5 ms·

Why isn't the price of water tied to the price of supply?

kansface 11y ago
Thats not the way water rights work at all - eg, farmers get a percentage of the water from a given stream. Check out SSC[1] for an in depth review of water policy in CA. 1. http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-doing/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do...
mangecoeur 11y ago
because water is a public utility and heavily regulated, and for good reason - you want to guarantee that everyone who needs water gets it, even if you are poor and unpopular. Of course that's vulnerable to pressure groups, in this case the agricultural sector who want lots of cheap water. Then again if it was all run privately with no regulation, all the water would probably be put in bottles and sold at 1000x the price.
- ancap 11y ago
  Your comment shows an ignorance of how prices work. Companies cannot arbitrarily set whatever price they want.
  - deciplex 11y ago
    Sure they can, it's just that in a healthy competitive market no one will buy what they're selling if they price themselves out. In an unhealthy market, however...
  - mangecoeur 11y ago
    No, but they will set the highest price the market can bear. It appears people are willing to buy bottled water at around 1000x the price per unit volume compare to tap water, so given a free reign companies would sell as much water as bottled water at that price as they could. This is actually happening in California with Nestle's bottling operation where the oversight of their water use has been very lax.
    - bradleyjg 11y ago
      You are being manipulated by a PR campaign. Nestle draws ~2000 acre-feet a year. It's a rounding error. Same thing with shutting off the water while you brush your teeth, restaurants not serving water until you ask for it, and so on. The uses that matter are agriculture, agriculture, agriculture, industrial (e.g. power plant cooling towers), and far off in the distance outdoor domestic / commercial use (pools and lawns). (Also, if you consider it a 'use' - not draining every river in the state, but rather allowing some of them to continue to be rivers. This is the so-called environmental use.) When you bring up red herrings about poor people dying of thirst because rich techies are buying bottled water from nefarious companies stealing public water, you are being a patsy of BigAg.
BurningFrog 11y ago
I think they are. The problem is that that price has no relation to the demand. One concern is to stop monopoly water suppliers from overcharging. So prices have to only cover the costs of delivering the water.

Thats not the way water rights work at all - eg, farmers get a percentage of the water from a given stream. Check out SSC[1] for an in depth review of water policy in CA. 1. http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-doing/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do...

mangecoeur 11y ago

because water is a public utility and heavily regulated, and for good reason - you want to guarantee that everyone who needs water gets it, even if you are poor and unpopular. Of course that's vulnerable to pressure groups, in this case the agricultural sector who want lots of cheap water. Then again if it was all run privately with no regulation, all the water would probably be put in bottles and sold at 1000x the price.

ancap 11y ago
Your comment shows an ignorance of how prices work. Companies cannot arbitrarily set whatever price they want.
- deciplex 11y ago
  Sure they can, it's just that in a healthy competitive market no one will buy what they're selling if they price themselves out. In an unhealthy market, however...
- mangecoeur 11y ago
  No, but they will set the highest price the market can bear. It appears people are willing to buy bottled water at around 1000x the price per unit volume compare to tap water, so given a free reign companies would sell as much water as bottled water at that price as they could. This is actually happening in California with Nestle's bottling operation where the oversight of their water use has been very lax.
  - bradleyjg 11y ago
    You are being manipulated by a PR campaign. Nestle draws ~2000 acre-feet a year. It's a rounding error. Same thing with shutting off the water while you brush your teeth, restaurants not serving water until you ask for it, and so on. The uses that matter are agriculture, agriculture, agriculture, industrial (e.g. power plant cooling towers), and far off in the distance outdoor domestic / commercial use (pools and lawns). (Also, if you consider it a 'use' - not draining every river in the state, but rather allowing some of them to continue to be rivers. This is the so-called environmental use.) When you bring up red herrings about poor people dying of thirst because rich techies are buying bottled water from nefarious companies stealing public water, you are being a patsy of BigAg.

BurningFrog 11y ago

I think they are. The problem is that that price has no relation to the demand. One concern is to stop monopoly water suppliers from overcharging. So prices have to only cover the costs of delivering the water.