It is near impossible to imagine any private company not enjoying the “problem” of high demand for its products and services. Yet there are some products that are repeatedly reported as shortages. There is one thing these products have in common: government intervention, typically in the form of price controls.
This is especially the case with water in Melbourne, Australia. FULL ARTICLE
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what’s more disgusting is the way the victorian government has fostered a dob-in culture. neighbours settling scores and turning water-snitches.
the state not only has a monopoly on piped water, but has laid down a raft of regulations and standards re: rainwater tanks and grey-water systems, making these improvements sub-economic.
don’t fancy universal fluoridization? gargle with evian, ingrate.
In Honduras we have the same issues and I would think Australia would have private water markets. Now, people or markets tend to adjust and with higher restrictions and price controls we have found ways to overcome rationing.
First, people store more water at home. This by it self has increased the water shortages, given that the water stored is not fluvial but coming directly from the tap. This increases the demand and reduces the reservoirs capacity.
Second, people drill for water. This again not only diminishes the water supply but also degrades much of the underground supplies given that extraction is not always done in the most efficient manner.
Both of these solutions are a direct result of the price controls exerted by the government.
We currently pay for a metric cube of water roughly $ 42 cents for tap water, but people who live in the poorest neighborhoods where the public sector does not/cannot supply water, the cost of the metric cube of water is roughly $ 1.50. Oddly enough bottled water in the 5 gallon format costs roughly the same as the metric cube the poor pay. Finally, privatization is a reality in some towns and cities in Honduras, unfortunately we have turned a public monopoly into a private one, with the aggravated fact that ownership of all sources of water are left to these single sellers. What a shame having the markets readily available we get political corruption to benefit a few and hinder public belief in markets.
Ahh, this is not really about “free markets” or even “Government control” but the rank criminal incompetence of politicians and their bureaucrat accomplices. This is actually a view of an Anglo failed state in the making (“…especially the case with water in Melbourne…”) – the pathetic consequences of decades of denial and refusal and outright lies – some days no power, no transport, soon no water + no food.
100 people died in a 43°+ Celsius heatwave in January, 2009 (110-120°F) because the city’s infrastructure wasn’t designed to function above 35°C (95°F)!!! Thus power outages were fatal as air-conditioning failed….. and 100′s of train services were also cancelled stranding exhausted commuters in the heat of the afternoon. And over 200 lives have been lost recently in wildfires in the Australian state of Victoria as a result of bad management of native eucalypt forests and poor communications putting rural towns at risk of being “wiped off the map” (Black Saturday, 7 Feb 2009).
Thus it is revealed how governments’ policies and their actions or inaction actually cost peoples’ lives or at least actually reduce peoples’ lifespans as well as reduce their standard of living. How much longer, then, will politicians be allowed to have their pretentious “cowards’ castles” (parliament/congress) and be unanswerable for their crimes?
The article “The Water Wizards of Oz” advocates privatization of water delivery as a solution to water shortages. I think I understand how pricing should mitigate shortages over time. I am not at all clear on how private water delivery might work. I live in a U.S. metropolitan area with water delivered by a public utility via underground pipes. How does privatization of this sort of utility work? There is one metered pipe entering my property from one main line running down my street. How does provider competition enter into a system of this sort?
One thing you are not factoring into your argument is that water flows through property lines. Whether it is a river or the underground water table. So when does extracting more from your property effect the property rights of others?
Water rights is what our western US agricultural society was based on and there must be limits to the amount that is taken from wells or rivers to insure all people in the society their rights to the water supply. Property rights must be enforced!
Private companies should not be allowed to tap these reserves at any price. If they see a profit in supplying additional water, they need to tap a resource outside their markets like desalination of ocean water and trucking it in.
Finally, just because you can afford it, does not allow you to waste it. Everyone needs to use less as increased water use mean increased sewage disposal. Responsibility must be part of our actions.
Well that touches on the question of how far down do your property rights go? How does common law treat the question? Cooperative firms can also be used to control water in a free market if more traditional firms make some skittish. It’s up to the consumers how to handle it really. Either way, the government is unnecessary.
The MISES community might be interested in Hudson’s view of the economic spectrum in today’s CounterPunch.
