5 ms·
The very wealthy buying all the water and selling it at a huge markup with poor people dying of thirst.
by jshen 8y ago
The very wealthy buying all the water and selling it at a huge markup with poor people dying of thirst.
- pfdietz 8y agoWow, that's some serious imagination you have there. It wouldn't work anything like that, of course.
- jshen 8y agoThis is what happened in CA to a lesser degree.
- cbnotfromthere 8y agoCalifornia never had a market for water / water rights, so your extreme left imagination is left without data to back it up. At all.
- jshen 8y agoIn the late 19th century rich people in LA bought many properties upstream of Owens valley, on the Owen’s river, and diverted the water to LA leaving farmers in Owens valley without the water they historically had and needed for their farms.
- pfdietz 8y agoDiverting water from farmers != causing the poor to die of thirst. That latter scenario of yours was just ridiculous.
- jshen 8y agothe idea that "leave it to the market" will solve all problems is ridiculous as is shown by the historical example I gave.
- pfdietz 8y agoThe idea that the only market is a robber-baron friendly totally unregulated one is an absurd strawman. The water issues in California could be addressed by trading (say) half the water currently going to agriculture. Everyone would be better off, including those poor you pretend to care about.
- jshen 8y agoIt’s not a straw man, that’s exactly what a whole lot of people on here believe is the one true way. So your idea is that the government will decide and enforce that roughly half the water is not allowed for agriculture?
- pfdietz 8y agoIf we generously assume someone needs 2 liters of water/day to survive, then only 3% of California's water production is needed for its population to not die of thirst. A market system could easily be set up where this tiny sliver of water is reserved for this purpose, avoiding the scenario where those dastardly rich twirl their mustaches and cackle while the poor wither.