Interestingly Saudi Arabia has been super wasteful of their water too.
They have all but drained their aquifers that takes thousands of years to replenish in a bid to become self sufficient in their food supplies. Now they are taking some corrective action with investing more in desalination, reducing certain type of agricultural produce etc.
One of the theoretical advantages of an absolute monarchy or any other totalitarian form of government is that it should be able to make unpopular decisions (i.e. prevent the people from accessing groundwater resources) that are good in the long run (i.e. the aquifers don't all run out within a few decades). Strange how that plays out in reality.
> should be able to make unpopular decisions that are good in the long run
Well, no, totalitarianism is characterized by the unilateral exercise of power, and the results will vary wildly depending on who your tyrant is. Tyrants are easily as dumb as the average person; dumber, perhaps, if you think that absolute power corrupts one's ability to view the world objectively (or that those who have a tendency to seek absolute power might correlate with those who do not have the best interests of others at heart).
They would've if they took the Chinese approach to gradually improve the standard of living organically through productivity improvements and education. Saudi Arabia instead immediately skyrocketed their standard of living far past what the population can do productively without oil. Populations don't take well to huge standard of living decreases that are inevitable when oil $ runs out to subsidize everything in the state enormously.
> They would've if they took the Chinese approach to gradually improve the standard of living organically through productivity improvements and education.
Well, since the topic is authoritarianism, note that the Chinese approach resulted in a few tens of millions dead, which is worse than what the Saudis have managed so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
