Over the Horizon Line / Hal Rothman
Western Water: A Legend of Overallocation
By Hal Rothman, 1-31-06
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Editor's Note: This is the first in a two-part series on Western water from Hal Rothman. Click here for part two, an investigation into the solution.
I stood at an overlook above Lake Mead and marveled at the white of the bathtub ring, the area once under water now exposed to light by the extended drought the Southwest has experienced. A remarkable repository of rural California’s water, the man-made Lake Mead has precipitously decreased from 1,214 feet in elevation in 1999 to 1137.5 feet in December 2005. Even last winter's powerful weather only temporarily reversed the decline. Since early in 2005, when water levels rose after unusually heavy rainfalls, the lake has again dropped to nearly unprecedented levels.
The resulting landscape is ominous. New islands, once submerged when the water was deeper, break the lake’s smooth surface. "Dangerous boating down there," my seatmate on a recent flight into Las Vegas wryly informed me with the faux panache of an experienced sea captain. But he had a point. Rock formations appear like icebergs, dark in the places where never submerged, pale white where the water once covered their exposed points. They stick up, far above the water level, like the submerged mountains hiding long-buried canyons they truly are.
The change in vista is stunning, its implications – of a dry and desolate future ala Mad Max, a feral world of scarcity - a terrifying prospect. Another year of light snowmelt could spell the end of this technological stunt. These days, no look at Lake Mead makes a case to sustain the existing system.
Lake Mead’s shrinking water tells the story of an Armageddon we have yet to grasp. Since Americans built the chain of dams that dot the Colorado River and bind the Grand Canyon between them, we have promised ourselves that a combination of law that divides the river’s bounty and faith in technological solutions to every class of problem will allow us not only to survive but to thrive in the desert. We believed that we could build dams, turn the water on and off like a kitchen faucet, and regulate the river to serve our needs.
Like everything else, the intersection of law and technology has consequences. We have overallocated the river without making provisions for the environmental changes damming causes, the changing nature of water use in the West, and the spate of legislation that is predicated on water to fulfill its mandate.
The problem starts with statute, the archaic and flawed "Law of the River," the Colorado River Compact. It deserves to be called “the fiction of the river," for it is an oppressive disaster, the root cause of a considerable amount of inequity in the Southwest and a clog in the intake pipe to middle-class opportunity for those who seek to the American Dream.
The Colorado River Compact dates from the legendary 1922 US Supreme Court case, Wyoming v. California. The court ruled the “first in time, first in right� presumption of priority in western water use applied across state lines as well as within states. Tossed aside by the court, upper river states like Wyoming and Colorado tried to reserve water for their own future growth – which they then imagined as agriculture – by letting California take most of the water south of Lee’s Ferry, Arizona. They salvaged an equal amount for the states on the upper river. More than seventy years later, this expedient agreement from the 1920s had become an albatross on the region, a cross that we all bear that not only destroys what many value most about the region, but impoverishes many to fill the coffers of an oligarchic few.
Since 1927, the Colorado River Compact has inherently favored agriculture and ranching over urban use. Even though it is based on the 1902 Newlands Reclamation Act, an effort to irrigate the desert land to create family farms, this law has become the underpinning of agribusiness in the desert. 160-acre family farms? Show them to me!
The result is stunning. 3.8 million of the 4.4 million acre-feet that California receives under the compact belongs to three agricultural districts in eastern California. In a state where urban economic activity exceeds that of even the enormous agricultural industry by exponential factors, such an arrangement defies economic logic.
In every western state, 80% of the water goes to agriculture and ranching. In no state, even California, do those activities generate 5% of the state economy. Agriculture and ranching in California in 2005 generated a gross of about $21 billion. The gross domestic product of the state the same year was $1.55 trillion. 80% of the water goes to produce 1.3% of the fifth-largest economy in the world. It doesn't make sense.
