I am having difficulty figuring out the hype over water
conservation. It is pushed by the
establishment media. It is taught
to kids in school. Or perhaps
brainwashed into their minds is a better description. In some places, you can only water your lawn on certain days
of the week.
First, nobody needs to tell me how to use my water or give
me an incentive to supposedly save water.
I pay my water bill each month.
That is my incentive. I am
not going to unnecessarily water my lawn because I don’t want to pay a huge
water bill. I am only watering my
lawn so that my grass doesn’t die.
My next thought on this subject is on the whole idea of
saving water. Where are we saving
it? Water evaporates into the air
and falls back down in the form of rain.
It actually works really well as a filtering system. You get clean water falling from the
sky.
I am no scientist, but I don’t think massive amounts of
water are disappearing from the earth.
It may get redistributed from some areas to others, but there is no
shortage of water on earth.
This leads to my next thought and that is that two-thirds of
the earth is covered by water.
Again, why is anyone supposedly worried about a shortage? I understand that you can’t drink salt
water, but even with that there is wonderful technology that can actually
remove the salt to make the water usable.
It may not be cheap to do, but there is no shortage.
At some price, water is available. While it does fall from the sky, it is not a free resource,
unless you can collect your own rainwater or if you have a well. But at some price, there is plenty of
water to go around.
This leads to the most important point of all regarding
water conservation. In most
places, it is government that is in charge of supplying water. If there are any shortages, that is
clearly the reason. If water were
like other goods provided in the marketplace, there would be a valid price
system that would allocate resources and find equilibrium for supply and
demand.
This means that some places would pay more for water. If you live in a remote area or if you
live in a dry climate, you can likely expect to pay more for water. But the higher price will mean that
people in those areas will conserve more because of the incentive to spend less
money. In addition, the higher
price will provide a signal to suppliers to shift more resources – in this case
water – to the areas that need it most.
It is quite symbolic of government that water conservation
is pushed. When the government
gets involved in something, there is usually rationing. Think about medical care.
Meanwhile, in the voluntary market sector, we see the
opposite. Do you ever see bottled
water companies telling you to limit your purchases to save water? That would be ridiculous. Bottled water companies want you to buy
their water. If they have a low
supply of water for some reason, they can simply raise their prices.
Whenever you see shortages and rationing, think government. It is no different with water. It is no different with medical care.