Wasting Water
Nov. 13th, 2009 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
WSJ article on low-flow showers. Includes, among other things, government regulation of showerhead pressure, plus bonus ways of subverting said regulations, and possible new regulations under consideration.
So ... stupid question: if the goal is to get people to stop wasting water, and if most municipalities own the waterworks … why don’t the municipalities raise the cost of water? I mean, I don’t care about my water usage because water is cheap. If water weren’t cheap, I’d take steps to use less. Don’t other people think that way too? It worked for gas when gas hit $4 a gallon; people started driving less. Am I missing something in the basic supply/demand equation here?
So ... stupid question: if the goal is to get people to stop wasting water, and if most municipalities own the waterworks … why don’t the municipalities raise the cost of water? I mean, I don’t care about my water usage because water is cheap. If water weren’t cheap, I’d take steps to use less. Don’t other people think that way too? It worked for gas when gas hit $4 a gallon; people started driving less. Am I missing something in the basic supply/demand equation here?
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Date: 2009-11-13 08:44 pm (UTC)When commodity prices rise you get a shockwave going through the whole economy, hurting everyone. You don't really want to do that on purpose.
Also, supply/demand curves work best when there's a sliding scale of supply that can react to the demand -- water and power (for two) don't really work that way. It takes years to build the infrastructure to deliver it, so instead you get shortages and MASSIVE swings in the price as it crosses the thresshold. The whole Enron scandal was about people manipulating this effect.
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Date: 2009-11-13 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 09:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-11-13 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-14 02:14 am (UTC)In our first house, the low-flow thing had just kicked in and all the shower heads I bought had the restrictors actually cast in. A dremel made short work of those.
It'll take a well-armed police state to get my morning shower away from me, and even then they would find me particularly dangerous to approach.
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Date: 2009-11-15 01:44 am (UTC)That said, it's extremely easy for heavy industrial users of water to lobby for advantaged prices, on the basis that they're bringing dollars to the economy. (Even if those dollars aren't very efficient, which agriculture often is).