Be honest about how said voters' houses are going to be worthless when Phoenix runs out of water, California burns down, and Miami/NYC/New Orleans are under water.
Also, be honest about how we're rapidly barreling toward the end of economic growth because the weather keeps destroying industrial and agricultural production.
What exactly is the "free market price" for water? Are you suggesting reticulated water supply for a city should be achieved via competing free enterprises? Is there anywhere in the world where that's worked well?
That's a non-answer unless customers can meaningfully choose where/how to obtain their regular water supply and how much to pay for it. I'm genuinely curious if that's true in any modern cities.
Edit: Santiago in Chile seems to be close to such a case. Interestingly, 70% of the population want to see a return to public ownership of water rights. And it's pretty hard to find evidence having private ownership of water rights is helping ensure long term supply for all.
There's far too few data points to make a meaningful comparison - but water supply has been a public good since Assyrian times. I was only objecting to your claim that if the price of water was somehow established via the free market it would magically ensure it never ran out.
How someone clearly intelligent enough to design parts at Boeing can parrot statements like that does my head in.
I'm not an economist at all, but I have at least a passing familiarity with elasticity of demand (which is pretty damn low for water, given it's a basic biological need with zero satisfactory substitutes, and that the excess use of brings little immediate gratification).
If you want to claim higher prices for water guarantee that free enterprise will always invest what's necessary to ensure its availability I'd like to see the evidence for it.
The fact that you are so nonchalantly dismissing the statement of someone like Walter should make you take a long hard look at yourself, your beliefs and your though processes.
Water usage is just as elastic as any other consumption behavior. Heck, I halved mine this year by simply selectively letting parts of my yard dry up in this hot summer. And enterprises can pass increased prices on to the final product.
No, it's simply not - most items we consume are not biological needs and do have reasonable substitutes.
Obviously there's scope for many of us to reduce our water usage, and I don't doubt increasing the price is one way of achieving that. But if you want to claim that a free market for water will guarantee there's always sufficient supply for a given population, then it's fair to ask for evidence.
Some years ago, there was a drought in Seattle. The government instituted a lawn watering ban to cope with it.
Some rich people didn't want their lawns to go brown, so an entrepreneur rented some tanker trucks, filled them up outside the region, drove back to Seattle, and watered their lawns.
This caused a hue and cry about how unfair this was, and another ordinance was passed to make it illegal to truck water in.
However, it is exactly what you asked for - an example of the free market delivering when the price is high enough.
As for biological needs, I recommend reading "Empire of the Summer Moon" about how the Comanche were able able to survive in the desert. This included killing their horses and drinking the contents of their stomachs as an example of how far they would go to get water.
Besides, biological drinking water is only a tiny, tiny fraction of human water consumption.
Another example, when there are natural disasters, entrepreneurs would truck in bottled water and gasoline and sell it (until the government put a stop to that, too).
"Look, your business is going bankrupt because it's now too expensive to water your crops compared to the price they would fetch if sold, but that doesn't mean there's a water shortage! You just can't afford it!"
Enterprises have to cope with price increases all the time. My friends building houses have seen the price for iron multiplying over the year, but construction still goes on.
Some businesses die but the others adapt and find solutions. It’s where human creativity and innovation shines. An expensive item is a great motivator to find alternatives.
And without water, some people die but the others...wash less and let their gardens and crops die? What sort of alternative do you think expensive water would be a great motivator for us to find?
And without food, some people die but it was the free markets who brought us this incredible array of cheaper and cheaper options while planned economies couldn't keep their citizens from starving.
"Food" is a vastly broader category of possible substitutable commodities than water is. And it's a stretch to claim it's entirely the work of free markets that ensures our food supply - agriculture is pretty heavily subsidised in most modern economies.
I'm quite willing to accept that we would see some more innovative ways of supplying water to cities if there was less public control over it. I also agree that water should be more expensive in places that it's hard to supply to (which should help discourage too many people from living there) - but no government is going to let its voters die of thirst, and is just as strongly motivated to maintain supply as competing private enterprises might be.
We have those in Australia. Free enterprise had nothing to do with it, in fact it would have been a terrible investment (and yes, it was a a questionable use of taxpayer money, at least so far).
But that you could supply a city the size and distance from the ocean of Phoenix with affordable constant supply of water with desalination plants seems a stretch.
Reputable sources explaining that climate change won't destroy trillions of dollar of assets and GDP? Seems like I am in that bubble too. Could you lay them down please?
You must have heard about the fires in California in the last few years, right? Look up what's happened to air quality on the west coast from the smoke.
True or false, reputable sources or not, there are still plenty of people in the US -- enough to affect the outcomes of elections, at least -- who just do not and will not believe it.
Also, be honest about how we're rapidly barreling toward the end of economic growth because the weather keeps destroying industrial and agricultural production.