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A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

story.californiasunday.com

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Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#61

Post by whyisthewhat »

m0zg wrote: post #48
whyisthewhat wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His policies are designed to selectively terrorize migrant labor and make it impossible for them to have recourse to the state. This keeps wages low because no private businesses are seriously penalized for employing migrant labor, but the laborers themselves are at risk of being brutalized by the immigration authorities if they attempt to seek redress for unfair treatment by their employers. The way to actually reso…

It's not "migrant" labor. It's labor which consists of people who _have broken US law_, and it's hired by people who are also breaking US law. It's like that article a few weeks back which called an armed home invader an "unwanted house visitor". These people _can't legally work here_, like, at all. If this is something you don't like, have your congresspeople change the law. Selective enforcement of laws is an insan…

The law is already selectively enforced, which is my point. It's selectively enforced to benefit private business owners at the expense of both migrant laborers (who are brutalized by both the state and extremely harsh and unfair working conditions) and domestic laborers. And the nature of the immigration laws means that non-selective enforcement is impossible, since attempting to do so will always favor the lawbreaking of private business.

The normative question of whether we should or should not harbor resentment or moral outrage against poverty-stricken migrant workers doing backbreaking labor for a pittance isn't really relevant to an analysis of how the government's immigration policies are enforced and who benefits from them.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#62

Post by coding123 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #25
Scramblejams wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the article is correct that water will become more valuable than oil, then of course you're gonna ship that water to California. The economics will mandate it. Now whether the article is correct about that prediction is another question. It's an understatement to say I'm skeptical. Desalination plants produce expensive water, but not that expensive...

People will start growing crops in more sensible places.

Water abundance is not the only reason to grow something. Sunlight humidity temp etc...

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#63

Post by yourapostasy »

Scramblejams wrote: post #19
empath75 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not gonna ship that water to California.

If the article is correct that water will become more valuable than oil, then of course you're gonna ship that water to California. The economics will mandate it. Now whether the article is correct about that prediction is another question. It's an understatement to say I'm skeptical. Desalination plants produce expensive water, but not that expensive...

> If the article is correct that water will become more valuable than oil...

Yep, your skepticism is warranted. This is unlikely in the US for common infrastructures, in the large scale, over a long (next generation) period, for standard municipal water (still an under-recognized engineering achievement IMHO). Potable and crop/livestock waters (the kinds that civilizations rely upon) are to a first approximation a derivative of energy. Whether to purify it, or move it, water relies heavily upon energy to enter the market.

To postulate that a barrel of American-municipal-standard potable water will cost more than a barrel of oil is to hypothesize a situation where it takes more than a barrel of oil to create a barrel of that kind of water. Now note I put in the qualifier "for common infrastructures". That's key.

If you have a large enough logistical tail behind creating that barrel of potable water, then it absolutely will cost more than a barrel of oil. For example, that will easily be the case when comparing a barrel of WTI pulled from a stripper well against a barrel of potable water created on a US Navy ballistic missile submarine, including all decomm costs amortized in on both the well and the submarine.

On a slightly less fantastical plane, that qualifier can likely be breached (pun intended) if sea levels do actually rise faster than we can revamp our coastal infrastructures. Major metro water processing plants and the supply chains feeding them are complex beasts, and they are multi-year projects even when money is no object and working shifts 24x7. If, as I predict based upon human nature, politicians kick the can on the sea level rise problem until dikes catastrophically fail in major metro areas, then yes, municipal potable water's disaster relief equivalent may indeed cost more than an equivalent quantity of oil for at least a few years if only because it all has to be trucked in as bottles or tankers during a disaster relief operation.

Leaving on a couple articles about water becoming more expensive than petroleum or gasoline (note it is generally about retailed bottled water):

[1] https://phys.org/news/2018-03-worth-oil.html

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/15/gas-cheaper-than-water-not-s...

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#64

Post by whatshisface »

ebcode wrote: post #57

It's interesting to think of the state of California as one ginormous mining-town. Only instead of some rare mineral that will one day be exhausted, it's the groundwater in the aquifer that underlies the entire valley. The concept of virtual water may help us to treat this vital resource with more care. I'm imagining something like a nutrition label, where there's an estimate of how many liters/gallons of water is ne…

The problem with that is that it's not water that's so valuable, it's water in California. Penalizing water use everywhere, even in rain-soaked places, would be counterproductive.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#65

Post by [deleted] »

function_seven wrote: post #55
m0zg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the links, I got a much better understanding of the situation now. Now I don't get why this is allowed to continue.

It's a minefield of property rights and politics. Land owners have water rights. The state can't (or won't) just arbitrarily yank those rights without compensation. At this point, I think that compensation would be in the very high billions of dollars? I'm not sure what the value is. Water in California is a complicated story. The right solution might be to take over the rights from the private owners and ration wate…

[deleted]

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#66

Post by marci »

pm90 wrote: post #53

> One day water will be more valuable than oil, and like oil it will start wars. Is this true? Its true that natural sources of water might be scant, but what happens if we just build huge desal plants all along the CA coast and pipe in the water? And what if those desal plants are powered by cheap renewable energy?

Before that happen, it will probably be cheaper to buy water from poorer countries, which will destabilize those regions (locals won't be able to buy their own water), and thus start war.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#67

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

pm90 wrote: post #53

> One day water will be more valuable than oil, and like oil it will start wars. Is this true? Its true that natural sources of water might be scant, but what happens if we just build huge desal plants all along the CA coast and pipe in the water? And what if those desal plants are powered by cheap renewable energy?

From my understanding desalination plants create a lot of waste that is not being processed. More plants, more waste.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#68

Post by ebcode »

whatshisface wrote: post #64
ebcode wrote: post #57

It's interesting to think of the state of California as one ginormous mining-town. Only instead of some rare mineral that will one day be exhausted, it's the groundwater in the aquifer that underlies the entire valley. The concept of virtual water may help us to treat this vital resource with more care. I'm imagining something like a nutrition label, where there's an estimate of how many liters/gallons of water is ne…

The problem with that is that it's not water that's so valuable, it's water in California. Penalizing water use everywhere, even in rain-soaked places, would be counterproductive.

That's a good point. But I wouldn't classify the water usage label as "penalizing". It's more, um, informational. So if you're in CA, you might set an ideal "virtual water budget" for yourself (100 kl/mo for example), but if you're in VA, your ideal could be several times that.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#69

Post by millisecond »

whatshisface wrote: post #64
ebcode wrote: post #57

It's interesting to think of the state of California as one ginormous mining-town. Only instead of some rare mineral that will one day be exhausted, it's the groundwater in the aquifer that underlies the entire valley. The concept of virtual water may help us to treat this vital resource with more care. I'm imagining something like a nutrition label, where there's an estimate of how many liters/gallons of water is ne…

The problem with that is that it's not water that's so valuable, it's water in California. Penalizing water use everywhere, even in rain-soaked places, would be counterproductive.

Isn’t it really the more general water where things grow that’s valuable? If it’s grown and used water then it’s labeled. If water in CA is more scarce/expensive, then the market will balance around it.

Re: A Kingdom from Dust (2018)

#70

Post by Nasrudith »

BurningFrog wrote: post #45
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will start growing crops in more sensible places.

Or people will have the city of LA in a more sensible region.

The temperature itself already makes LA a pretty sensible location. It also takes resources dealing with weather and extremes of temperature it lacks. Doing the math an aquaduct pipeline from a wet region could ironically be the cheaper option compared to heavier use of heating and air conditioning.
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