Outside of Baker, Nevada, an award-winning rancher named Dean Baker runs 2,000 head of cattle and raises alfalfa on 2,000 acres. Baker may be the best at what he does in Nevada. He has received the BLM's stewardship award for Utah, and has been voted Nevada Cattlemen of the Year and Rancher of the Year. This is an impressive set of accomplishments.
For every million gallons of water used, a single Las Vegas Strip hotel produces 550 times the employment offered by any Nevada farm, as well as more than 275 times the wage and salary payments of agriculture. Dean Baker, for all his accomplishments and admirable rhetoric about individualism and property rights, produces no comparable contribution to the state economy.
As I have long argued, the urban West would come out way ahead if it paid agriculture and ranching not to raise crops and animals. There is simply no more inefficient economic use of water in the arid West than agriculture and ranching.
Every hour of every day, water goes to western agriculture because it always has, not because the crops its produces are necessary or it creates plentiful jobs or taxes on its profits fill state coffers. Subsidized agriculture also creates competition for farmers and ranchers elsewhere in the country who are not so fortunate to receive federal subsidies. Even worse, the uses of the water border on the ridiculous. This precious resource grows cotton outside of Yuma, Arizona and alfalfa on the Walker River in northern Nevada.
The last time I looked, alfalfa and cotton were neither valuable nor scarce.
Who's kidding who? Why do we do this? Because we always have? Could there possibly be a better way? We will never know unless the public pressures elected officials to take a look at this ridiculous situation and see if it merits some kind of adjustment. It is simply too hard for elected officials take on entrenched interests without a brutally forceful shove from the public.
Hal K. Rothman is Professor and Barrick Distinguished Scholar at the Department of History at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Considered the one of the nation’s leading expert on tourism, travel, and post-industrial economies, he is the award-winning author of countless books, including the widely acclaimed Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the 21st Century (2002), Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth Century American West, (1998 ), Saving the Planet: The American Response to the Environment in the Twentieth Century (2000), which received the 1999 Western Writers of America Spur Award for Contemporary Nonfiction, and many others.
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Comments
We should have a moratorium on Growth including mega resorts expansion, and residential housing, until the drought is over.
We should grow more corn to make fuel from for the cars that we should be manufacturing to be rid of oil dependency.
In South Dakota it is about 18 percent of the economy.
http://agbiopubs.sdstate.edu/articles/ESS1404A.pdf
Paul Riley points out that agriculture comprises 18% of the economy of South Dakota, and he is quite correct. Of course, South Dakota is not a Colorado River state, having nothing to do with the river or the compact. Nor is agriculture particularly healthy in South Dakota, as both the historic decline in agriculture as a percentage of the state economy and the trend toward consolidation of high schools in that state shows. All of the states in the tier from the Dakotas south have long histories in agriculture, and all of them face the same rural-urban dichotomy. The decline in the Oglalla Aquifer since World War II illustrates the problems such states face and hardly anyone in any of those states would bet their future on agriculture at this point. I could go on, but enough said on the subject.
As for the contention that western farmers feed Americans or that without western agriculture, we would be in jeopardy of losing our food independence, a quick look at the distribution of American agriculture shows that while a considerable portion of American agriculture is in fact irrigated, most of that is on the plains states. It is from the plains states that we feed the world, not ourselves. My complaint is with agriculture that is simultaneously surplus and subsidized, not with agriculture in general. This is an important distinction that is lost on the writers, who are more emotional than rational on the subject.
The notion that Las Vegas uses more water that Los Angeles is so ludicrous to defy credulity. Anyone who suggests such a thing simply knows nothing about water and how it is consumed. Without belaboring the point, agriculture uses so much more water than urban use throughout the West-even in South Dakota-that comparisons of urban and rural consumption of all kinds show how fundamentally wasteful agriculture is in comparison to other kinds of economic uses.
And finally to Dave Gardner, who seems to think I've gone to work for the Bush White House, I would suggest that you are defending the oligarchic status quo at the expense of the middle class of the future, not me. For a defense of irrigated, subsidized agriculture is inherently a defense of century-old power structures, privilege, and the political far right. A bad system is not made better by longevity. Culture and custom are not substitutes for reason. Efficiency may not be the best measuring stick, but it is considerably better than the one we currently use. I am surprised that anyone who considers themselves an environmentalist of any stripe would defend the current status quo.
