Winged Wheeler

Great piece from the coyote blog:

Mostly, we use prices to match supply and demand. When supplies of some item are short, rising prices provide incentives for conservation and substitution, as well as the creation of creative new sources of supply.

When we abandon prices, often out of some sort of political opportunism, chaos usually results.

California, for example, has never had the political will to allow water prices to rise when water is short. They cite all kinds of awful things that would happen to people if water prices were higher, but then proceed instead with all sorts of authoritarian rationing initiatives that strike me as far worse than any downsides of higher prices.

In this particular drought, California has taken a page from Nazi Germany block watches to try to ration water

So, faced with apparent indifference to stern warnings from state leaders and media alarms, cities across California have encouraged residents to tattle on their neighbors for wasting water — and the residents have responded in droves. Sacramento, for instance, has received more than 6,000 reports of water waste this year, up twentyfold from last year...

Some drought-conscious Californians have turned not only to tattling, but also to an age-old strategy to persuade friends and neighbors to cut back: shaming. On Twitter, radio shows and elsewhere, Californians are indulging in such sports as shower-shaming (trying to embarrass a neighbor or relative who takes a leisurely wash), car-wash-shaming and lawn-shaming.

“Is washing the sidewalk with water a good idea in a drought @sfgov?” Sahand Mirzahossein, a 32-year-old management consultant, posted on Twitter, along with a picture of a San Francisco city employee cleaning the sidewalk with a hose. (He said he hoped a city official would respond to his post, but he never heard back.)

Drought-shaming may sound like a petty, vindictive strategy, and officials at water agencies all denied wanting to shame anyone, preferring to call it “education” or “competition.” But there are signs that pitting residents against one another can pay dividends.

All this to get, in the best case, a 10% savings. How much would water prices have to rise to cut demand 10% and avoid all this creepy Orwellian crap?

One of the features of Nazi and communist block watch systems was that certain people would instrumentalize the system to use it to pay back old grudges. The same thing is apparently happening in California

In Santa Cruz, dozens of complaints have come from just a few residents, who seem to be trying to use the city’s tight water restrictions to indulge old grudges.

“You get people who hate their neighbors and chronically report them in hopes they’ll be thrown in prison for wasting water,” said Eileen Cross, Santa Cruz’s water conservation manager. People claim water-waste innocence, she said, and ask: “Was that my neighbor? She’s been after me ever since I got that dog.”

Ms. Franzi said that in her Sacramento neighborhood, people were now looking askance at one another, wondering who reported them for wasting water.

“There’s a lot of suspiciousness,” Ms. Franzi said. “It’s a little uncomfortable at this point.” She pointed out that she and her husband have proudly replaced their green lawn with drought-resistant plants, and even cut back showers to once every few days.

Update: Seriously, for those that are unclear -- this is the alternative to capitalism. This is the Progressive alternative to markets. Sure, bad things happen in a free society with free markets, but how can anyone believe that this is a better alternative?

What Happens When You Abandon Prices As A Supply-Demand Matching Tool? California Tries Totalitarianism | Coyote Blog

Snarge

Then again water is a human right. Sorry you are almost dead and will be soon, but you are a poor lazy idiot who doesn't fit into a narrow socio-political view of how the world should be....

What a pathetic piece.. using terms like Orwellian, Nazi and communist....

jungle

The list of human rights seems to be growing every day, can you show us the list?

I got some sage advice as a boy, always camp near an adequate water source.

Snarge

Why not try the UN Declaration of Human Rights... and then count the US violations of it...

Smart boy to camp near water... now what do you do when the IMF comes in and exchanges financial aid for privatization of the water... now what was free you got to pay for....

Or some corporation gets tax breaks to set up a chemical storage unit up stream and contaminates your water... (WV company fined $11K for tainting 300,000 peoples water)

Just because you follow advice... doesn't mean you are politically astute much less engaged....

jungle

Since you are so astute and engaged perhaps you can tell us how to escape all these violations of our rights by those evil governments and corporations.

Who or what is it that you think is going to protect you, do you believe in the Easter Bunny or some other mythical figure?

Looking forward to an astute and engaged answer, in the meantime I will be doing what is best for me in my current campsite without waiting for magic that will never be made.

UN declarations are a nice pipe dream, but having been all over the world I have yet to see that dream come true, even when the UN had armed control over said area.
They forgot one tiny detail-how to pay for all that splendor.

jungle

....because it is unlikely they will do anything at all.

My best advice is to seek your own path, this may involve moving your campsite. Or you may wait to die while pleading for help.

A few tips, Sam Kinison was right, move where there are jobs, food and rights-don't wait for them to be delivered.

Guest Post: How To Find Shelter From The Coming Storms? | Zero Hedge


Two minutes of real wisdom:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VKNoJ2BzSRU

Loon

Just follow page 567 of the liberal handbook: use OTHER PEOPLES backyard and OTHER PEOPLES money!

jungle

Even the UN hasn't spoken on this point, the right to cop a free buzz:


As The LA Times reports,

Medical marijuana dispensaries in Berkeley must give some of their pot free of charge to low-income patients under an ordinance approved by the City Council.

At least 2% of the marijuana each dispensary doles out needs to be given free to dispensary members who have “very low” incomes and are Berkeley residents, the ordinance, approved Tuesday, says.


The ordinance also stipulates that free pot must be the same quality, on average, as the pot that other members buy.

According to NBC Bay Area, the City Council has defined very low income as $32,000 a year for one person and $46,000 a year for a family of four.

Berkeley had three permitted dispensaries as of early 2012, according to the ordinance.
The reason for this...

“It’s sort of a cruel thing that when you are really ill and you do have a serious illness... it can be hard to work, it can be hard to maintain a job and when that happens, your finances suffer and then you can’t buy the medicine you need,” said Sean Luce with the Berkeley Patients Group.
* * *
It appears, having realized that cracking the nut of inequality is impossible given the vested corporate interests, that the government will resort to numbing the poor comfortably into not caring... and on the bright side, late-night sales of snack food may surge... so it's positive for GDP too...

Winged Wheeler

I don't follow the first sentence here, has it been shortened from a more complete thought? One would hope so.

As for the comparisons to totalitarian forms of government, you have a bit of a point there. Normally, comparisons to "Nazism", etc., are over the top and are signs of a weak argument. I considered not posting it at all and I considered editing to remove the terms that you found objectionable. However, those comparisons were the point of the coyoteblog post, so I left it as it was. It remains a fact that encouraging "snitches" and public shaming are features of actual totalitarian governments as well as Orwell's literature.

This blogger makes a good point--price discipline would be much better for everyone than a coercive state program.

WW

Winged Wheeler

News from The Associated Press

I think it is a fair summary to say that there is a government apparatus in the CA communities that has emerged to regulate and mandate a very limited use of fresh water. Part of this apparatus are citizen who monitor their neighbors--the adjectives "Orwellian" and "totalitarian" both apply here. There are also agents of the state, who are presumably being paid, assessing fines and teaching re-education classes.

Why would allowing water prices to rise to fair market value be worse?

WW