There is a good episode of the podcast 'Econtalk' on this subject. My take-away from listening to that is that supply and demand and setting the price according

There is a good episode of the podcast 'Econtalk' on this subject. My take-away from listening to that is that supply and demand and setting the price according to the supply would solve most of the world's water problem. Except that's not the way it's done. They mentioned so many silly subsidies and flat out craziness going on in the water markets that it made templated C++ code seem sane in comparison :/