Dear members of the California Water Resources Control Board,
Everything I ever needed to know about rules, I learned in kindergarten: don’t hurt other people and don’t take stuff that doesn’t belong to you. Based on these simple principles, I want to convince you that your proposed conservation law, which will be another thorn in the regulatory thicket, is a bad idea. It addresses a 5 percent drop of California’s water usage and ignores the other 95 percent. It will neither make a significant dent in overall water consumption, nor cause Californians to respect the rule of law.
In 1788, James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper #62, “The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is to-day can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?”
Some rules are obviously necessary. Everyone agreeing to drive on the right side of the road, for instance, is a sensible check on chaos of complete liberty to drive on the left, the right, or down the middle. The goal of government therefore is to provide just enough rules to allow the maximum amount of liberty with the minimum of chaos. Yet, too many rules that get frequently changed, “poisons the blessings of liberty itself.”
Mandates are not magic bullets. Mandates are enforced with real bullets.
At its core, government is force. It presumes its use of force is for the welfare of the citizens it serves. Yet, if California’s policymakers want to regulate society toward their vision of perfection, they are going to need enforcers. And the more regulatory requirements placed on the populace the more it needs enforcers to make sure these laws are met. And every enforcement action is a confrontation. And confrontations do not always end well. The more rules, the more enforcement agents will interact with people who don’t share that vision, and who resent the constant enforcement attempts.
As an example of a well-intentioned government regulation turning deadly consider this: The state of New York had a significant sin tax on cigarette packs as a health measure to lower smoking. The city of New York levied an additional tax, making an unpopular law even more so. It was so unpopular that more than half of cigarettes sold in New York were smuggled from neighboring states. Flagrantly disobeying a law that was, obviously, for the people’s own good, upset New York city officials. They sent out officers to send a message that this behavior would not be tolerated. Officers were assigned to track down shipments of smuggled cigarettes and often small-time street vendors, many of whom live on the edge of poverty. Small time vendors serving poor customers: these are people who need to be creative to make it through a day.[1] On July 17, 2014, a shop owner reported that a black man known for selling single cigarettes was near his store. Police then went to investigate. They stopped the man on a sidewalk on Staten Island and he told them, “Please just leave me alone.” This response was not the one Officer Daniel Pantaleo wanted to hear and he put Eric Garner into an illegal chokehold and murdered him for a health code violation.
I will end by quoting from a 2012 piece Senator George McGovern wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “’Can we make consumers pay the higher prices for the increased operating costs that accompany public regulation and government reporting requirements with reams of red tape.’ It is a simple concern that is nonetheless often ignored by legislators…..
“[C]onsumers do have a choice when faced with higher prices. You may have to stay in a hotel while on vacation, but you can stay fewer days. You can eat in restaurants fewer times per month or forgo a number of services from car washes to shoeshines. Every such decision eventually results in job losses for someone. And often these are the people without the skills to help themselves — the people I’ve spent a lifetime trying to help….
“The problem we face as legislators is: Where do we set the bar so that it is not too high to clear? I don’t have the answer. I do know that we need to start raising these questions more often.”
I am raising this question because I believe the Water Board does not consider it often enough. I hope the Water Board will reconsider this regulation which will disrupt the lives of the citizens of California while providing very little to zero benefit to them. If the Water Board passes this mandate, it will hurt other people by poisoning their liberty and taking their stuff.
[1] “US adults with low socioeconomic status generally have high prevalence of cigarette smoking in relationship to various sociodemographic characteristics, irrespective of sex.” Garrett BE, Martell BN, Caraballo RS, King BA. Socioeconomic Differences in Cigarette Smoking Among Sociodemographic Groups. Prev Chronic Dis 2019;16:180553. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd16.180553external icon
Nullius in Verba 