Comment by Dylan16807 4 days ago
A bunch of entities have perpetual promises for specific amounts of water, and sometimes the promises are too big and can't be fulfilled, or a city needs some water and can't get it allocated, or stuff like that. So, shortages.
Add in some market mechanics and that problem disappears. The only entities left without water are the ones unwilling to pay a small fraction of a cent.
A fifth of an acre of higher-water corn will provide more than 10k calories per day for a year. So about 5 acre inches, about half a million liters, if the price spikes up to 0.1 cents per liter that's $500 of water.
I'm not particularly concerned with the viability of people farming their own food but that seems plenty cheap.
Even desalinated water would be under a thousand dollars, and we could 10x the water supply at that point.
> and again we would predict that rationing measures would favor politically powerful agribusinesses and perhaps the Indian reservations over most small farmers
If the system allocates free water which can then be easily resold, the end result is basically the same as everyone paying but some entities get free money. Anyone expecting to buy their water should be no worse off.
If you're trying to water a cornfield big enough to feed your family, a fraction of a cent per liter might still be too much, though (and again we would predict that rationing measures would favor politically powerful agribusinesses and perhaps the Indian reservations over most small farmers). But it's not about dying of thirst.