As a lawyer, I am asked to fight laws that micromanage lawn-watering. http://rexcurry.net/waterlaws.html
Watering laws blame individuals for overuse caused by water bureaucracies.
The government employs police-state tactics including surveillance patrols,
citations, fines, judicial proceedings and even criminal charges.
“Government Water Supply” bureaucracies produce water shortages in the same
way the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics produced food shortages.
If bureaucrats were any stupider they would have to be watered weekly.
Every “Government Water Supply” would create the same shortages, rationing
and tyrannical tactics if it became the "Government Water, Food, Clothing
and Shelter Supply."
It is fortunate that food is a free market compared to water, or the Soviets
could have broadcast pictures of Americans standing in line for food rations.
Instead, the Soviets could have broadcast water rationing and police patrols, and
private waters being emptied by government bureaucracies.
Government rationing leaves extra water for wasteful uses while
defeating profit incentives to develop other sources and solutions.
People who altruistically conserve and who support watering restrictions
are chumps who promote waste by naively propping up the government's non-market
pricing. http://rexcurry.net/commentary/water.html
If the media want to solve water shortages, then they should advocate privatization
of all water sources and distribution. Then our wealth of water
will equal that of our food, clothing and shelter, without soggy socialism,
Soviet-style rationing and the police state.
As Libertarians and Objectivists say, "Water is too precious to have the government involved."
For a longer or more complete version of this article see http://rexcurry.net/waterlaws.html
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The section above (minus the urls) is a synopsis that
contains 250 words or less, and served as a popular letter to the editor.
The letter has also been published as a longer article by including the additional
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One of the biggest, most economical water systems evolved from a company
founded in 1782 by the Perrier brothers that supplied piped water in Paris.
Steven Hanke, a former senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers,
who has made a study of private water systems, states, "The success of the
Parisian system can be laid squarely at the feet of private ownership and
regulation through competition, rather than public regulatory bodies."
Capitalism provides the means to build cisterns, drip irrigation systems,
better commodes and showerheads, automatic faucets and other solutions. Capitalism's
desalination technology and waste-water recycling technology will eventually
circumvent the problems caused by government ownership and control of water.
Meanwhile environmentalists lengthen shortages and delay innovation by using
conservation to hide the true cost of water and by diverting time and money
to government and self-defeating programs.
Bureaucratic efforts to encourage greater water conservation and regulation will achieve the opposite of that intended.
People should not altruistically conserve water, and the media should not encourage the practice.
Altruistic water conservation in a non-market system helps wasteful people
evade the true cost of wastefulness and it discourages use and development
of alternatives, which would eventually reduce the price of water. Perpetuating
the present non-market approaches will cause greater shortages and higher
water prices.
People who altruistically conserve water and who support watering restrictions
are rubes and patsies who promote waste by naively propping up the government's
pricing system, which would otherwise be levied in market prices among private
firms just like other goods. Watering restrictions are another regulatory
response to overuse of water caused by the government's own bureaucratic
water fees, which are not market prices (that would rise during shortages
or drought, based on supply and demand).