
Survival on a fictional desert planet has a lesson for a drought-stricken state - BIackSwan
http://nautil.us/issue/25/water/to-save-california-read-dune
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Retric
California water issues really just relate to heavily subsidized water for
farms which use 80% of the state’s water. When farms can't afford to spend
1/100th of a cent per gallon, perhaps the state has better uses for that
water.

PS: 2k per Acre-foot would bankrupt most farms and that’s over 270,000
gallons. Of note, at 1$ per 122 gallons the state has unlimited water from
desalination, but that's considered ridiculously expensive water.

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murbard2
They forgot the part where the House Atreides wisely decides not to heavily
subsidize alfalfa farming.

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meatysnapper
nor rice. in the goddamn desert.

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rasz_pl
lets not forget about the nuts

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masterleep
Absolutely the only thing that needs to be done in California is allowing
water markets to function. We do not need to be reading Dune except for
entertainment.

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pjonesdotca
Is this a plea for 'letting the markets solve the problem' ?

Because California tried that 15 years ago with their electricity problem and
history shows how badly Enron abused the 'markets' for profit.

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pjonesdotca
I love it when a comment gets downvoted with no response. Can't be bothered to
explain why you disagree?

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bsder
Welcome to the tech groupthink brigade. How dare you criticize capitalism!

It's because tech people think they're all going to get rich. They don't
realize that the genuinely rich regard them as stupid peons to be exploited--
if they regard them at all.

"Work work. Zug Zug. Dabu."

~~~
stickfigure
Or, perhaps, you're getting downvoted because you said something stupid.

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kbenson
> Someday, sooner than we’d like, it’s not inconceivable that residents of
> California will be shopping on Amazon for the latest in stillsuit tech.

Stuff like this is what pulls me out of the article and actually works against
the writer. There's a lot of ways the author could have led into the next
paragraph, but by going so obviously overboard, I'm pulled out of the
narrative just so I can think "really?" forcibly enough.

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sampo
_" an acre-foot of water"_

An acre-foot is 1233 m^3, or 1233 tons, of water.

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mceoin
The Martian is a much better read as a technical manual to surviving in low-
resource/low-water environment.

Great read.

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thrill
If only some brave explorer would travel west from the California desert.
There are ancient stories of a vast _ocean_ of water there, if one could
believe such a thing.