In privatizing any kind of public utility, governements are not really interested in ensuring competition but in promoting a facade that they are at least seen to be acting in the public interest. The ultimate cost or the efficiency of service and the reliability of supply are secondary issues, in fact. Privatization merely provides an investment vehicle with a captive market for billionaire entrepreneurs or pension funds/soverign wealth funds to make easy money without risk.
It might have seemed odd that I mentioned “bushfires” in my earlier post but these hazards also impact both water supply and water quality. Melbourne already has a shortage of water (30% of storage capacity and falling) and wind-blown ash as well as the subsequent run-off from forthcoming rains in the water catchment areas affected by the fires will seriously degrade water quality, possibly for some years. In the meantime, they are desperately pumping water out of the main dams into other reservoirs while they still have the chance.
Those fires are still continuing to burn and also put both water and gas pipelines at risk of damage and closure as well as threatening high-voltage power lines both directly as well as from smoke causing them to earth out. So, even the water one does have is at risk in more than the obvious ways. Failing to invest in or promote greywater use for industry and home gardens, etc, has also been a shortcoming there in Melbourne and the government has rushed to pipe water from a distant hydro-electric project as well as construct sea-water purification plants at any cost to insure against an unknown future supply-wise.
Wow! Sounds like G’d Old USSR all over again… (Cant’ do this, can’t do that, get in the line, get a ration coupon…) Never thought that this could be possible in a country like Down Under…
But I have to admit, a poster named “greg” has a point – water is a scarce resource in this instance, and whoever controls it is a monopoly – no matter public or private, and cannot be stopped if they decide to limit the supply or raise the price: What are you going to do? Drink less? Or do away without?
This is a brilliant example of what I was always trying to show – a monopoly whether it is the government itself or a couple of smart-ass entrepreneurs in pursuit of their view of “happiness” can wreck havoc on the other participants of the market relationship… Now, what to do? Take a test:
a) Privatize the water supply infrastructure and the rights to distribute it to private players with NO government regulation;
b) Privatize the water supply infrastructure and the rights to distribute it to private players WITH the government regulation;
c) Create a “special water committee”;
d) Create a movement “Citizens for less water drinking dot org”;
e) None of the above
Before answering to the questions of the quiz, one must remember that the water delivery infrastructure is so intertwined with other private property in terms of pipe and sewer routs that the private enterprise operating as a water supplier will have to deal with all that (pay ‘em off, most likely – the complainers, gold-diggers and the like)…
I do not pretend to know the absolute right solution in this instance. And those, who claim they have it – such as privatization or pint a) in the quiz above – are being either too naive or disingenuous… I don’t see any “clean” solution to controlling a vital strategic resource. If you were ask me, I would go down the path of privatization but with the government oversight to prevent monopolization (i.e. with option b) above), but I am not sure, so I choose e) …
This is a classic example where the Republic “meets” the Democracy (i.e. where one has to decide whether majority should impose their will on the minority, or vice versa, since the property rights are being questioned)…
The amount of water one can take from a river must be set by an agency with the authority to set law. Because rivers cross national and international boarders, all individuals and societies located along the river must have their rights established.
A good example of the ill effects of taking too much water is the Colorado River. Southern California diverted a huge amount of water to their region which resulted in a major disruption in the flow of the river into Mexico and distroyed their fishery in the Gulf of California.
Water rights must be established and adjusted with the flow of the river. If this flow crosses boarders, national or international agencies will need to step in to set these rights.
For example, it may be set that for every acre you own along the river, you are allowed 10 gallons of water. If you want more, you must find someone downstream that is willing to sell you their rights. The free market will set the price of these rights.
If you have a city along the river, their amount is set too. If their population grows, individuals will have to use less unless the city can buy more water rights.
Now comes the interesting problem facing public water systems. When we cut our individual usage so that we can supply the growing population, we pay more for less water. That is because we have a fixed amount of water and when the delivery system must be expanded, the cost per unit goes up.
Which brings me to the real problem….POPULATION GROWTH!
It would not be so terribly difficult to come up with a rational system for private distribution of water. The real problem is how to privatize the water sources, which have generally been created with taxpayer funding.
Bill Daniels asks how to do this, for example in NYC area. NYC and surrounding suburbs get water from the NYC DEP water system, a series of reservoirs upstate created and expanded over the past century-and-a-half-plus. They are owned by NYC, and in the 19th and early 20th centuries, small towns were completely wiped out (eminent domain) to create the reservoirs. See http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/drinking_water/history.shtml.