I am truly grateful for the comments received and look forward to continuing with a spirited debate. Please stay tuned for the next part of my series, which should debut next Monday, February 13.
Living now in a rural area of western Wyoming where much of the water flow depends upon melting glaciers, which will be completely gone in another 20 years or so, what is facing all of us who live in the West is an objective and serious decline of fresh water that does not depend upon any particular ideology of urban vs. rural interests. Yes, agricultural uses of water in the West is highly inefficient and destructive of native ecologies, but those uses are slowly disappearing, both from urbanization and lack of water. At the same time, the growth of the megalopolises in the desert and even the intermountain west is fundamentally irrational, and reminds me of what I saw in my travels in the Middle East and southwest Asia, the same things that Shelly wrote about in his poem Ozymandius. Ruins thousands of years old testifying to human greed and self-agrandizement of "too much, too fast." While oil has permitted a certain economic recovery in the those areas, when the oil is gone those areas will return to what they were a century ago: the realm of tribal peoples living on the edge of making a living.
It seems to me that what we are facing in the American west is something similar, and we'd better get ready for it. Of course we won't, and the shocked surprises of people in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, etc., will be something to see. Don't think that we can pipe water down from Canada to survive. We won't be able to afford it. In short, it seems to me that people in the West are soon to be faced with a kind of ecological selection, and it won't be pretty.
That's why change is so necessary. The wheels are off the cart, and we are dragging it in the dust. It is time to try something else.
Human beings have proven themselves enormously incapable of strategic thinking time after time over the last several thousands of years of civilization. Instead, time after time human civilization has run itself into the ground with the belief that it owns the ground that makes civilization's existence possible. It doesn't. I have no doubt that the same will happen to the vaunted American civilization.
Once that happens, human survival will depend upon tribal existence. Since the vast majority of Americans have no concept of tribal life, they won't survive. It will be quite interesting to watch.
Rothman says, "We have overallocated the river without making provisions for the environmental changes damming causes." Based on this statement I would assume he would reject the Southern Nevada Water Authority's claim that their proposal to pump and pipe as much as 180,000 acre-feet of water from rural Nevada and Utah south to southern Nevada can safely be reviewed in 75 years, after the construction bonds have been repaid. SNWA's proposal is so half-baked they cannot even pinpoint their well locations, or choose not to. In 75 years some future Rothman will be bemoaning the early 21st century misunderstandings of technology and law concocted and maneuvered by SNWA with its powerful allies and articulate cheerleaders.
Unrestrained growth of mega cities in the arid West always will have a tendency to overallocate distant water sources while degrading local environments. The influence of the deep-pocketed and well-connected, such as developers and gaming corporations, always will drive water development in the West. And they always will have their cheerleaders.
"Cadillac Desert" by the late and lamented Marc Reisner. Simply the best overview of water in the West.
"Pillar of Sand: Can the irrigation miracle last?" by Sandra Postel. Salinization of irrigated soils is a horrifying problem, especially when one looks at the remnants of the "Fertile Crescent." The greatest slave revolt in history, AD 869-833, took more than a million lives as slaves refused the task of peeling away salt-sterilized soils over hundreds of square miles.
Postel's "Last Oasis" looks at growing water scarcity not only in western states, but around the world. Things are grim now and will get worse.
At a more local level, Geoff O'Gara's "What You See in Clear Water" explores the people and water issues in and around the Wind River Reservation -- compliments "Cadillac Desert" very nicely.
"Good News," by Edward Abbey, a futuristic fable about the West when the water runs out, with city developers embracing militant fascism and Abbey's people embracing nomadic tribalism and the clash therein.
Of the vaunted Cedars of Lebanon, there are 300 individual trees left in a park above Beirut.
