Water restrictions are stupid: a rant

[erudito]

Received the quarterly water bill: $46.25 for a three bedroom house for three months. $23.63 was for water use (30 kilolitres). At a price (after the price rise) of 80c per kilolitre.

That’s 80c (actually 79.82c) per 1000 litres.

You charge 79.82c per one thousand litres and find, surprise!, surprise!, people use a lot of water

Comments

What's this about natural resources?

[erudito]

What do you mean by natural resources (food? coal? metal? wood? land? fish?) and what makes private ownership of them an inherent problem?

Given how often states are appalling owners, and the problems of the common, I would have thought the presumption (if any) would be the other way, particularly on economic (i.e. resource efficiency) grounds.

Water is different not because it is a natural resource per se, but because it is a natural resource gathered over land in a micro, non-rivalous way. You can't 'fence it off' in normal private-property fashion.

It is also a network good, and they have their own specific problems, effectively regardless of ownership structure.

Thanks for the vote on the rest!

Of course, the standard economist's response is price properly and give money to the poor and let them make their own purchases -- Milton Friedman (Mr Negative Income Tax) and Hayek leading the way.

Mind you, negative income tax is a bit tarnished now, given studies into its effect on behaviour and family coherence. But, then, earned income tax credits are simply the more fine-tuned evolution of the idea.

Classical Roman jeremiads about the cultural and political effects of permanent welfarism (Rome being the first society to engage in it in the paid-by-the-state version) seem to have some resonance nowadays (one thinks of Theodore Dalrymple's writing from the welfare frontline).