Those reservoirs could be sold to investors in a privatization that would raise much needed cash for NYC. There are something like a dozen separate reservoirs (depending on how you count them, as some are connected, and the Croton watershed is really all one system, built over the course of the Croton River). Altogether they comprise about 500 billion gallons of water storage. see http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/drinking_water/maplevels_wide.shtml.
Sell each major reservoir to an independent investment company, and let them compete with one another.
But, you say, they all use the same aqueduct and pipe system, how do we know whose water goes where?
Recall back in the 90′s when we deregulated the phone industry? We did not get separate lines into each house from AT&T, Verizon, Bell South, etc. They came up with a system for switching and monitoring traffic that shared the existing copper infrastructure. Water pipes would be no different. Each reservoir monitors how much water it releases, each household has a meter monitoring how much water it receives. If I want to subscribe to Croton Water Suppliers instead of Ashokan Reservoir Corp, I do so. The water suppliers monitor how much each user buys, and how much each supplier provides, and they split up the revenue accordingly.
When water runs low in Croton reservoir, the owner corp raises the price. Ashokan or Neversink Corp supplies the difference at their price. If I am unhappy with Croton’s price, I switch my subscription to Neversink. We see the same thing today in petroleum markets. The gas and fuel oil that ends up in our tanks comes from all over the world, and the entrepreneurs running the oil supply and distribution system see that it gets to us readily at the cheapest sustainable price. It does not matter to me whether the oil came from Venezuela or the Saudi desert (it all gets mixed up together anyway, at the refinery and in the pipelines), as long as my local station and my heating oil company keeps it coming.
It does not matter whether the water in my bathtub comes from the Croton reservoir, in my home town, or from Ashokan way upstate. It all gets mixed up in the pipes and aqueducts, anyway. But I pay the company who offers me the services I most want (pipe maintenance, plumbers on call at all hours, or whatever value-added services distinguish them from the competitors) at the price I consider acceptable. This system already works to promote healthy competition between heating oil companies and gasoline suppliers. It would work just the same for water.
The facts contained in this report are erroneous.
Government interference has caused the price of water to rise beyond its economic value. Investers like Macquarie Bank have bet on the price rising just like everyone has bet on everything else rising. However farmers have responded in the usual way, cutting back on production and sourcing other feed for cattle and animals from alternate sources. Australian farmers have learned to survive in the driest continent in the world. Their city counterparts have also cut back on usage and it should be noted that Melbourne has not run out of water during the driest period on record. If it were not for Government interference the price of water would collapse tomorrow as has the price of water traded temporarily on the open market.
If Melbourne did not run out of water during this dry period then why does it need more water? There are many other alternatives such as recycling.
No doubt the rains will come again and we will have floods just as there are now in Queensland. As the poem goes, Australia is the land of droughts and flooding rain.
Some of you people have no imagination whatsoever. Don’t you think if private profits were involved, risk-taking entreprenuers would find new, innovative ways of getting water to people at a cost that they can afford? This has been true in other industries.
Sure, there are some complications and difficulties in making the transition, but the market is more likely to make the transition faster and easier than the government would. Look at how ridiculous cable-tv and electricity “deregulation” has been handled by the government.
Michael,
Please use your imagination and give us a broad overview on a system that the invisiable hand would come up with. Just give a little more than “market forces”.
Greg, imagine it’s 1890, and you have been asked to give an overview of how horseless carriages will reshape the world. Would you imagine everything we have today? The point of the market process is that it takes information that is simply not available to any particular actor and creates solutions–you know, Hayek’s spontaneous order?
In the olden days, people used to deliver ice and milk every day. Even today, businesses have bottled water delivered. The delivery of bottled water would not cover everyone’s needs, but it would be a competitive alternative, if piped water became too costly.
Speaking of piped water, the telephone system before monopolization might be an interesting example: phone companies were working on ways to share the phone lines, instead of trying to impractically put up multiple phone lines to compete. If government hadn’t stepped in there, early phone service would have expanded at a much faster and cheaper rate.
