171–180 of 222 posts
Can someone explain to me why we don't just build a pipeline from Seattle or some rich water source up north down to California?
Seattle isn't actually that rainy, it's just a constant drizzle, actually. Water restrictions about on the summer also. If you want to see how it is done, China recently built a north south water diversion canal. Though it hasn't paid off yet.
About time. Agriculture is using 80% of the water, but accounts for a mere 2% of the GDP (4% of employment)[1]. There's no reason we should be squeezing our rural and suburban centers that fuel the overwhelming majority of our economy while giving farmer's a free pass to suck the state dry of usable water which is mainly used for exported profits and not sustaining local industries. [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
Why is that a comparison that makes sense? If we doubled the water available to tech companies, that wouldn't make them any more productive.
Via: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do... (If you haven't read this, you really, really, really should. It's an accessible, level-headed analysis of California's water situation.)
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Water is a scarce resource in this case. You don't exactly let the "wealthy" buy off everything they can just because. Scarce resources need to be regulated my friend.
Scarce resources need to be exposed to market forces. The purpose of markets is to allocate scarce resources and price them appropriately.
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Even when those resources could be bought by someone who will waste them? We're not talking about something like gold here, we're talking about a resource that is essential for human life. Would you really want someone who's wealthier than you to buy all the water around you just because they can?
No, I certainly wouldn't! Still, the drought is on my mind, and while I recognize the need to conserve, I am frustrated by my government's response to the problem so far. So far, we've been responding to the crisis in a way that doesn't really allow people to make good trade-offs. For instance, I went to my parents house in a nice warm place, after a week in the fog, and my kids kind of wanted to play in the inflatab…
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Even when those resources could be bought by someone who will waste them? We're not talking about something like gold here, we're talking about a resource that is essential for human life. Would you really want someone who's wealthier than you to buy all the water around you just because they can?
That is the beauty of the market: you do stupid things like that and you aren't rich enough to do so much longer. If it was regulated and you used your buddy connections to appropriate all the water usage rights then you still have your buddy connections once you have taken my water.
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Why is that a comparison that makes sense? If we doubled the water available to tech companies, that wouldn't make them any more productive.
If we instead, e.g., mandate that all showers be painfully low-flow, that hosing down sidewalks is illegal (and thus, they'll often be covered in human poop in the area around Twitter), and other such things that make it less pleasant to live here, workers will be less eager to live here, and thus, it'll be harder to keep the best ones (or even the average ones) from moving to another state or country. And thus, yes,…
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The point is watering your lawn is a drop in the giant reservoir. If only 20% of the water is being used by residents (in reality, it's a bit less) and you pass super aggressive water conservation laws targeting residential use such that it's reduced by 50% then you've conserved a whopping..... 10% In contrast, a mere 12% increase in agriculture efficiency gets you the same win. Targeting residents to curb the water…
While this is true for the big picture, it's still fucked up that the status quo is for most everyone to have a well-watered lawn. And the response of "cities" like Los Angeles is to subsidize people's servants completely redoing their yards! Implementing water restrictions is incredibly easy - you declare "no outdoor water usage except on these two days of the week after 5pm" and issue fines to people who don't comp…
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If we instead, e.g., mandate that all showers be painfully low-flow, that hosing down sidewalks is illegal (and thus, they'll often be covered in human poop in the area around Twitter), and other such things that make it less pleasant to live here, workers will be less eager to live here, and thus, it'll be harder to keep the best ones (or even the average ones) from moving to another state or country. And thus, yes,…
There are lots of other ways to clean off a sidewalk.
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A free market fix is not a right-now fix, right? The market is a powerful force but usually takes a little while to adapt. The optimal fix would probably involve short-term regulation and long-term market solutions?
In this case, the market will very quickly adapt. Because not adapting (increasing prices, reducing usage/costs, etc), will cause businesses to fail. And no one likes losing money or closing businesses, but they don't mind reduced profit. The problem is that all this "short-term regulation" has caused increasing and cumulative lopsidedness in all sorts of relatively harmless areas of the market. That if we were to no…
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While this is true for the big picture, it's still fucked up that the status quo is for most everyone to have a well-watered lawn. And the response of "cities" like Los Angeles is to subsidize people's servants completely redoing their yards! Implementing water restrictions is incredibly easy - you declare "no outdoor water usage except on these two days of the week after 5pm" and issue fines to people who don't comp…
"While this is true for the big picture, it's still fucked up that the status quo is for most everyone to have a well-watered lawn." Why? Why should we not focus on what actually matters? Note that california's per-person water consumption (including lawn watering) has declined over the past 20 years. So people are doing a good job. Note also that parts of LA and other places you are complaining about, have the lowes…
But personally wasting water is still insanity. It demonstrates an attitude of being someone else's problem, which ties right in to the general California philosophy of outsourcing personal judgment/responsibility.
I've seen much better conservation efforts during New England droughts, which only ever last a few months and are then followed by an inundation of precipitation.