
As California Drought Enters 4th Year, Conservation Efforts and Worries Increase - erickhill
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/us/as-california-drought-enters-4th-year-conservation-efforts-and-worries-increase.html
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ars
> and orders to restaurants not to serve water to customers unless asked.

And in one small sentence all the problems are laid bare. This? This is their
solution to drought? Not serving a cup of water in a restaurant?

Can politicians really be that stupid? Or is this "we have to do something,
anything, never mind if it's actually useful"?

If they feel the need to actually do something, then fund a massive leak
detection and fixing program.

Or install mater meters and bill on an exponential scale based on number of
people in the house and expected usage.

Or shut down any industry that uses a lot of water (and rehire the people for
the water leak program).

Or fix all the well documented water waste for farming.

Or copy some techniques from middle eastern nations on how to farm with less
water.

But no, they instead chose to not serve water in a restaurant.

~~~
rosser
Yes, the actual savings of water from restaurants only serving on request is
negligible. But it _reminds people we 're in a fucking drought_. Maybe — _just
maybe_ — that awareness goes home with them, and they don't run the tap while
brushing their teeth before bed that night. Or they take a 3 minute shower
instead of a 10 minute one the next morning.

Yes, these things are all token by themselves, and yes, residential use is
utterly dwarfed by agricultural use, but _every damn bit helps_.

~~~
tomjen3
Or more likely people get pissed at the restaurant for trying to cheat them.

~~~
rosser
How exactly am I being cheated by having to ask for water?

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duncan_bayne
[http://boingboing.net/2009/11/16/is-there-really-a-
wa.html](http://boingboing.net/2009/11/16/is-there-really-a-wa.html)

"Neither in developed or developing countries is there a physical scarcity of
water. The problem is lack of infrastructure, and more importantly, the lack
of management. And those are things that are bad in both the developing and
developed world."

Furthermore, treating droughts with water rationing actually makes the problem
worse:

[http://mises.org/library/clean-water-scarcity-and-market-
pri...](http://mises.org/library/clean-water-scarcity-and-market-prices)

"In the case of droughts government monopolies set prices arbitrarily and this
sends consumers distorted prices. Just as bad crops increase the price of
oranges so should droughts increase the price of water. Individuals then
internalize their decisions to make best use of the scare resources — their
own finances and the water commodity. Government distorting prices prevents
individuals from acting most efficiently to conserve scarce resources."

~~~
api
The problem is liberals and conservatives. Liberals tend to block
infrastructure for "green" or NIMBY reasons, while conservatives de-fund it
because infrastructure is socialism.

It's time to smash the whole political continuum and start implementing
policies that work based on reason and evidence instead of vapid ideology and
back room corruption.

~~~
duncan_bayne
I'd put it slightly differently: it's time to start implementing policies
based on ideology that is itself grounded in reality.

Taxpayer funded infrastructure _is_ socialism, and is a species of the problem
discussed in the second article I linked.

 _Edited_ : perhaps I should clarify the above since I'm getting downvoted
into oblivion (without argumentation, but that's another issue).

Essentially, the issue with existing policies is that they _aren 't_ based on
ideology, or that they are but the ideology itself is wrong.

That is, coercing taxpayers to pay for infrastructure is not only morally
wrong, it causes price distortions, moral hazards and malinvestment that all
contribute to the 'water shortage' that people are worried about.

The correct solution is to entirely deregulate the production and provision of
water, and let the free market determine the real price.

~~~
api
Things like water distribution are natural monopolies. Or are you suggesting
that we have several independent water vendors built completely separate water
pipeline infrastructures?

~~~
duncan_bayne
From [http://mises.org/library/myth-natural-
monopoly](http://mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly) (with emphasis
added):

"Furthermore, competition is said to cause consumer inconvenience because of
the construction of duplicative facilities, e.g., digging up the streets to
put in dual gas or water lines. Avoiding such inconveniences is another reason
offered for government franchise monopolies for industries with declining
long-run average total costs.

It is a myth that natural-monopoly theory was developed first by economists,
and then used by legislators to "justify" franchise monopolies. _The truth is
that the monopolies were created decades before the theory was formalized by
intervention-minded economists, who then used the theory as an ex post
rationale for government intervention._ At the time when the first government
franchise monopolies were being granted, the large majority of economists
understood that large-scale, capital-intensive production did not lead to
monopoly, but was an absolutely desirable aspect of the competitive process."

------
scottfr
80% of California water is used by agriculture and antiquated water allocation
laws lead to massive inefficiencies in the agriculture sphere.

Stopping serving water in restaurants, putting bricks in your toilets, and
turning off the fountain outside your company are all effectively irrelevant
in helping conserve water. Everything of importance in solving our water
issues can be found in the farm fields of the central valley.

------
swamp40
You guys sit next to an ocean full of water.

And you have a critical mass of the smartest people on the planet.

Get crackin'.

~~~
mey
Personally I'm waiting for someone to stick a nuclear reactor far off shore,
use it for both power generation and desalination at the same time and ship
fresh water back to the mainland on barges.

~~~
bduerst
I wonder if a nuclear reactor would qualify as falling under the "Economic
Exclusive Zone" (between 12-200 miles out from shore)?

Maintenance would be expensive on the floor. Why not put the reactor at the
end of a string of barges?

~~~
mey
I would expect something like one of the advanced oil rigs that uses cables,
ballast and computer systems to establish a stable platform at sea.