I see the same factors that destroyed the civilizations of the Old World at work in the American West, some of which my friend Brody Farquhar relates above. No civilization has survived the rapid exploitation and ruination of its resource base, with the possible exception of Western Europe. The explanation for Europe's survival is in Edward Hyams wonderful history, Soil and Civilization. I recommend it highly along with the books Brodie refers to.
I feel quite confident about this prediction. And so, where's the water going to come from? I live in the great watershed of the West, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the headwaters of the Colorado, the Snake-Columbia, and the Yellowstone-Missouri. And I'm here to tell you folks, the water's running out.
I am concerned that reducing subsidies now (both cash and resource) will hasten this process and cause much more grief for middle and lower income earners down the road to a much larger extent than increased residential water costs (environmental costs aside).
Wouldn't it be better to restructure the subsidies to improve production generally and direct western agriculture towards realistic methods and crops?
To Ken Hill (above):
Just what do you suppose we do about urban growth in the Southwest? Ban it? People move to "mega cities" (whatever that means) in the Southwest because they can find work and afford homes. Of course this is, in part, a result of efforts by developers and gaming corporations to make profit, but so what. Besides, the problem here is a lack of water due to misallocation towards agriculture not the over-allocation towards cities.
Dave Gardner
Chair, SaveTheSprings
http://www.savethesprings.org
This fact is something that libertarian economists deplore, but their ideology assumes that the "political" can be removed from the "economy" to make the latter more "rational" and therefore beneficial to individuals and society alike. That's simply not the case, and never will be the case.
Therefore, when people look at solutions to the problems that are being discussed here, they have to remember that the problems are ultimately political problems, that is, problems underwritten by the pursuit of power. And as we know, politics is even more irrational than econmics. We also know that the pursuit of power is definitely a win-lose game, with those with the gold winning and those without it losing. The political system is not set up to do the right thing, or even the rational thing, but to do what power demands.
The answer to the problem would appear to be not to play the game at all.
We know from history that solutions to problems of political economy have been ones more imposed by events rather than chosen and implemented by choice. That's why civilizations kill themselves off without realizing it. This is one of the ultimate themes of the well-known book, Collapse by Jared Diamond. While Dr. Diamond holds out some hope for human societies to make strategically rational decisions, on the whole the record, as he makes clear, is not good. This is borne out by history, particularly the history of human ecology over the last 10 000 years or so.
This brings the issue of rational action down to the individual or small group level, and the solution, as offered by Daniel Quinn, author of the Ishmael books as well as an interesting little book called Beyond Civilization, may well be one of choosing to abandon civilization altogether--to the degree that such a thing is possible. (However, it appears to be more and more possible as time goes on and the ecological damage from human action gets worse).
As Quinn points out, homeless people, as people who have been deliberately abandoned by civilized society, may well be the pioneers of a new tribal culture not dependent upon civilization at all. In other words, abandoning civiliztion may be the most rational course of action open to people to deal with these great problems of political economy, which at base are problems of ignorance and stupidity, selfishness and greed.
Of course, pursuing such a course of action has to accept that there will be many more losers than winners. Some things don't change.
In other words, there is a different kind of power available to those who choose to abandon civilization. It's the power of survival. It's an individual power, something very important to tribal societies, which is why civilization has worked so hard to destroy tribal societies--they believe in individual power as essential to the survival of the tribe. Civilized societies believe in denying power to individuals. Ultimately, this is why civilizations fall, notwithstanding the issue of ecological suicide.
These are truths of evolution as well as ecology.
Can some people here who have studied these issues take a risk and suggest a way through? (I mean, besides abandoning civilization, which strikes me as throwing up one's hands and saying "It's no use!") Given the realities on the ground, and the dwindling water supply, what do we do about it?
Good question. Actually, abandoning civilization isn't as hard as it might seem. It's as much a matter of changing one's thinking about what land is for as it is changing one's behavior. It's something I'm working on personally.
I honestly don't believe there is any practical way to change the situation as it is now developing. It's quite amazing to me that people are talking about rebuilding New Orleans despite the clear irrationality of doing so. Perhaps another Katrina, which is likely, will finally convince people that the ecological and environmental limits have been reached on the Gulf Coast.
