This is what I would expect to happen. Everyone wants the government to "simply" violate property rights and seize it but is there not a way for the market to sort itself out fairly? Are they forbidden from selling their water rights? Or is the water actually worth more to the farmers than the city residents so that the current situation is actually fine?
> Everyone wants the government to "simply" violate property rights...
It's a lot simpler when you don't believe that water is something private individuals have a right to hoard. Imo, water is a natural resource we all have some minimum access to as humans, regardless of if someone wants to buy it up and sell at a higher price later
It's not really natural though, is it? Regulated by the Hoover dam and supplying people living in deserts. Obviosuly people who choose to live in remote arid places don't automatically have the right to be provided with water by everybody else.
Obviously I'm talking about the transport of the water from where it naturally occurs to where people want to use it, not somehow creating it out of atoms.
Unfortunately the government sold it. Now of course they could buy it back ... That's unacceptable, apparently. Just taking it away, no compensation is what everyone seems to want.
And the price the current water holders want is apparently infinite because they claim the right to all the water that falls in perpetuity. We have removed rights to certain classes of objects before when managing other resources. If I recall correctly land deeds used to assume rights from heaven to hell but then air and mineral rights were carved off for the sake of commerce. We can do so again
This happens in some places already but a major issue is the absence of a distribution network to get water from where it is to where it is needed most. Being able to move the water consumption to where the water is located is one of the major drivers of cattle ranching out west.
