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Comment by obidee2 | Hacker News Reader

That was widely ridiculed, but despite how it sometimes seems policy makers are not so stupid to believe saving water from cups not drunk would make a meaningful difference directly.

One of the big hurdles for changing human behavior at scale is improving awareness. Even people who want to conserve their water usage benefit from frequent reminders to actually make changes stick. Being reminded the state is in a drought every time you go to a restaurant was an effective way to keep lots of people regularly conscious of the issue. Even if they complained about the method.

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This is a great example of how patronizing policies developed by intellectual authorities backfire in the real world.

The premise is, the general population is too stupid to do the right thing themselves and need to be reminded of the drought by being inconvenienced by completely ineffective performative policies.

All this actually does in practice is diminish trust in authorities to make good decisions. If the drought policies are bogus, which other ones are too? Fuel economy standards? Air quality? OSHA?

Instead of this nonsense - just allow the market to set the price of water based on what’s available.

Of course, the answer there is usually “Oh but there are special interests that need to be able to consume as much water as they want without paying more for it, even in a drought!” And thus as usual the problem is not the personal conduct of individual citizens but corrupt and spineless politicians who are not actually interested in solving any problems.

> just allow the market to set the price of water based on what’s available.

There is a base amount of water that everybody uses as a basic necessity, and then there is water used on top of that for water hungry lawns that is not. If all you can do is set a flat, non-progressive, water usage rate, the wealthy people who use a disproportionate amount of water will not change their behavior.

The same anti-tax Republicans who gave California the disastrous Proposition 13 also gave us Proposition 218. The people in charge of water policy know what they're doing better than you do, but their hands are tied by the voters. https://www.ppic.org/blog/prop-218s-ongoing-impacts-on-calif...

I'm always surprised when people think they know something better than the professionals and just complain about it to other non-professionals. Just explain your idea to the professionals. If it's actually reasonable, they will change what they do. I have done this successfully with local governments many times.

> just allow the market to set the price of water based on what’s available.

I'm 100% with you overall on the basic thrust of your comment, however I can't help but think that if we were adjusting water prices, somehow they'd go up by 60% in the dry years and go down 10% in the wet years.

Maybe that's just because here in California we pay 2x-3x what anyone else in the US pays for electricity, and 50% more than most people pay for gas.

I don't know why California's electricity costs so much, but the gas prices are high due to regulation distorting the market. California has special California gas produced only at in-state refineries. It's for a good cause--California's gas, "CARB gas" is cleaner. But the gas market in California is segregated from the wider US market

> The premise is, the general population is too stupid to do the right thing themselves

This isn't premise, it's observable fact.

> and need to be reminded of the drought by being inconvenienced by completely ineffective performative policies.

This is just evidence that the authorities are also members of the general population.

You didn't use the word "almonds" in this post and for that I commend you.

Well it didn’t work. I don’t elect my representatives to change human behavior at scale.

So you don’t think the government should have any economic policy? No taxes, education, or social welfare services?

What do you elect them for then?

> Being reminded the state is in a drought every time you go to a restaurant was an effective way to keep lots of people regularly conscious of the issue. Even if they complained about the method.

So treating your citizens like cattle.

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