I disagree. I think agricultural water is the perfect use case for a market. Perhaps this is just semantics, but I don’t think you can make an absolute water ri

I disagree. I think agricultural water is the perfect use case for a market. Perhaps this is just semantics, but I don’t think you can make an absolute water right; it’s scarce, and farmers are not guaranteed as much water as they want, nor are homeowners guaranteed a right to water their lawns in a drought. Markets are a good way of prioritizing allocation of scarce resources. But I think it’s sensible to have a high-level allocation where first we make sure that there is enough water for people to drink, and if you want to call that your “water right” then I’m on board. We also allocate a bunch of water to recreational and conservation/wildlife purposes, and again I wouldn’t want to auction off all of the national parks of course. But within the (very large) remainder that we allocate to productive usages, I see no reason to get in the way of the invisible hand. If almonds are higher yield than alfalfa then we should not divert water from almonds to alfalfa. A liquid (pardon the pun) market would make these allocations more efficient.