>> You made the straw man argument by waving off all of economics with a hand wave Not the case at all. "it's also immeasurably a bit wrong" is not the same as

>> You made the straw man argument by waving off all of economics with a hand wave Not the case at all. "it's also immeasurably a bit wrong" is not the same as "we should ignore [incentives and prices or anything argued using economic principals]". >> we need water regardless of the price That seems uncontraversial to me, you can't elect to stop consuming water for your crops, livestock or your personal use for example. >> water is some substance belonging to one person and a fixed supply Not fixed supply but restricted supply in some locations at some times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_conflict >> What part are you uncertain about This bit - "What you really want to look at is total revenue." You'd prefer we ignore the source of the revenue and focus on only the revenue. It's a convenient view for some idealogies but it's most likely to be a bad approach. Especially compared to one alternative which would be to do both - to continue to look at the source of the revenue AND optimise.