I believe the same is true of the West. Perhaps we need a few major disasters to convince people that it's time to try something different. One approach I personally favor, but don't believe is actually achievable under current conditions, is a form of political bioregionalism, in which political power would be organized in such a way to ensure that local resources stay local and to ensure that local human populations don't exceed ecological and social sustainability. For instance, I see no reason why the water of the Greater Yellowstone should be directed for the use of ecologically irrational entities like the megacities. Yet, under current political conditions, what we are likely to see instead is a shift of allocation of Western waters to subsidize the cities rather than Western agriculture, which apparently is what Hal wants to see happen. While I agree that agricultural subsidies ought to be cut, to subsidize the cities, which is already being done to a large degree, makes no more sense. Indeed, it makes even less sense, after seeing what a disaster agricultural water policy has been. There is no reason to believe that an urban water policy that requires the maintenace and even expansion of the existing water delivery infrastructure will be better, more efficient, less costly, etc.
The cities are locked into the growth at any price mentality and I see nothing in politics as usual that would change that. Colorado water lawyers have been working in Wyoming for years to buy up water rights for the benefit of Denver. More water projects are being planned to ensure that water goes to Denver. Where does the political and economic power to bring about a fundamental change in direction to "sustainability" come from? It simply doesn't exist. And it won't exist until absolute ecological and environmental limits impose themselves and don't let go.
In other words, to have rational change, people are going to have to have change forced upon them, with it being clear that there is no hope of going back to how things used to be. I know that's a harsh assessment but the human species simply hasn't proven itself capable of making the necessary changes on its own.
Robert
Anyway, the zero-growth option isn’t an option whether it is brought about by libertarian or environmental policy. If it’s even possible to stop growth, it certainly isn’t possible to do it and maintain democracy. Sustainability in an ecological sense is not concerned with economic sustainability. Zero-growth leads either to a lack of affordable housing, a laboring underclass, and transportation nightmares (see: San Francisco) or it leads to economic stagnation and decline. Not to mention the other benefits of growth such as mobility, tax revenue, socioeconomic opportunity, etc., etc.
That's why I start with internalizing the costs. The only reason expansion appears to create opportunity and prosperity is because so many of its costs are hidden and shifted to the public at large. If all the costs could be truly connected to the behavior, it might actually come to a stop. Imagine a Las Vegas developer actually having to come up with the BILLIONS of dollars necessary to build the next ridiculous water delivery mechanism. That real estate deal just might crater.
As long as these costs continue to be foisted onto an unsuspecting public, we actually could see the day that a pipeline from Canada is seriously explored to enable paving over the next bit of paradise a couple states away.
We have two obstacles: money corrupting politics, and the myths believed by both the politicians and the suckers who elect them.
But I’ll take you up on your proposition. I can imagine a developer having to pay in full the cost of hooking up his own expansion to the existing network. I can also imagine that developer demanding that he have ownership of that piece of the network along with the streets he had to build above it—since he paid the development costs in total and all. And why not? The public wouldn’t be doing a thing to have a claim to ownership. Would you be alright with that? Could he and every other developer, be they individual or corporate, purchase their portion of the infrastructure and hire another business(s) that could own the core facilities and act as a contractor for the construction and maintenance of the system? They could police themselves in accordance with local health and safety regulations. Then the costs would be initialized to behavior.
If this were to happen do you really think the total cost of living compared to income minus taxes would go up for any length of time? Do you not think that the developers would have an interest in acquiring enough resources along with an efficient distribution system to reduce the overall cost of living for the consumer? Would you be alright with them acquiring those resources (i.e. land, power, and water)? Do you not think developers would want to develop property where land is cheapest since land is by far the largest portion of real estate costs, and since that’s where the demand for houses would be? Where do you think that might be? Would it be the area surrounding Santa Barbara or Phoenix?
