Friday party!

This is GOOD fast food... pinxas (tapas) in Bilbao:

Let's talk about truth

The kind view:

The cruel view:

Water Smarts: pricing, regulation and water sources

There are VERY FEW people following the "Water Smarts" learning campaign. This is disappointing to me, because I am pretty sure that MOST readers of this blog do not know as much as they should about their local water conditions. Worse, there are FAR MORE people who don't read the blog (or know this stuff) because they don't care.

If "education is the solution" then we are going to have trouble because nobody is in class!

In this post, I will comment on some "closed" activities and invite you to ongoing and new activities.

NB: Questions/activities are based on chapters from Living with Water Scarcity, and you can download the 2015 WaterSmarts Calendar here.

• March: How much do you pay? (Chapter 2)
  One person filled this in with data from Colombia. The interesting points are (1) the tariff (US$2.55/m3, combined water and sewer) includes a cross-subsidy from higher- to lower income families and (2) that this family used roughly 250lcd (65gcd), which is less than California's (poorly measured) average of 88gcd. If you want more data, read my paper on global water tariffs [pdf] or this post on low charges in Europe's fiscally mismanaged countries
• April: Who's your regulator? (Chapter 3)
  From Colombia, I learned that the regulator targets full cost recovery with a cross subsidy from rich to poor. This method is sound in terms of efficiency as well as equity. It is not found in many countries where, for example, full costs are not recovered (deferred maintenance, cheap energy, pollution discharges) or the poor are left without service. I'm guessing that the US and Canada deliver service quality on par with southern Europe. This paper describes how Southern California managers (but true for managers in the West) underprice their systems, thereby screwing current customers for new development. This beautiful map app offers data on wastewater coverage and treatment (yay Netherlands!)

If you want to improve future posts (giving me more material to work with), then PLEASE take 10-20 minutes to answer questions on these topics:

• May: What's your water quality? (Chapter 4)
• June: The water in your food (Chapter 5)
• July: What's your (utility's) water source? (Chapter 6) NEW!

Dates for July: Americans celebrate the foundation of the EPA and NOAA (by Nixon!), English and New Yorkers celebrate the opening of their important canals, Greece opened its Corinth Canal (not before bankrupting a few), and several other anniversaries passed. Check it out!

Monday funnies

Travel sites do seem to be going in this direction...

Papers worth reading

1. Hsu [pdf] examines water/air pollution from the hog CAFO system in the US, as well as market concentration. He establishes that large farms lobby for weak regulations to eliminate small farms. What would be the cost of complying with the Clean Water Act (over 40 years of exemptions)? About 30 cents 3 cents/kg. This outrageous environmental rip off probably applies in chicken and cow industries.
   
   
2. Hernández-Mora and Del Moral [pdf] give a critical examination to the establishment, operation and impact of water markets in Spain. They conclude that the markets serve elites over the public. This is a problem of governance, not markets, i.e., Part I vs Part II in my book. Pay attention to the "space" in which markets operate!
   
   
3. Coleman [pdf] finds that "oil companies send inconsistent messages to their two audiences -- warning regulators and reassuring investors." Surely there's some scope for regulators to pay attention to (or integrate) other information into their oversight?
   
   
4. Goeschl and Jarke [pdf] use experiments to examine HOW people trust others in exchanges. One pattern is to verify a few times to make sure the other is honest, before lapsing into trust without verification. These results match real-world examples such as spouses who cheat, auditors who fail to double check clients, teachers who trust "good students" etc. Countermeasures: renewed romance, rotation and random checks, respectively.
   
   
5. van den Bergh and Kemp [pdf] apply many economic ideas (path dependency, institutions, business cycles, etc.) to economic-social-political "transitions." I am going to use this paper for my growth & development class :)
   
   
6. Sinden, a law professor, gives a useful overview of the (mis)application of cost-benefit analysis in environmental regulations. This paper [pdf] discusses the environmental protection act. This one [pdf] reviews the US government's "dirgiste" approach to CBA. (She's working on another paper that measures the degree to which bureaucrats ignore "unquantifiable but important (to them) data" in a process that results in poor decisions.

Flashback: 6-19 Jul 2014

A year old but still worth reading...

• The Quest -- the review Oil is big, so it's useful to understand the industry
• Pricing tap water for efficiency and fairness -- send this to your utility
• Governance is like pornography Obviously.
• Water rights, salinity management and remote sensing -- accounting is complex but important
• Another blow against IBRs (if you don't believe me)
• Four Rivers, two losses, i.e., corruption and fail in South Korea
• Thinking, Fast and Slow -- the review -- know thyself!
• Do you trust your neighbors? I'd replace "professional" regulators with normal people

Friday party!

This video is really worth watching for its portrayal of a man who enjoys his work and community. I'll note that it's really possible to take such a "low paying" job when you've got a social insurance system that works rather than one based on Social Darwinism.



I posted this video on reddit/basicincome and got this comment:

I like to think there are those in this world who already have basic incomes, and they are anyone who is currently pursuing whatever passion in life that they would do anyway.

If you don't do work for income, but instead your income allows you to do your work, you have a basic income.

This bike repairman has a basic income.

Also, I like the way he looks at problems. You can either patch a problem in a way that just requires infinite patches, or you can get to the root of the problem and fix it in way that negates the need for patch after patch.

Welfare programs as they exist today are patches. Minimum wage hikes are patches. Basic income negates the need for any more patches because it gets to the root of our problems - the lack of sufficient access to resources.

Back from vacation

It's taken two days, but I think I have caught up with dirty laundry and lots of social media (updates, comments, tweets).

OTOH, nothing much has changed so perhaps I should have stayed, unplugged, in Zaragoza...

Just kidding.

But seriously, it looks like my dissertation "findings" -- that a co-op (Metropolitian) was ripping off one of its members (SDCWA) -- is coming "true" in legal terms. Check out section 1.3.