Government Ingenuity

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

California is having water problems again. Too much demand, not enough supply. New tools for law enforcement at hand.

The water meter calls the water department on the cell phone to report excess usage, so they send public employees out to videotape offenders, as evidence to support an Excess Consumption ticket. This seems cumbersome and top-heavy to me.

The water department already knows historic water consumption, there, and in dry climates around the world. It could calculate a Daily Essential for each category of user (residential, car wash, hospital, laundromat). The government could charge an affordable amount for the Daily Essential based on political considerations, and charge everything over that amount a ferocious Excess Consumption rate. Payment due in 10 days or we shut you off.

No video evidence, no ticket, no phone call, no staff overtime. People would scream. But they’d comply. And if they don’t comply fast enough to alleviate the water shortage, raise the excess consumption rate some more. Eventually, even the McDonald’s franchise owner is going to turn off the sprinkler rather than risk having his restaurant closed for non-payment of the water bill.

Alternative plan: have the water meter stop the water flow when the Daily Essential amount is reached. Ideally the usage should be carried over so an underused amount will credit to the next day. This is not futuristic, it’s well within the range of current day technology. Sure, it’ll cost a fortune to upgrade all the meters – but it’ll solve the problem.

Joe Doakes

The ongoing debacle in the California water situation further proves the government is the absolute least effective way to allocate scarce resources.

7 thoughts on “Government Ingenuity

  1. Back in 2008, I told our commenter-friend angry clown that his progressive buddies’ promise of universal prosperity would leave us cold and hungry in the dark. You can add thirsty to the list.
    Today’s progressives promise no trade-offs (they call them “false choices”). You can have high regulation (which reduces growth by definition) and high growth. You can discriminate in favor of certain groups without discriminating against other groups. You can import millions of low-skilled, low wage workers without depressing the wages of low-skilled, low-wage workers. And, of course, you can get all the benefits of exploiting the natural environment without exploiting the natural environment.

  2. California has some of the cheapest water in the country. Whatdya mean they’re running low?

  3. My brother, who lives in Mountain View, loves to tell the story of how they grow rice in the desert. No shinola–that’s where most US rice comes from. And you the taxpayer are on the hook for bringing all that water to farmers to create *()&)(&)( rice paddies in the desert.

    Solution is easy. You allow water rights owners to sell their annual allocation without losing it. Some would go to LA, some would go to farmers, and environmentalists would buy some so the Colorado River might actually make it to Baja some years. Problem solved, no intrusive water meters and sprinkling nazis needed.

  4. California is next to the largest body of water in the world. Build a few nuclear powered desalinization plants – Poof! problem solved.

  5. And Loren also solves Global Warming / Climate Change / Climate Confusion caused “catastrophic rising level of the oceans” boogie man at the same time.

    Thumbs up! 🙂

  6. I’ve heard that the EPA, under orders from Valerie Jarret, are subtly changing the way that they describe climate change skeptics. Instead of caling them “worse than holocaust deniers,” they will call them “worse than Jews.”

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