>Huh, yes it will? You don't need state violence to reduce wealthy farmers' water rights from 10B gallons per year to 8B, which will instantly free up water for others, more important uses. Their quality of life won't decrease if they have to switch a few plots from alfalfa to wheat, if that's what you're afraid of.
Why develop local gas fields and solar when we can just invade nations with oil?
The only way to win sustainably is to make the resource, whatever it is, more accessible or less needed, somehow.
A few billion on this or that is pocket change compared to the economic and political cost of political policy with very obvious and well defined classes of losers. Taking things isn't free even if done domestically.
>1, you don't need much (or any) state violence to keep a few rich families from stealing water
Yes, you do. It will just be spent on schools to tell the kids how to think and carrot/stick grant programs to financially incentivize compliance among the municipalities and subsidies with strings attached and inspectors to verify these things and studies and surveys and all manner of other stuff like that rather than bombs and missiles but you absolutely need to spend untold sums of money to enforce policy that is "bad" for whoever you're enforcing it upon.
>I just can't get over how arrogant and mean this line is.
I'm jaded beyond caring about such things at this point.
>The pie is continually growing, the only thing preventing people from getting a slice is that capital owners keep it all to themselves.
>We have bloated contractors receiving billions for very little in exchange, and in this situation, people like you are suggesting we don't solve this very simple resource allocation problem and instead shovel a few more billions of public money to the private sector for completely superfluous infrastructure we won't catch a glimpse of before 2048.
I want you to do the math on what the capital owners actually make. Sure, they're filthy rich and putting their thumb on the scale in various bad ways but the rent they take is peanuts compared to the money just pissed away on goods and services that are far outside of whatever the critical path is.
For every dollar the CEO or board members or other large shareholder of some megacorp are paid the megacorp pays tens or hundreds to the "bloat" which you rightly identify as a problem in a lot of these project.
To use a metaphor, paying the football coach and the chancellor less isn't gonna fix the price of a college that has a non-teaching non-researching administrator for every two students.
Would putting the bloat into the public sector somehow make it less wasteful? Of course not.
At the end of the day we need to find a way to reduce the bloat and waste because the bloat and waste are not only why the nuclear desalination plant (or whatever) looks expensive and unattractive, it's also why the farmers care to hold onto the water. If pivoting was cheaper/easier/more reliable than perpetually fighting they would.
The past 50yr of regulation has been the kind of quasi centrally planned financial tomfoolery to incentivize the "right thing" (for who's definition?) and it's worked so poorly here we are in these comments discussing how LA has stagnated to the financial detriment of most there. No, I don't think "just one more centrally planned tweak" is gonna fix it whether we're tweaking water or something else.
> Why develop local gas fields and solar when we can just invade nations with oil?
Non sequitur. Better analogy: why dig new wells when you waste half of your oil anyway? Because that's what alfalfa is: wasted water. But it's slightly more profitable to the water rights holder, so that's what they grow. Could this fresh water be used in more productive ways? Doesn't matter to them.
> The only way to win sustainably is to make the resource, whatever it is, more accessible or less needed, somehow.
Yes, by cultivating more water efficient crops in regions under hydric stress, like California. Why do you refuse to engage with my argument in good faith?
> Yes, you do. It will just be spent on schools to tell the kids how to think and carrot/stick grant programs to financially incentivize compliance among the municipalities and subsidies with strings attached and inspectors to verify these things and studies and surveys and all manner of other stuff like that rather than bombs and missiles but you absolutely need to spend untold sums of money to enforce policy that is "bad" for whoever you're enforcing it upon.
Utter nonsense. You pretend to despise "centrally planned financial tomfoolery" so why do you spend so much energy to support the current water rights holder?
On your last paragraphs: again, why are you misrepresenting my arguments?
"Capital owners" doesn't mean CEOs and rich people, it's all stakes in the financial markets. So when you say "paying the football coach and the chancellor less isn't gonna fix the price of a college that has a non-teaching non-researching administrator for every two students", it's true, but that's not what I meant, at all. And I think you know it.
What I meant, is that for-profit schools and PE-owned football clubs are responsible for jacking up prices, to feed useless middlemen that weren't there before. That's the bloat. The actual economy is growing very slowly while financial markets have 4% annual growth. Do the math.
