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Comment by jsLavaGoat | Hacker News Reader

You will never start over and rationalize water like that for ag. And it's an easy and popular target for lots of people who are disconnected to it. Residential use is where the waste is.

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Both can be true, but if you subject water pricing to market forces the problem can help correct itself. That won't happen for ag pricing (strong lobby) but would get rid of the relatively minuscule residential wastefulness.

Why should society let market forces decide how we treat a resource necessary for human life? I would rather trust a democratic society more than I'd ever trust any of these anti-humans that currently lead big tech. These people have shown the open disdain they have towards humanity, we are under no obligation to give them whatever they want if they just pay for it. Money is not the issue for them, they do not like being told no.

Society should, and is, openly reject such disdain and contempt toward humanity.

I'm specifically talking about local elected governments managing a municipal resource that needs to respond to market supply and demand realities over the course of time where availability of said resource fluctuates. These municipalities are run by democratically elected representatives that should be acting in the best interests of their constituents -- and if not they can be replaced.

That's incredibly solvable: subsidize every household with a baseline of essential water, and charge above-market rates for everything else. Set the higher tier's price to fund an annual dividend for every citizen to offset the average food cost difference. Waste would go way down, and practices would shift to water-efficient practices.

I believe this makes a lot of sense. Hopefully we also have a smart meter one could use to get quick feedback on water use, so homeowners can see how changing their behavior reduces water use in the same way that a smart meter for electricity gives us the same feedback for reducing energy use.

Even without the economic incentive, I've turned off the lawn irrigation installed by previous owners, use soaker or drip irrigation in my berry and vegetable gardens, and water ornamental plants only when they're really in distress during our summertime droughts. It's amazing how soil can go from moist and wonderful in the spring to desiccated powder in a summer drought.

Coming soon, we'll be replacing the front yards with creeping thyme and maybe wild strawberries. I do need to see if wild strawberries, though, are a groundhog buffet. I hate those little fuckers.

A couple of farms use more water than all residential in California.

The waste is NOT residential.

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