Gyroscopic Investing

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.

In Los Angeles, water officials will soon offer residents door hangers, which they are encouraged to slip anonymously around the doorknobs of neighbors whose sprinklers are watering the sidewalk. The notices offer a prim reminder of the local water rules and the drought.

The Irvine Ranch Water District, meanwhile, shows residents how their water consumption compares with that of other homes in the area — and puts labels on customers’ bills that range from “low volume”? to “wasteful.”?

“Not everyone realizes what a severe drought we’re in, or understands how their actions affect the whole system,”? said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, which issued the report on water saving. “Just showing people what they’re doing vis-à-vis their neighbors motivates them. Shaming comes in when you’re worse. You want to be as clever as your neighbor.”?

Of course, asking neighbors to inform on one another does come with drawbacks.

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.”?

Mountaineer wrote: Why not just bulid some private desalinization facilities like they do in the mid-East and charge accordingly.  Get the government out of the water supply business; they muck up most everything they have their fingers in.

... Mountaineer

doodle wrote: Seems like it would be easier to just raise the price of water enormously one consumption got beyond a certain quantity.

The problem of resource management become deadly serious when it concerns water rights in arid places. In most dry areas of government societies, the government declares itself the sole owner of the rivers and the aquifers. Where water is not abundant, careful management of these limited resources is crucial to ensure that farms and cities do not run out of water. But on the other hand, with such limited resources, unfettered growth could easily deplete the water reserves, harming everyone. This is a delicate balance that no government has yet managed to successfully achieve. As could be expected, the vast, overwhelming majority of dry-area governments systematically privilege current growth over long-term sustainability. All over the southwestern United States, governments are depleting their rivers and aquifers far faster than they naturally recharge, eager to enable the population booms that have taken place in southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico.

This trend of scarce water resources being dictated by the desire for growth far more than the need for sustainability is even more pronounced in representative societies where the politicians themselves are changed frequently, especially in places where terms in office are limited by law. To someone whose term in office may not last more than 8 years, for example, what real reason is there to ensure that the water supply will last another 50? After all, he'll be out of office by then and it will be somebody else's problem! The politician's political incentive is the opposite of what a private owner's personal or business incentive would be—to preserve the resource for as long as possible.

The reasons for this mad water grab are plain: the power of any given representative government is directly proportional to its population. More people yield more votes, more representation in larger government organizations, and more political power. By the nature of the incentives that govern them, elected politicians with short time horizons (made even shorter with term limit policies) will always prefer expanding their power in the present or near-future to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the resources that make their power base possible. California provides an excellent example as the city of Los Angeles progressively sucks dry the remainder of the state: its political power makes it the dominant force in state politics, and its massive growth into America's second-largest city has been enabled only by draining lakes and rivers elsewhere in the state, transforming large parts of California into a desert even as the natural desert that Los Angeles sits on becomes a 500-square-mile oasis.

Mountaineer wrote: Informing on neighbors?  What does that sound like?  Oh yes, Nazi Germany or Socialist Russia under Stalin.

... Mountaineer

doodle wrote:

Mountaineer wrote: Informing on neighbors?  What does that sound like?  Oh yes, Nazi Germany or Socialist Russia under Stalin.

... Mountaineer

No, it just sounds like natural human behavior. Shaming is an ancient practice.....probably in bible as well

Water system in agriculture is probably way wasteful as well. Overall, I think probably some market pricing mechanism would help

TennPaGa wrote:

Mountaineer wrote:

doodle wrote: No, it just sounds like natural human behavior. Shaming is an ancient practice.....probably in bible as well

Water system in agriculture is probably way wasteful as well. Overall, I think probably some market pricing mechanism would help

I should have said "government encouragement of informing on neighbors" ... that is not natural human sinful behavior which is Biblical.  That is Nazism or Communism (my opinion).

... Mountaineer

Ignoring the water rights question...

I'm not exactly clear what you are saying here, Mountaineer.  My interpretation:

* Humans shaming one another is natural human behavior
* Humans shaming one another is sinful, according to the Bible

Do I have this right?

Desert wrote: This all makes sense.  I assume that you think that the price that Angelenos pay for their water is artificially low?  And that if they paid the real cost, it would encourage less migration to the area?

Desert wrote: Yeah, I agree.  I wonder how subsidized the water prices are in LA though.  I honestly just don't know.  I'm thinking that it's possible that the huge number of consumers in LA, together with the relatively high price of water that a city consumer is willing to pay (relative to a farmer, for example) might be enough to drag all of CA's water to LA even if the delivery was privatized and unsubsidized.  That's just a thought - I haven't researched it yet.  I did see (after a quick search) that water for farming in the CA central valley is heavily subsidized, so I'm guessing that LA's water is likewise subsidized.  But with the bulk of taxpayers also in LA, wouldn't they end up paying for their water one way or the other, through utility bills or local/state taxes?