That's why a single missile costs 15M and 3 years of labor, and involves dozens of private contractors, when the US was able to build multiple planes a day during WWII under Roosevelt for pennies. So when you ask "Would putting the bloat into the public sector somehow make it less wasteful?", the answer is yes. The proof is the New Deal, how Roosevelt was able to wrestle the country back from the jaws of Capital and build public infrastructure using public workers, efficiently.
You only believe in private over public because of decades of propaganda, when the reality is the government has never subcontracted more of its work and we can't get anything fucking done! California abandoned its high speed rail project after feeding billions to various companies for literally nothing in return.
> If pivoting was cheaper/easier/more reliable than perpetually fighting they would.
The farmers aren't fighting, because there's no one in office to even fight them. Capital completely owns the government, to the point that a simple law such as "farmers have to use slightly less water in the middle of a fucking desert" feels so impossibly hard to pass that we can seriously entertain building a nuclear power plant and dozens of desalination plants to produce fresh water when we already have enough for everyone!
You're focusing on a single micro level issue, namely water and farming in the arid west, and missing the big picture.
Say we do a better job growing crops. That just kicks the can. LA grows and then we're right back here. Something needs to be done to provide for LA's growth and scale with it without teeing up future political fights.
>Utter nonsense. You pretend to despise "centrally planned financial tomfoolery" so why do you spend so much energy to support the current water rights holder?
I don't give a shit about either party to that particular dispute. I give a shit that we approach these disputes in a way that doesn't just kick the can.
>That's why a single missile costs 15M and 3 years of labor, and involves dozens of private contractors, when the US was able to build multiple planes a day during WWII under Roosevelt for pennies. So when you ask "Would putting the bloat into the public sector somehow make it less wasteful?", the answer is yes. The proof is the New Deal, how Roosevelt was able to wrestle the country back from the jaws of Capital and build public infrastructure using public workers, efficiently.
They bought the B29 straight from the blue prints. You, and everyone who thinks like you needs to stop and spend some time thinking about what roadblocks would arise, what lawsuits would fly, what waste would the system compel to occur, if a procurement short circuit like that were to be done today.
Public and private industry alike are hobbled by the same bloat (which I'll get back around to at the end of this comment) when back then neither was hobbled to anywhere near the same degree.
>What I meant, is that for-profit schools and PE-owned football clubs are responsible for jacking up prices, to feed useless middlemen that weren't there before. That's the bloat. The actual economy is growing very slowly while financial markets have 4% annual growth. Do the math.
You're getting close. What causes the demand for these middlemen that the well capitalized financial interests (for profit schools and the like) seek to make buck creating?
Say I get a borderline bullshit degree as a civil engineer from one of these degree mills. That qualifies me for an entry level job double checking beam calcs or drafting cookie cutter site plans. Where does demand for such services arise?
>You only believe in private over public because of decades of propaganda, when the reality is the government has never subcontracted more of its work and we can't get anything fucking done!
Lol. Tell me what I believe.
I've seen how this sausage is made. I've worked in defense. Government contracts this stuff because as bad as the defense industry is government is worse.
Say it costs $100 for the government to build something or provide some service. The private sector might be able to do it for $95. Looks like a $5 cost savings, right? Sure. It is. But the real problem is that the numbers would be $61 and $60.55 if both sides were not saddled with god knows how much non-productive bloat.
And the private sector will never tell you that because they make money on the spread. Nevermind the fact that we'd all be richer if we could get more of the good or service we want in the first place. You can't eat dollars.
It's tempting to complain about regulation and red tape, but IMO those are a reflection of culture, norms and values. This is a values problem.
I am focusing on that LA water issue because that's what the discussion was initially about. I don't think fixing inefficient resource allocation is "kicking the can down the road". You should read up on just how much water is wasted every year in that region.
When you see a leaky pipe, you don't think to build a second one coming from a different faucet (with more expensive water) before fixing the first pipe. It really is that simple. But anyway, unto the larger picture.
> You're getting close. What causes the demand for these middlemen that the well capitalized financial interests (for profit schools and the like) seek to make buck creating?
> Say I get a borderline bullshit degree as a civil engineer from one of these degree mills. That qualifies me for an entry level job double checking beam calcs or drafting cookie cutter site plans. Where does demand for such services arise?
