A happily ignorant economist.

California is perpetually portrayed as suffering from a shortage of water. Case in point: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently declared a statewide drought, telling citizens to prepare for rationing. But the state's problems are not a result of too little water.

The real problem is that the price of water in California, as in most of America, has virtually nothing to do with supply and demand. Although water is distributed by public and private monopolies that could easily charge high prices, municipalities and regulators set prices that are as low as possible. Underpriced water sends the wrong signal to the people using it: It tells them not to worry about how much they use. . .

I propose a system where every person gets the first 75 gallons, or 1.5 bathtubs, per day for free but pays $5.60 for each 75 gallons after that. Under my system, the monthly bill for the average household of three would come to $95.

My system is designed to reduce demand rather than cover costs. Revenue paid by guzzlers would cover the costs of those who use only a small amount of water. Any leftover profits could be refunded to consumers or used to enhance the quality or quantity of the water supply.

This fellow has apparently never encountered reality. Perhaps he spends his whole life in dim rooms playing video games - the command and control type where you get to determine the course of civilization with mouse clicks.

Most water is used by agriculture and industry. No water policy is of any value that does not deal with this reality. The amounts used for homes is small in comparison. That's not where pricing systems can focus to achieve meaningful water management objectives.

There's also something creepy about fellows like this nosing around about how much water individuals use, calling some of them misers and others hogs. Maybe the misers are actually slobs who have a loose relationship with neatness and hygiene, and maybe the hogs are good housekeepers. You can't know with only water use to judge by, but this is the way political thinkers demonize segments of society to achieve most often spurious policy objectives.

Beyond that, his initial premise is flatly false. California has always had a water shortage. Its history is soaked in blood as well as water due to the perpetual hunger of those with money and power who want water - someone else's water. There are a thousand stories about these conflicts. Some have even been made into movies. There are a thousand more still to tell and a million more to come as California's already wild cyclical climate swings may get wilder in coming years. When you look at history you see huge variation over the period since the Spanish missionaries first started keeping records, and even greater variation in the tale of the rocks and trees.

The price of water to homes is a trivial part of the water issue. Priggish nutters can cluck about those who use more than is deemed to be strictly necessary, and so deserve to be economically punished, but that has no more to do with effective water policy than some regulation about how often people should change their underwear, and is equally creepy.