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Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

I mean that if resources were reallocated by a market, literally EVERYONE would be better off. The current situation is not Pareto-optimal.

To put it another way: if the users being asked to conserve water could just pay farmers to use their water, both would come out ahead. The farmers would get more value than from using it for farming, and the other consumers would get more water for a lower price than from alternatives.

In any case, it's bizarre you cringe at the word "markets". Societies that try to avoid markets are horror shows. Markets are an utterly essential social technology for the modern world.

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I love market based economies, but not the idea that markets solve all problems. You said something about “their water”, and that’s the problem. Going back to the history of CA water rights, there is no clear concept to determine who owns water. If I buy the house on the river upstream from your house on the river, who owns the river water? I went to college in CA and had to take a bunch of CA history classes. I highly recommend reading up on CA water rights and it’s history. It’s a fascinating and enlightening topic.

Are you saying there are no water rights in the current system? If there are, what's wrong with being able to trade them?

The very wealthy buying all the water and selling it at a huge markup with poor people dying of thirst.

Wow, that's some serious imagination you have there. It wouldn't work anything like that, of course.

This is what happened in CA to a lesser degree.

California never had a market for water / water rights, so your extreme left imagination is left without data to back it up.

At all.

In the late 19th century rich people in LA bought many properties upstream of Owens valley, on the Owen’s river, and diverted the water to LA leaving farmers in Owens valley without the water they historically had and needed for their farms.

Diverting water from farmers != causing the poor to die of thirst. That latter scenario of yours was just ridiculous.

the idea that "leave it to the market" will solve all problems is ridiculous as is shown by the historical example I gave.

The idea that the only market is a robber-baron friendly totally unregulated one is an absurd strawman.

The water issues in California could be addressed by trading (say) half the water currently going to agriculture. Everyone would be better off, including those poor you pretend to care about.

It’s not a straw man, that’s exactly what a whole lot of people on here believe is the one true way.

So your idea is that the government will decide and enforce that roughly half the water is not allowed for agriculture?

If we generously assume someone needs 2 liters of water/day to survive, then only 3% of California's water production is needed for its population to not die of thirst. A market system could easily be set up where this tiny sliver of water is reserved for this purpose, avoiding the scenario where those dastardly rich twirl their mustaches and cackle while the poor wither.

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