What? No, that's not the source of the bloat. Much more income is generated via capital gains than though salaries, today. Shareholders are the "middlemen" I was referring to, not the workers trying to put food on their table. Everything is inefficient because everything is designed to provide 4% growth yoy to shareholders, when this is completely impossible to achieve in a sustainable way!
Teachers in for-profit schools are severely underpaid, where do the ludicrous tuitions go? In buybacks and dividends, and other fluff like sport teams and stadiums to attract investors.
> Government contracts this stuff because as bad as the defense industry is government is worse.
I don't believe that, and I don't think you should either. For a single example, 18F was doing great work before DOGE cut them, so TurboTax could keep profiteering. Speaking of, with all the ruckus DOGE made, they just couldn't find much "waste, fraud and abuse" in public services, and just ended up slashing cheap programs on political grounds, to save face with their supporters.
> It's tempting to complain about regulation and red tape, but IMO those are a reflection of culture, norms and values. This is a values problem.
Look, ultimately, I'm a historical materialist, I believe material conditions are the source of our societal structure, and "values" as you say. Culture doesn't grow in a vacuum, these issues don't just spontaneously arise. They are consequences of how our societies were structured yesterday, and our societies let capital concentrate more and more in fewer and fewer hands, with zero checks and balances.
Our current world is one of all-powerful capital, that has grown to wield tremendous power, and has permeated every facet of our governance, media and way of thinking. It's not a coincidence that all those regulations and red tape end up benefitting private contractors, who charge more and more for less and less in return. The purpose of a system is what it does, and what our system does is transferring our public money into private hands.
It's why you end up with suicide nets on the Golden Gate billed at half the price of the damn bridge (adjusted to inflation), or single-use missiles at 15M a piece.
It's how we're unable to get a single politician willing to stand up to water rights holders in California, to correct an obviously inefficient allocation of natural resources. Everything is done to keep any threats to the interests of capital away. See how much vitriol someone like Mamdani receives from both sides, simply for not being 100% at the heels of capital.
Why develop local gas fields and solar when we can just invade nations with oil?
The only way to win sustainably is to make the resource, whatever it is, more accessible or less needed, somehow.
A few billion on this or that is pocket change compared to the economic and political cost of political policy with very obvious and well defined classes of losers. Taking things isn't free even if done domestically.
>1, you don't need much (or any) state violence to keep a few rich families from stealing water
Yes, you do. It will just be spent on schools to tell the kids how to think and carrot/stick grant programs to financially incentivize compliance among the municipalities and subsidies with strings attached and inspectors to verify these things and studies and surveys and all manner of other stuff like that rather than bombs and missiles but you absolutely need to spend untold sums of money to enforce policy that is "bad" for whoever you're enforcing it upon.
>I just can't get over how arrogant and mean this line is.
I'm jaded beyond caring about such things at this point.
>The pie is continually growing, the only thing preventing people from getting a slice is that capital owners keep it all to themselves.
>We have bloated contractors receiving billions for very little in exchange, and in this situation, people like you are suggesting we don't solve this very simple resource allocation problem and instead shovel a few more billions of public money to the private sector for completely superfluous infrastructure we won't catch a glimpse of before 2048.
I want you to do the math on what the capital owners actually make. Sure, they're filthy rich and putting their thumb on the scale in various bad ways but the rent they take is peanuts compared to the money just pissed away on goods and services that are far outside of whatever the critical path is.
For every dollar the CEO or board members or other large shareholder of some megacorp are paid the megacorp pays tens or hundreds to the "bloat" which you rightly identify as a problem in a lot of these project.
To use a metaphor, paying the football coach and the chancellor less isn't gonna fix the price of a college that has a non-teaching non-researching administrator for every two students.
Would putting the bloat into the public sector somehow make it less wasteful? Of course not.
At the end of the day we need to find a way to reduce the bloat and waste because the bloat and waste are not only why the nuclear desalination plant (or whatever) looks expensive and unattractive, it's also why the farmers care to hold onto the water. If pivoting was cheaper/easier/more reliable than perpetually fighting they would.
The past 50yr of regulation has been the kind of quasi centrally planned financial tomfoolery to incentivize the "right thing" (for who's definition?) and it's worked so poorly here we are in these comments discussing how LA has stagnated to the financial detriment of most there. No, I don't think "just one more centrally planned tweak" is gonna fix it whether we're tweaking water or something else.