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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

Seems like an everyone sucks here situation. People who bought houses and chose an off grid life in a water stressed area and did nothing to alleviate the situation, only add consumption. People who want to water their lawns and are unable to adjust their personal behavior in times of need. People with “I got mine” mentality who don’t want to share the space because they got there first and were able to exploit the resources to their desire. The town governance and realtors who keep allowing the sale of properties when there’s no water.

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Yea, this is what happens when the hyper-individualistic "everyone for themselves!" becomes the prevailing attitude. Selfishness becomes a structural weakness for the whole community.

Sounds like a market failure caused by using the government to meter water. In this case, the 'selfish' method would work better.

In a free market, the price of water rises so that there is no such thing as a "shortage." It would be uneconomical to waste water on lawns far before a significant amount of additional people would be unable to buy enough to drink. This is why you'll never find the gas station runs out of bottled water because a nearby farmer used it to water his strawberries, despite the selfish/greed factor of the bottled water industry being off the charts.

The government can meter stuff at market rates too.

Though, there also seems to be a lot of spite here, which the market may not be able to solve. Seems like the folks buying bulk water were paying FAR more, to the point that they were using less than 1% of the supply, but paying 15% of the cost. In a pure market, they would be the last cut off, yet they were the first.

Clearly there is something else at play stopping the market price from emerging, otherwise one of the in-towners could just resell the water to the excluded persons from their supply at a profit. I'm guessing they've made this illegal, though, since it's such an obvious solution of a win-win to a quick buck to a local that wasn't used. At the very least there is always a crackhead who needs $20 for a hit, I don't see how you can get the whole town to collude out of spite, it's just completely infeasible unless the people buying are like notorious child snatchers or something.

> In a free market, the price of water rises so that there is no such thing as a "shortage." It would be uneconomical to waste water on lawns far before a significant amount of additional people would be unable to buy enough to drink.

What happens when growing alfalfa makes more of a profit than individuals have, such that individuals simply cannot buy water to drink? Or what if a company comes in with sufficient capital to corner the market, then bottles and sells the water at a profit to individuals, exporting the leftover to sell to individuals in other places?

Or what if some random billionaire decides he's mad at his neighbors for voting wrong and decides to buy out all the water for a huge swimming pool that only he gets to use?

It takes 100+ gallons of water to grow a pound of alfalfa.

Alfalfa value top out at something like $0.50 a pound for the very best stuff.

So your theory is what, that if alfalfa farmers are willing to take no profits at all they could potentially bid water up to 0.5 cents per gallon?

You are so incredibly grossly underestimating the cost and impracticality of bidding water up as high as you're imagining, it is mind boggling.

They can easily bid water high enough to make it commercially useless for many industries, outbidding it from access to human consumption would require mind-boggling amounts of money.

Alfalfa was a placeholder for illustration, not the only possible concern. Do you really think there's no world where the meagre funds of individuals can't ever exceed profitable use? Not to mention you completely neglected to address my other examples.

I want to see you dying of thirst one day with no money while I have all the water (for 1 million dollars a gallon of course) and when you ask for a drink I will say

""there is no such thing as a "shortage.""

Free market religion followers are crazy lol

How is being able to buy water for $1M worse than not being able to buy it at all?

"People who bought houses and chose an off grid life in a water stressed area and did nothing to alleviate the situation, only add consumption."

They paid money for the water.

They paid (over and over) for one time water allotments.

The price of guaranteed access to water is much much higher, and they did not pay for it. It was probably not even for sale, and they should have known that. They are not entitled to anything.

They knew they didn't have guaranteed access. It's in the article.

Do ordinary homeowners ever pay for guaranteed access to water? Surely not, right?

Yes, in a way. They live within the bounds of a water district, which itself has water rights. These districts limit use (or the growth in use) by passing rules on the use (limiting the watering of grass, for example), or (fairly often in some places) limiting new service hookups. They won't let you connect if they don't think they can secure the supply long term.

Nothing is "guaranteed", so no. People usually congregate where resources exist, that's often why towns are where they are, near water for example. Where I live for example, freshwater comes from a pretty stable water source. Paying the municipality to operate and maintain that is as close to "guaranteed" as it gets probably.

Once the circumstances change, we'll have to adapt.

Water law in the US southwest is wild. The right to flows of water, into the future, is treated as a private property right and is bought and sold. Municipal water systems normally acquire the rights (and arrange transport).

As a homeowner I literally pay a fee every month to fund the construction and maintenance of the infrastructure that gets water to my home.

If that water supply is cut off without valid reason, there is a complaint mechanism with the local utility commission where the issue can be heard and resolved.

I also live in the municipality where my water is supplied, and therefore am represented by its government.

Therefore I am both economically and politically invested in that infrastructure.

Unfortunately none of this is true for the folks in this article.

Is that a "guarantee"? No. Nothing is guaranteed. But it's far better than the arrangement these folks operated under.

The arrangement they had with the town was closer to buying water at a gas station. You sort of assume it’s always going to be there, but one day it wasn’t because they stopped selling it.

There land did not come with any water rights (something you've got to ask about for any land out here not already hooked up to a metro water system), and thus you are entirely at the mercy of others and not guaranteed anything. Why you would ever choose to build/buy a home without some relatively senior water rights or a metered water connection is entirely beyond me.

Well, what happens when 300 people move to a town where there’s only enough water for 100 people? Is just paying money enough?

"Fort Garland uses 120 acre-feet of water per year — that’s 120 acres covered by 1 foot of water. Sales to people in cisterns account for about 1 acre feet per year, Pacheco said. Revenue for the water sales to rural residents totaled $43,000 per year, about 15% of total revenue."

Lack of water is not the problem here, especially now that the town's pump has been fixed.

If money isn't solving the problem you're just not using enough.

It's sad & true & and I hate it.

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