My point, obviously, is that while you and I can’t think of every possibility, a large market would gather the information of millions of people to develop better, more cost-effective water delivery systems. And as suggested above, it would probably develop multiple water delivery systems, instead of letting government put all of our eggs in one basket.
to rose ley:
bear in mind that the state governments in general have decided the recycling of drinking water has too much of a yuk-factor to be considered.
we’ve gone straight to expensive de-salinization here in wa, without even trialing recycling.
to pbergn:
water doesn’t doesn’t have to be a total monopoly, though it is now.
many australian state governments also dictate how local farmers manage their own man-made or natural dams/reservoirs.
governments’ manifest failure is always rewarded with more funding.
In parts of Sydney roof-fed rainwater tanks are a viable option. However, when I built 7 years ago I wasn’t permitted to install one. Instead I was compelled to obtain water from the reticulated supply, even though no new reservoirs have been built for decades in order to pander to those who want us to return to a self-sufficient agrarian lifestyle surrounded by bush. (Instead of more reservoirs they are building an expensive desalination plant.)
Prices are set by IPART – the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal – funded by the government, of course. Yes I know it sounds like something out of the former Soviet Union, and the pricing does too – I pay more per unit the more I use. Imagine trying out that pricing policy with say, PC memory.
Lately Sydney storage levels have risen substantially, but about the only letup in restrictions was permission a couple of weeks ago to let children play under backyard sprinklers on hot days. (http://www.sydneywater.com.au/WhoWeAre/MediaCentre/MinisterialReleases/GreenLightForKidsToPlayUnderTheSprinkler-090206.pdf)
Over and over again our government reminds us that we are living on the driest inhabited continent in the world. However Australia’s average rainfall per acre is not too dissimilar to most other inhabited parts of the world, yet we have one of the lowest population densities. Per person we have vastly more rainfall than almost anywhere else, and if it wasn’t for the government, water could be incredibly cheap.
Chris,
While I do have alot sympathy for the opinion expressed in the main body of your article, especially in respect to the absurdity of restrictions and rebates and the general criticism of governements abiltiy to deliver water supply, I must point out that you have misunderstood the role of the Essential Services Commission, and in portraying it as some sort of politicised pricing agent totaly misses the point of who is accountable for our current predicament.
The Essential Services Commission is an independent pricing regulator, it has its own commissioners and is a much as is humanly possible removed from the average ministerial argy bargy that most other sectors of governement are subject to.
The Commission does not set prices. Rather it approves the prices put forward by the businesses against a set of criteria established in legislation. Those criteria basicly boil down to are the prices efficient, there is no mandate to stop price increases. In practice this means the Commission assess the water utilities expenditure in terms of its cost efficiency in delivering the businesses stated outcomes. This expenditure forms whats known in regulatory terms as a revenue requirement. This requirement is the only cap on prices …. in that prices must not provide for a revenue that exceeds that required. The Commission does not block expenditure because it would cause a price increase, it blocks expenditure because it can show that there are cheaper ways of delivering the same outcome.
Although I do not work for the Commission I feel fairly confident in stating that it would support any efficient expenditure assoicated with increasing the water supply. Indeed contary to your assertion the Commission has approved quite substantial increases in prices accross many of Victoria’s water utilities and is more than likely going to approve substantial price increases in Melbourne to accomodate the forthcoming desalination plant and the North South Pipeline.
By the way, the Commission has no role in seting water restrictions nor in abatement schemes. Further to this, I imagine that as an economic regulator its natural tendancy is to view restrictions as a service failure as do other regulators such as OFWAT in the UK.
In focusing on the Commission what you have failed to mention is that the businesses themeselves are governement owned entities and while corporatised are subject to a high degree of oversight from the goverment through the Department of Sustainability and Environment.
I suspect that in searching for villans you have latched on to what must seem to the uninitiated as the obvious candiate.
Chris
Without a free market, there is no way to determine ‘efficiency’.
What you have shown is the unfortunate tendency of Australian bureaucrats and politicians to presume that they have some sort of prescient knowledge about demand and the future, when in fact they don’t. Mises writes extensively about this in Human Action, Socialism, and Bureaucracy, and his logic is utterly sound.
In many ways Australia is living in a time-warp – yet to learn the lesson that protectionism, interventionism and government monopolies do not lead to prosperity, but to poverty. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom springs to mind…
Sorry, previous comment was addressed to Mark, 5:27 pm.
