Sensible Alternatives to Water Rationing

Recently, a serious newspaper published an article titled "Government Dries Up California's Water Supply."

 It offered an alternative solution to the California drought, one that transcends the usual "Voluntary or mandatory cutbacks in residential water usage."

 As the author, a Fellow at the Hoover Institute, saw it, "Price and other controls," and "Government-dictated prices, coupled with restrictions on the transfer of water, have made a bad situation much worse."

 Although many suspect that the drought is related to precipitation in California, the situation is exacerbated reportedly because, "Shortages are generally caused when governments place ceilings on prices or when they prevent markets from operating freely in some other way, like restricting trade."

 As the author pointed out "The current water situation resembles oil in the mid-1970s;" he asserted that the cost of water to some users, "most notably agriculture, is too low."

 He suggested letting free Markets prices serve to "encourage farmers to sell water to urban users, thereby increasing residential supply and driving residential water prices down."

 His solution is sound assuming we can get faithful translations of those classic Cookbooks and Instructional Videos, issued in North Korea during the heyday of their 1990s famine; these dietary manifestos were designed to wean Koreans off tradition foods.

 Given the right blend of herbs and spices, those of us who habitually dine on agricultural products could make the culinary transition, as North Korea did, to dried pondweed or duckweed, corn husks and cobs, oak leaves, pine bark, tender weeds and grass.

 Such were menu choices their exulted leader, Kim Jong, recommended despite the resultant severe gastrointestinal problems for those hungry enough to actually eat them.

 The less discriminating Korean Gourmands dined on extracted undigested kernels of corn from farm animals.

 As the author, also a Stanford Professor, assured us, "the first step is to let all owners of water sell their rights" to city slickers because "This would ensure that water goes to its highest valued use."

 Most of the suggested North Korean food substitutes can be foraged from existing residential properties in LA and San Diego without having to upset current agronomies.

 Admittedly, grass and bark are a little extreme but why not eat canned or frozen vegetables, and if the dairy cows are that thirsty, what about powdered milk?

 "Given that residential users of aqueduct water in San Diego pay rates that can be more than five times as high as those paid by the farmers in Kern County," why not let the Central Valley lie fallow until this drought, or the top soil, blows over?

 Jeffrey R Smith