It’s kind of funny too that the two easiest ways to increase the price of land is to limit the amount of land available or to get the local government to oversee its connection to the infrastructure. Yet you seem to be arguing that taking the government out of infrastructure would stop growth and mobility by increasing prices.
What’s even more amusing is that this debate isn’t about the deleterious effects of growth and the resulting water shortage but the (again) misallocation of water resources towards agriculture and away from urban areas along the Colorado.
I suspect that you are disguising an environmental or cultural argument behind the beguiling mask of libertarianism.
But beyond all of that, I find your idea that the benefits of growth and mobility are myths incredibly misguided. Are they myths for the people that moved to Las Vegas in the past twenty years and found a job that paid them enough money to buy a home? Surely not. Take a trip to Spring Valley in Las Vegas and throw a rock at a crowd. Chances are you’ll hit a first-homeowner, and chances are that person will work in the service industry for wages.
In a highly enlightened society we might be able to simply legislate that carrying capacity won’t be exceeded. I would stand up for that in a heartbeat if I thought there was any chance of achieving it. A more realistic approach is to move toward letting the free market allocate scarce resources. Since I’m not a libertarian, I think society probably should subsidize agriculture to some extent, because otherwise we are all relegated to mass-produced frozen dinners as the most economical way to produce and distribute food.
Connecting the true and full costs of growth with the activity would not stop mobility within the U.S. It would encourage internal migration to flow toward places that had more carrying capacity. In fact, the long-term result would be that carrying capacity would not be exceeded. Remember, I propose connecting ALL the costs with the behavior, and that includes the environmental costs.
I suspect you can imagine a developer paying the full cost because you haven’t done a full accounting to determine every externalized cost. I’m not aware of a single electric utility that charges connection fees that recover the cost of building the generating capacity to meet new customers’ needs. And I’m quite certain there’s not a single electric utility charging connection fees that cover the externalized growth cost to society and the environment of the air pollution their coal-burning power plants belch out. And the fact that no city in America has been able to grow its population AND prevent traffic congestion from worsening tells us that society at large is paying the externalized cost of local mobility for new residents.
Here is what developers do: they buy land that is cheap because it has no access to infrastructure (transportation and utilities, primarily). Then they get the public to pay for as much of that infrastructure as possible, boosting the value of their land so they can profit. Land in Nevada may be cheap. But water is not. It’s just that the developers aren’t the ones paying for the ridiculous water projects. Never have.
Taking government out of funding infrastructure would force a serious change in the business model of developers. It would at least be a start. The reason I became engaged in this conversation is my outrage over the focus on misallocation of water rather than the lunacy of basing any plan on continued, unsustainable population expansion. And the “beguiling mask of libertarianism� might be necessary to start these changes since society seems so hell-bent on self-destruction.
Most important, however, is to address Garron’s statement about the benefits of growth He proposes that these benefits are not a myth. His example is the fact that some service worker was able to move to Las Vegas, find a job and buy a home. Thanks, Garron, for the perfect example to make my point. Let me know what you think of this: That “opportunity� looks very good on the surface, doesn’t it? But it is only possible because so many of the costs were subsidized by the general public. The cost of most of the utility capacity and infrastructure, the cost of the regional transportation network, the cost of the subsidized mass transit necessary in a crowded, congested city, the cost of the dirty air from generating electricity for that worker, the cost of managing the stormwater runoff from that development, even the cost of the income tax deduction on his mortgage interest, and probably even some tax abatements or other “economic development� incentives to entice his employer to be there. I’m sure I’m leaving out a few externalized costs from this list.
No wonder so many worship at the altar of growth! Behind the curtains lie all the dirty little secrets about what society has to do to prop up society’s ill-advised plan for surviving, even prospering, in the future. Adding people to the planet does not solve a single problem, and it creates many. I believe in thinking globally, and acting locally.
I can see that you find that sort of thing interesting. But believe me, I’m not trying to label you so that I can dismiss your argument. In fact, I am not trying to label you at all. I am trying to understand what your argument is, what your idea would look like, and how it would function as policy. And, by the way, for anyone who has ever heard Hal Rothman speak for five minutes knows yours was about the worst attempt at labeling in the history of mankind.