2nd attempt (first received acknowledgment msg…??)
Quite right, Michael (A. Clem)! Simply because a particular person (here or elsewhere) cannot at the moment see a solution to a particular problem does not mean that one is (and likely many are) not possible in reality – in a society without the interference of governments.
As for the subject of “water rights” that some have raised, this bears directly on how private real estate is viewed in a truly *self-ordering* society. In the goal society of the Self-Sovereign Individual Project, operating on the Natural Social Contract (NSC) and Social Preferencing, both based on the principles of Social Meta-Needs, the definition of real estate (simply a volume of space) necessarily includes the contractural covenants governing all boundary conditions (in and out of any of the boundaries of the volume of space). The NSC annotation on “real estate” – http://selfsip.org/solutions/socialcontract_annotations/realestate.html
Alex,
I agree, and further to this i think that unfortuantely there are no free markets, governement interference and regulation is ubiquitious (at least in the Australian context).
The point i was trying to make was that Chris’s article failed to pick up on a pecularity of Victoria’s system. What we have in Vicotoria is an interesting case of a regulator regulating government. The water utilities are govenerment owned and have historically been subject to ministerial intereference, particularly in regards to price seting.
What the introduction of an independent regulator has done in the case of Victoria has been to exert a discipline and transparency not only on the govenement owned businesses but also on the govenement as stakeholder.
Please dont misunderstand me, I am not advocating the public provision of water services. What I am suggesting is that Chris has picked the wrong institution at which to aim his criticisms
At the end of the day if water had been privately provided we would not see such things as permanant water savings rules, nor do i believe we would have seen anywhere near the amount of water restrictions that people have been subjected to.
I was curious, Mark, and looked up the “Essential Services Commission” of Victoria – http://www.esc.vic.gov.au/public/
“Established by Essential Services Commission Act 2001, the Commission subsumes the Office of the Regulator-General and its work builds on the regulatory foundation laid by that Office. The Commission has developed a reputation for high quality and rigorous analysis and regulatory decision making.”
It’s welcome page starts off:
“The Commission is Victoria’s independent economic regulator of essential services supplied by the electricity, gas, water and sewerage, ports, grain handling and rail freight industries. The services provided by these sectors are among the most important contributors to the social and economic wellbeing of all Victorians.”
It seems to me that the wording “independent” is being used quite ambiguously since this commission is a regulatory body created and maintained by government – it is an arm of government trying to disguise itself as something else.
“In addition to its regulatory decision making role in these sectors, the Commission also provides advice to the Victorian Government on a range of regulatory and other matters. It is also responsible for developing and administering the Victorian Renewable Energy Target and the Victorian Energy Efficiency Schemes.”
This is government intervention no matter how many times the word “independent” is used. Sounds like Orwell’s “newspeak”….
It is indpendent in the sense that it is comprised of Commissioners who hold public office. These commissioners are free to make decisions and come to positions that contradict those of individual ministers (such as the minister for water) or of governement in general.
No one would argue that the Commission is truly 100% independent. Afterall its funding comes from govenerment and the commissioners themselves are government appointees. Rather it has a degree of independence that other arms of government do not have.
I am not in anyway defending the Commission nor the concept of economic regulation.
Just to reiterate my original point was that Chris’s article was misleading in singling out the Commission as being responsible for the situation in Victoria in regard to water. In this case teh economic regulator (who is quite often percieved as being the villan) has imposed a discipline on governement that otherwise it would not have faced.
…it’s a bit like the australian “productivity commission” auditing government economic policy. intervention begets intervention.
I agree with Michael’s point. The market would find multiple solutions to the problem which could be a combination of pipeborne supply, bottled water delivery or trucked supply. I don’t live in Australia (although I may be moving to Brisbane shortly) but pipeborne supply could also be modeled somewhat on the US natural gas pipeline system. Companies can either be integrated and take stakes along the chain in either supply, transportation, storage or customer marketing. A water futures trading market could also be part of the system. Allowing distributors, suppliers, storage providers etc to hedge future pricing or lock in profits at a particular price. Not sure how communities are set up in Australia, but they could probably galvanize and hire a third party to contract or purchase water in bulk for them on the market or real estate development companies could provide water storage as part of their community plans and make additional revenue through water supply and trading on behalf of their developments. This is all said with only Chris’ article (and a brief look at the Australian Government National Water Commission’s website) as context. The commission seems to be looking at the issue and I am sure they will have their ideas implemented in an efficient, timely and cost effective manner (insert sarcasm here).
