[LINK] OT: Water [Was: NBN Broadband Plan]

[Jan Whitaker]

At 09:12 AM 10/01/2010, David Boxall wrote:
>Bottom line: state governments are charging for five or six times the
>available water. Hard-headed business people keep paying the fees, so it
>must make sense at some level.
>
>But Cubbie still went broke.

Possibilities off the top of my head and not thought through:

- owning the licences is a monopoly position and can be used to 
restrict the competition or 'blackmail' others reliant on the same 
resource into selling their land cheap
- states do it because the 'market will bear it'; if there is no 
rational oversight of selling something that isn't real, but only a 
possible future promise, then why not? We're talking about the Crown 
here that can write laws to allow it to do just about anything in 
this country. Checks and balances don't really exist here in the same 
way as the US Constitution and Supreme Court interpretations of it do there.
- the principle is similar to one implementation of 'insurance' -- 
keep up the license [policy] because if you drop out, you will pay 
huge premium increases [based on age] at a later date [blame the 
Howard govt for that one]
- it's a shell game, 3-card monte, a shill
- limited resources are always sold at a premium; scarcity is a sure 
way to have a system like this [if you want to actually SEE why this 
is the case in Australia, take a look at that www.nearmaps.com site 
that Stephen posted this week]

Bottom line: the pyramid always crumbles eventually. Naked emperors 
are finally recognised for what they are.

Jan


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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