In a lot of the Western US, water usage is based on decades-old interstate compacts, where future water rights are based on a use-it-or-lose-it system. I'm not

In a lot of the Western US, water usage is based on decades-old interstate compacts, where future water rights are based on a use-it-or-lose-it system. I'm not necessarily in favor of the extreme unregulated end of the free market either, but the system as it stands seems to me to be a market distortion that incentivizes people towards heavy water-usage activities (ranching, raising of water-heavy feed crops like alfalfa), rather than what a purely free market would apportion. See, for example, https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/story/wasting-water-out-west-use-it-or-lose-it https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/story/w...