I strongly disagree. In the West, the urbanized population generally have the political power, but the law happens to be on the side of the farmers. Most of the difficulty we see is the conflict between these two facts.
They absolutely can, but the will is completely absent.
Have a lot of cash on you? Cops can steal it without a warrant :)
It is however within the criminal context, with at least the thin pretext if criminal wrongdoing.
This is a far cry from the idea that the government can simply take what they want because they want it.
The idea that politicians can (or should) just make a law dissolving property rights and take whatever water or land they want without compensation is misguided.
Not that I disagree... but this is roughly describes how the US was established.
Hopefully people can agree that it is not a good practice to embrace and repeat.
I don't want to live in a society where people take whatever cant be defended with force. Conversely, I don't think others would want to live in such a world with me.
The government usually has to pay them off for their buy-in for Big Ticket decisions with taxpayer money
Owning the water rights and the land are separate issues from political influence. That is a legal matter, not political.
The longer states wait to buy back those water rights, the more expensive it is going to be.
https://www.zipdatamaps.com/politics/state-level/districts/m...
It is not like the Federal senate where each state gets fixed representatives, independent of population.
For example, Salt Lake country has 12/29 senate representatives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_State_Legislative_distric...
Imagine trying to fill 10 cups to 51% with one cup of water.
There are so few people in actual rural areas that if you go to a meeting where delegates are allocated by population they are few and far between. The vast majority of the population comes from four counties on the Wasatch Front - Salt Lake, Utah, Davis and Weber - and the next four counties (Washington, Cache, Tooele, and Box Elder) are predominantly urban populations as well.