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Water crisis: Ending the policy drought
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121 pages, Paperback
First published January 28, 1945
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July 25, 2024
A LIBERTARIAN ANALYSIS OF WATER RIGHT POLICY
Terry L. Anderson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and professor of economics at Montana State University; he is also the author of 'The Technology of Property Rights' and other books.
He observes early in this 1983 book, "The 'products' that are generated from publicly owned resources are, for the most part, zero-priced. Because there are no markets, the public resource manager is forced to make marginal comparisons without the benefit of information contained in prices. The lack of economic information forces the public manager to make trade-offs between alternative resource uses in terms of political currencies; these currencies, at best, provide distorted measures of value." (Pg. 16)
Later, he admits, "We have not yet devised the property rights necessary to ensure an optimal and efficient allocation of water resources for use in pollution disposal. Perhaps water pollution presents a situation where collective action must be used. If this is the case, the focus must be on alternative collective institutions that can approximate the efficiency of markets." (Pg. 91)
Although forty years old, this book still makes some arguments of current relevance.
Terry L. Anderson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and professor of economics at Montana State University; he is also the author of 'The Technology of Property Rights' and other books.
He observes early in this 1983 book, "The 'products' that are generated from publicly owned resources are, for the most part, zero-priced. Because there are no markets, the public resource manager is forced to make marginal comparisons without the benefit of information contained in prices. The lack of economic information forces the public manager to make trade-offs between alternative resource uses in terms of political currencies; these currencies, at best, provide distorted measures of value." (Pg. 16)
Later, he admits, "We have not yet devised the property rights necessary to ensure an optimal and efficient allocation of water resources for use in pollution disposal. Perhaps water pollution presents a situation where collective action must be used. If this is the case, the focus must be on alternative collective institutions that can approximate the efficiency of markets." (Pg. 91)
Although forty years old, this book still makes some arguments of current relevance.
Displaying 1 of 1 review