La crisis del agua en Texas

Yugh!

Me late que es una mera provocación.
El blog Freakonomics sacó este post, por Hamermesh,

Grazing the Non-Commons
By Daniel Hamermesh

Central Texas is having its worst drought in 50 years, and since May we have been limited to twice-a-week lawn watering. With things getting worse, on August 24 the limit goes to once per week. I’ll abide by the limit, but I’ll set my sprinklers to run longer each session than during the twice-a-week watering. I’m sure I’m not alone; and thus these private actions will partly undo the restrictions. We all take water out of a common pool, but the water is not a public good — each of us uses it up. The local paper is trying to solve the shortage by publishing the names of the biggest residential users and shaming them. I doubt this will help. The problem could readily be solved by pricing the water sufficiently high to ensure that we get through the drought with water to spare. Indeed, that’s what a free market would do. Unfortunately, Austin hasn’t seen fit to mimic free-market pricing of this increasingly scarce resource.

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Esta es la respuesta que puse... aparecerá pronto, muchos de los argumentos han aparecido antes en esta bitácora...

That very drought is occurring in pretty much all of Mexico.
Mexico City's supplies are low by 30%. Water shortages are on since January, and there are places in the city that receive water 3 hours every 3 weeks... Ha! The discussion here is about watering the lawn! -If urban planning was to make any sense, no home in Texas (or in Arizona, or in New Mexico, or, come to that, in California itself) should have irrigation for the lawns. End of story. You should have cactus instead! Mexican producers are fearing that the whole bean output would be lost to drought, and started already using next year's rights to save the current agricultural year...The thing is that the drought will still be here next year as well.

Water is about producing food. Not watering the lawn. And yes, it IS a public good (a decade or so of sound water economics says so). It's a public good that saturates though (in a drought, it is obvious it looks like a private good... ). Water economists and water experts both say that water is perhaps a market not matched in the magnitude of externalities and market failures. A free market will not do. Water pricing will not do. (Too much to valuate, too poor and imperfect our tools). Now, the ethical comment: As an economist, you should be aware about the tragedy of the commons... That type of behaviors (watering longer because "I'm not alone") lie at the core of our environmental problems. You can do as you please. But know that you're part of the problem. Not part of the solution. Economists, as social scientists, very aware of emergent properties and bad equilibria, should behave otherwise. But you don't have to agree with me.