Anyway, you are proposing a libertarian solution to growth by arguing that the realistic approach is to let the free market allocate scarce resources. But if there were a free market, what resources were scarce would be determined by economic value alone, not environmental value. Do you remember the point of Hal’s article? The problem isn’t simply that there is a lack of water along the Colorado system. It’s that the water is grossly over-allocated to agriculture, which produces far less of a return on the subsidy in economic terms, and wastes far more water in the process than “megacities.� In a free market the developers could easily out-price the farmers and ranchers and acquire all the water they needed. They would also decide the relative scarcity of land in the same economic terms. The number of desert tortoises that inhabit a track of land would not be an issue.
The only way your idea makes sense is if the cost of development is artificially increased by a bureaucratic body that determines the scarcity of resources and divvies them up. That would most definitely not be a free market or link all costs to behavior, and it is essentially what happens now. It still wouldn’t (and doesn’t) stop growth because people either elect politicians that say they will protect the resources and limit growth or that they will bring water to the constituency and free up land to develop. And all points in-between.
But you said something very interesting that I would like to talk about. That was, “[t]aking government out of funding infrastructure would force a serious change in the business model of developers.� This is certainly true. Developers would internalize all of the development costs and transfer them to the consumer, raising the cost of living. But there is a flip side to this. The local government would for the most part be reduced to heath and safety, education (for a time), and oversight. Local governments would no longer be able to justify most of their taxes. These taxes would go back to the people and businesses they originated from. And they would spend it on … ?
There is another point along this line.
You seem to assume that local governments are more efficient at delivering services than corporations could be in a free market. But this thought ignores the dual purpose of local government. They do not only exist solely to provide services, they also propose to provide stability and social justice in the form of a relatively well-paid, well-insured, well-pensioned class of relatively unskilled labor. Corporations in a free market would not seek this purpose. They would hire and fire based on performance and set wages in relation to productivity. So, in effect, the libertarian policy regime would result in a lower real cost of living.
You cannot translate sentimental environmental and social value to hard economics. That’s why we have politics.
This brings us to our discussion of myth.
You asked me to let you know what I think of this: “[t]hat “opportunity� looks very good on the surface, doesn’t it? But it is only possible because so many of the costs were subsidized by the general public.� What you have just described is the subsidation of the middle and lower classes up the seriocomic ladder. That is not the “myth� of opportunity resulting from growth but the subsidation of it. It is real. And we choose to subsidize it because we are concerned with integrating people into the middle class. That is what I am concerned with and I think the libertarian regime you feign support for could reduce the overall entry cost even more. It is certainly debatable, anyway.
But, alas, you are not proposing a free market. Instead, you want to use the language of libertarianism to fool the suckers into thinking you want free markets, which is amazingly similar to your dig on politicians and those who vote for them. Whereas in reality your idea would cut lower income earners out of a chance to own property by transferring development costs directly to the consumers (ending subsidies) and artificially inflate those costs by creating a top-down and ridged economy enforced by the extortion of resources.
I notice that in all of this discussion on the Colorado and in Hal's fine papers the word Mexico does not appear, although the trend towards an increase in Spanish use is mentioned, (possibly a consequence of not giving the Mexicans some more of the water of the Colorado?)Canada gets a mention but only as a possible future source of water. It is interesting to see how the Mexican border shows up on Google Earth with all of the rivers that cross it.
I remember sitting through the protests of an American in Phonm Penh about his perceptions of the deficiencies of the Mekong River Commission in not standing up to China, which is imitating the run of dams in the Colorado in the upper reaches of the Mekong and thinking about Mexico.
Since the management of water resources are conducive to monopolistic behavior (or conquest) they cannot be left to markets (and hopefully not armies). There are no easy answers but good leadership and education in the watershed can help the stakeholders understand the long term consequences better. I am not sure if the US "Pork Barrelling" process is a big help in this regard, but perhaps some philanthropic body could take up this cause?
John Leake
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