers to waste is bad, and perhaps should be changed, to say flat allocation per hectare encouraging growing less water wasting crops. Still, even worst crops are still more beneficial than dick-waving lawn moved by a servant every two days, so...

Why? Why not just charge a market rate to farmers? It's worth noting about the lawn comment, that the article claims city users (lawns) are consuming less than farm users, so.... your comment seems irrelevant, and unrelated, so.....

One thing the article points out is that the farmers are required to use the water to keep their water rights. They are not allowed to save the water in their own reservoirs, nor "sell their surplus water to those who needed it".

[Zeropoint]

One thing the article points out is that the farmers are required to use the water to keep their water rights. They are not allowed to save the water in their own reservoirs, nor "sell their surplus water to those who needed it".

You don't have to be a shill to know that this is illogical and counterproductive.

[amigocabal]

To further elaborate my point, imagine, if you will, that people predict that California’s milk production would be at historic lows for various reasons.

Here is what we would expect to not happen. We would not expect mandatory reductions on milk consumption from the state government. There will not be laws telling us how much milk we can drink per day, how much cheese we can have on a pizza, how much cheese we can put on our pasta. There would not be any laws against cooking cheeseburgers, nor any laws against using sour cream in tacoes and nachoes, nor any laws against making ice cream.

Instead, prices would simply rise. In the immediate term, many people will cut back on milk and milk products because of the higher prices. Some people will only drink milk for breakfast every other day instead of every day. Some people will use margarine instead of butter, other people will use soy milk. Some restaurants will add a surcharge for including milk-based products like cheese and sour cream into the food that they sell.

And that is not the end of the story. Out-of-state dairy farmers will be willing to sell their milk to California, a trade only profitable at higher prices. At a high-enough price, milk derived from dairy cow stem cells might become feasible.

Why should not similar principles apply to water? Water, like milk, should be a free market commodity that should know no borders.

[Napoleon the Clown]

What happens if there's no milk: There's no milk.

What happens if there's no water: Things die.

[PainRack]

And?using economics, the study of human purchasing and selling behavior is not a sin.

Anyone remember the much derided auctioning of Sulphur dioxide permits? It worked to reduce sulfur emissions, didn't it, since companies found it cheaper to simply reduce emissions than buy a license.

So, why can't similar incentives be applied to water consumption?

[madd0ct0r]

becuase the price that would be set would be too high for the poorest to afford and they die horribly and slowly?

[Napoleon the Clown]

Detroit did it, nobody seemed to give a damn about the people who couldn't afford to have water. I guess we're onto something! Make water prohibitively expensive. The wasteful yutzes cut back, and the poor people have to start smuggling water home from the McDonald's!

[Broomstick]

Detroit's population has also dropped precipitously over the past few decades, too, and everyone who could got the hell out of town. Sounds more like people cared enough about how shitty things got to vote with their feet.