Comment on Wreck the economy because it only works for the billionaire class.
SmoothIsFast@citizensgaming.com 1 year agoScarcity is not a creation of the uber rich, it just exacerbated by them.
40% of food is thrown out in the US every year, food scarcity is not an issue in the US at least. Sure there are certain decisions that need to be made but once again, these decisions are not required to be done by the billionaire class and are already being handled by your lower level municipality workers. It wouldn’t delve into chaos because Joe stopped telling investors why they should invest, we simply need to forget about there bullshit profit motives and manage resources without a dollar valuation and instead based on how scarce the resource and its utilitarian value is when utilized in a specific process.
Scarcity is not a creation of the uber rich, it just exacerbated by them.
Exactly scarcity is the the means at which we can judge how something can be utilized, when you complicate that with dollar valuations instead of the utility and efficiency it can generate you end up in a corrupt broken system extracting wealth to those who can name prices, instead of proper resource allocation that can benefit all.
Right now it is mostly decided by economic power and a byzantine set of rules and laws dictating who owns the water.
As stated it’s currently handled by municipality workers who can continue with the current process or switch to one which values the utilitarian output of a decision versus its economic value. None of the issues described are solved by or aided by the inclusion of a billionaire class, instead they, as you stated, exacerbated by such classes of individuals.
Nahvi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If you live in the eastern part of the US, you might find it interesting to look up water rights west of the Mississippi; it is an absolute madhouse.
Spent a year in Colorado not long ago. The water that fell from the sky above was owned by someone else before it even hit the ground, though I think I heard that there were some changes specifically in regards to rain barrels since I left.
SmoothIsFast@citizensgaming.com 1 year ago
I’ll have to check out how the west coast allocate water than should be an interesting rabbit whole to dive into.
I mean, even if that’s the case, who enforces the rights to “sell” that water? I’d assume it’s some lower level employees or still municipality government that could just also up and not give a shit that some billionaire has staked claims to sell this water to whoever they please instead of allowing it to flow to those in need. Almost all the claims of ownership from those obscenely rich are more or less just expected to be respected and enforced by those who suffer from their exploitation, most systems could continue on tomorrow and gain efficiency I’d we gave the middle finger to the wealth hoarders and banks.
Nahvi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t really know how true it is, but my horticulture buddy up there made it sound like the water flowed through a number of small farms that really weren’t worth much until the population boom made land prices sky-rocket over the last 20 years.
The bigger issue in the area is that it is more how long the water rights have been retained. If your family bought your farm 150 years ago, you will get your water before the person that bought theirs 20 years ago. It doesn’t matter in wet years, but as soon as a drought hits the 150 year farm will get 80-100% of their water, while the 20 year farm will be lucky if they get 20%. If you bought water rights last year, you better conserve your seed and sell your animals quickly because you aren’t getting any water.
In a way it is completely fair, it isn’t the long-term farmers fault that the state is having an unsustainable population explosion. However, as one of those new residents who really didn’t understand the local laws when I moved there, I hated it.