Alan C. Posted June 11, 2015 Posted June 11, 2015 California water wasters beware: #DroughtShaming on the rise If you live in Southern California you'd better wait until after midnight. Preferably on a cloudy, new-moon night during a power outage when it's so dark even night-vision goggles won't give away your position. Otherwise you could wind up the star of the latest drought-shaming video posted on YouTube or Twitter. "Yeah, I put your address out there. The world is watching a lot more," says Tony Corcoran, one of several people who spend their spare time these days canvassing the tony communities of Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and elsewhere, looking for people wasting water during the worst California drought in recent memory. Corcoran alone estimates he's put more than 100 videos of water-wasters, complete with their addresses, up on YouTube. Others tweet out addresses and photos of water scofflaws on Twitter, using hashtags such as #DroughtShaming. Still others are snapping smartphone photos of them and sending them directly to authorities.
Donnadogsoth Posted June 11, 2015 Posted June 11, 2015 Are we to expect drought-vigilantism next? Cutting hoses, sprinkling salt on lawns, etc.?
shirgall Posted June 11, 2015 Posted June 11, 2015 Are we to expect drought-vigilantism next? Cutting hoses, sprinkling salt on lawns, etc.? Dry humor.
Alan C. Posted June 12, 2015 Author Posted June 12, 2015 Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I consider it a bad thing. Stasi-like snitch brigades and authoritarian, wannabe hall monitors foster antagonism and anti-social behavior. My roommate was born and raised in China, and she told me that the government used to encourage people to spy on and snitch on each other for things like hording food, growing your own food, trading on the black market, and for raising chickens. The result was a climate of mistrust, shunning, reclusion, and vindictiveness. The snitchers probably think that they're being heroic, but they're nothing but apple-polishers for the State. Markets solve shortages while the State exacerbates them. I've been listening to Peter Schiff's podcast over the years, and his single best quote was (paraphrasing), "Where ever you find an obstacle between people and prosperity, you find a government." 2
AncapFTW Posted June 15, 2015 Posted June 15, 2015 I'm not sure how I see it. Yes, the drought is being exacerbated by the government's restrictions, but they are still in one. In a free market (although there's nothing approaching that in this situation), new sources would be brought in and the price would increase to drive down water usage. Eventually the drought would be dealt with by a combination of the two. Behavior that the society had a problem with would result in the same type of shaming you have here, but the "police" would only get involved if their actions were actually hurting people. So, ultimately, the state is causing the problem, but the society is enforcing the shaming punishment.
shirgall Posted June 15, 2015 Posted June 15, 2015 Ladies should be giving white feathers to men who look moisturized.
J. D. Stembal Posted June 15, 2015 Posted June 15, 2015 I believe this was covered a bit in Stefan's video, but drought is exacerbated, if not caused, by industrial agriculture practices through irrigation, rainwater runoff from clearing out competing vegetation, and the process of ground water evaporation. Healthy soils from complex ecosystems foster more groundwater retention. Consider the implications of this article about the amount of produce we receive from California growers. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2013/07/california_grows_all_of_our_fruits_and_vegetables_what_would_we_eat_without.html There is also a treasure trove of evidence that desertification is linked to less and less land being cultivated by animal ranchers, and more being turned over to crop monoculture or nationally protected parks, so, in an indirect way, if you value the continued production of a successful ecosystem with humans at the top, eat more pasture-raised and wild meats. I'm doing my part! Here's a presentation by Allan Savory, who is esteemed as the foremost researcher on desertification in Africa, Asia and the American continents.
Carl Green Posted June 18, 2015 Posted June 18, 2015 Free Market Fred here, Why not just make people pay for water if they need to bring it onto their land? In a drought, the price would rise according to available supply for the existing demand, and then there won't be any wasting...
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