“…it’s a bit like the australian “productivity commission” auditing government economic policy. intervention begets intervention.”
Its interesting that you mention the Australian Productivity Commission, as it is undeniably one of the primary drivers behind the liberalisation of the Australian economy. It has a long history of championing free trade, the removal of regulation, the removal of subsidies, the corporatisation and privatisation of government owned utilites and it has even argued for free and open labour markets.
In it has been so successful in pursuing these outcomes that for a long time the abolition of the Productivity Commission was a formal Labour Governement policy.
Don’ t you think that water supply problems also are caused by the too fast growing supply of new babies ? If new births too could be ruled by supply/ask law, I think the world would be less over-crowded, with advantages for everybody (except for priests of any kind). Do you agree ?
A QUESTION- How does one respond to the arguement that only the wealthy will be able to buy and drink water? Some politicians claim that water is a social resource, belonging to all the people, rather than an economic resource. Regards, Gera Rosy
The article “The Water Wizards of Oz” advocates privatization of water delivery as a solution to water shortages. I think I understand how pricing should mitigate shortages over time. I am not at all clear on how private water delivery might work. I live in a U.S. metropolitan area with water delivered by a public utility via underground pipes. How does privatization of this sort of utility work? There is one metered pipe entering my property from one main line running down my street. How does provider competition enter into a system of this sort?
I apologize for the re-posting of a previous message. It was caused by a browser mistake on my part.
to mark:
liberalization in australia is a caricature of the term. how much worse things may have been without the productivity commission is debatable.
industrial relations “liberalization” (workchoices) gave us a thousand pages of legislation. “free trade” pacts also run to thousands of pages. victoria’s power “liberalization” is also an exercise in interventionism. telecommunications likewise has a vast regulatory ballast. the list goes on…
the productivity commission is a useful prop for politicians. if the advice is not what is wanted, they are ignored. the labor party certainly will not abolish the productivity commission, it’s no threat whatsoever.
Such a process happened in the water industry in nineteenth century Britain. Up until the mid-nineteenth century, Parliament discouraged municipal involvement in water supply; in 1851, private companies had 60% of the market. Competition amongst the companies in larger industrial towns lowered profit margins, as companies were less able to charge a sufficient price for installation of networks in new areas. In areas with direct competition (with two sets of mains), usually at the edge of companies’ territories, profit margins were lowest of all. Such situations resulted in higher costs and lower efficiency, as two networks, neither used to capacity, were used. With a limited number of households that could afford their services, expansion of networks slowed, and many companies were barely profitable. With a lack of water and sanitation claiming thousands of lives in periodic epidemics, municipalisation proceeded rapidly after 1860, and it was municipalities which were able to raise the finance for investment which private companies in many cases could not. A few well-run private companies which worked together with their local towns and cities (gaining legal monopolies and thereby the financial security to invest as required) did survive, providing around 20% of the population with water even today. The rest of the water industry in England and Wales was reprivatised in the form of 10 regional monopolies in 1989.
Such a process happened in the water industry in nineteenth century Britain. Up until the mid-nineteenth century, Parliament discouraged municipal involvement in water supply; in 1851, private companies had 60% of the market. Competition amongst the companies in larger industrial towns lowered profit margins, as companies were less able to charge a sufficient price for installation of networks in new areas. In areas with direct competition (with two sets of mains), usually at the edge of companies’ territories, profit margins were lowest of all. Such situations resulted in higher costs and lower efficiency, as two networks, neither used to capacity, were used. With a limited number of households that could afford their services, expansion of networks slowed, and many companies were barely profitable. With a lack of water and sanitation claiming thousands of lives in periodic epidemics, municipalisation proceeded rapidly after 1860, and it was municipalities which were able to raise the finance for investment which private companies in many cases could not. A few well-run private companies which worked together with their local towns and cities (gaining legal monopolies and thereby the financial security to invest as required) did survive, providing around 20% of the population with water even today. The rest of the water industry in England and Wales was reprivatised in the form of 10 regional monopolies in 1989.
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