It could be an alarming situation if water pricing were to strictly follow the free market law of supply and demand. Water is the essential necessity of life. The law of supply and demand in the free markets dictates that while some will enjoy surpluses of a commodity, others will suffer scarcities. There will always be those who can drive big fuel guzzlers and increase the demand for gasoline to such an extent that those with fuel efficient economy cars have trouble filling their tanks simply because they have less money than those who are increasing the demand. This would be a real concern for the general population in a society where there is such a huge income disparity between CEO’s and the middle class. A situation could evolve where the ultra wealthy, fueled by taxpayer funded government bailouts, erect for themselves vast decorative fountains for their amusement, while the workers who toil in their mills can barely afford to flush their toilets.
Since the system of wealth compensation in US society is not based on merit, or laws of supply and demand in the field of talent, and since the public are made to subsidize mediocrity under the open barrels of armed IRS agents and a judicial system that has the power to extinguish all dissent by sending the plebes into the US prison system where they shall surely be anally raped by violent convicts while private contractors hired to run those facilities look the other way, it is almost guaranteed that any attempt to impose so called free market pricing of water will only result in an unfair redistribution the water in which rich people will waste water and the rest will die.
Water shortages, such as the one in California, are often not caused by an actual draught. California declares a draught whenever there is not a higher than average rainfall. In the historic and geologic past there were many periods lasting for decades where average annual rainfall was lower than current levels. California is a good case example of how it probably is in many other areas. California experiences water shortages, to be sure, but not because there is a natural draught. The water shortages there are human induced, the place is overdeveloped and overpopulated, management of the resource is poor and politically motivated, the reservoirs run low, and cuts have to be made.
It’s better to ration water when there is a shortage rather than increase the price. Increasing the price will just impose hardships on some and whatever amount they save by reducing consumption the corporate welfare queens will just waste. Look at Las Vegas, you have the reservoir practically bone dry while Caesars Palace sprays the water up into the air where it evaporates and residents use the water for their lush lawns and the developers plant thousands of tree’s everywhere. It is an unnatural water wonderland out in the middle of the desert. Downstream from Vegas- nada- hardly any of the Colorado River water ever makes it to the Sea of Cortez. That is how the free market law of supply and demand works, the subsidized wealthy will waste a finite resource and impose economic hardships on the rest.
Only the regulated rationing of water for all users will curb waste. If “realistic water pricing” ever curbed waste, then the Colorado River would run continuously into the sea. As it is, the water is affordable to those that want to waste it and unaffordable to those who need it. The only force that could ever stop Las Vegas from damming up the Colorado Rover and then just pouring the water on the ground to evaporate before ever reaching the sea would be if the same loaded guns that force the many to subsidize the few were instead turned against the few and they were forced to ration the water.
