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Comment by moomin | Hacker News Reader

Australia has a serious problem with water, and it would have a serious problem even without climate change. The water in the Darling, and in any river, can be extracted free of charge if your land includes the river. This produces permanent drought conditions in a country that exports oranges.

Australia has limited water resources and laws that treat it as unlimited. It will be incredibly hard to square that circle. Imagine being told your entire business is toast because Sydney has no drinking water and you’ll have some idea of how toxic it’s going to be _before_ it get politicised.

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Do you have a source for this? I have a friend who is a farmer in Australia, they trade water rights, so these two concepts seem opposed.

[updated] As per a comment below, Australia and the Darling in particular have a water market https://www.mdba.gov.au/managing-water/water-markets-and-tra...

The market is a sham, with overallocation of water resources being done by the Minister responsible as favours for party sponsors.

Agribusinesses are growing rice, cotton, and almonds in the most arid farming region in the world.

The MDBA is a toothless regulator with the government deliberately reducing their budget any time policing or enforcement action is actually performed.

The MDBA could be a self-funded statutory authority if it was allowed to collect water licensing fees directly, with approvals for dams and other water works going through the MDBA instead of the various states.

Ideally there would be no scope for ministerial direction, or at least any such direction would only be through publicly visible instruments.

Also the NDBA should have the authority to demolish illegal dams and water-affecting earth works. For the moment the worst it can do is write strongly worded letters.

And in the meantime we have Queensland farmers continuing to claim that all the water falling on their land should be theirs to do with as they please.

Ouch. I’m 20 years out of date. There is indeed a market in water rights now, but it has problems. Here’s a reference:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia...

I read somewhere (can’t find the link) that the rights are allocated on the basis of the previous year’s flow. As you can see from the article, this still means people are pulling out water when there’s not enough water to go around. (There’s the usual complaints about speculation, but IME if you don’t have speculators you don’t have a functioning market. There’s plenty of data from regular financial markets about this.)

Apologies.

It could be simply solved by selling water usage rights or incentivizing saving water wherever the river runs. This was done with success in some parts of the US.

Whilst this is a logical way forward, my point still stands that some will be big losers from this or any other sustainable policy.

From my perspective* the biggest challenge facing humanity currently isn't even the challenges themselves, it's the resistance to the growing pains associated with tackling these challenges.

It necessitates growth in the collective consciousness of humanity, similar to how addicts cannot give up their addictions without growing as people.

*edit

No water "rights". It's fucked up the entire US West. Everyone pays the same $/unit water is the only just system.

That probably wouldn't work well either due to transportation costs; it's not a single market. Maybe it would work for people using the same river?

Until the amount of water available becomes less than the rights that have been sold. Then things get sticky again.

The price should be obviously elastic. I never mentioned "fixed prices" anywhere.

Then sell a %

Cities require relatively little water for the economic output they produce, compared to farmers.

If you require farmers to pay full price for the water they consume, they will never be able to afford it.

If there's a choice between producing more oranges for export or providing enough water to support your population, it doesn't make much sense to choose the orange export.

There are plenty of ways to manage water rights so that you have a reasonable amount of farming and other uses also get to exist.

Cities also need food. The price of food would go up and some sorts of farming might become uneconomical, but food would still be farmed.

Indeed, some forms of farming e.g. cotton in Australia are literally unsustainable when exposed to market forces.

Doesn’t mean capitalism is wrong in this case, though.

> Doesn’t mean capitalism is wrong in this case, though.

Edit:

Wes it does, in this case. This is not some software startup. The water, which ostensibly belongs to all, is the input to this wealth.

Plus, that's a stupid use of water that should not be rewarded.

Original below ----------------

of course it does. It's "captialism" and we must bow down before it and not question any of the inputs to the money being made.

If market forces would make something which is already unsustainable untenable without subsidization, it is the subsidization that is the problem because it enables the unsustainable behaviour.

In other words: let the cotton farmers get stuck with paying for the water, and the business will simply dry up, and the water will be used for economically sound purposes.

Sure. But since the word "subsidization" is in play, are we now talking about socialism? :-)

This is the fun thing. If person X thinks the fair price for something is $1, person Y thinks it’s $10, and the government has to set the price, both of them can yell “Socialism” at the other and never actually address anything.

I'm specifically referring to the Government giving money or forgiving taxes to business in order to help them. That is not "Capitalism".

I know, right? The crazy thing is, the Great Artesian Basin.

The problem with water in Australia, is the politics. Australians have one of the most heinous political systems around, yet seem adequately comfortable with their lot.

I mean, its the nation that sat by and watched the Great Barrier Reef die. Care of the land has not been a priority in Australia for about 200 years...

(Not trolling, Aussies! She'll be right mates!)

Weird. Every country I know of has a legal system for ownership of water extraction rights.

Though, come to think of it, that may only be two countries...

I think this is a bigger problem where downstream countries rely on a river that passes through their neighbour first.

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