There’s not a ton of fans of the idea of tradeable water rights in my comment thread, but I’m not seeing many better options. Obviously the first-best option would be for the geological facts to just become different such that the pleasantly sunny southwest also had enough water to accommodate everyone’s desires. But that’s not the case. And scarce resources need to be allocated somehow. Allocating them by price has a couple of advantages. One is that it ensures that high-value uses keep going. If you have two business enterprises, and one can create VERY MUCH value out of a gallon of water and another can create JUST A BIT of value out of a gallon of water, it makes sense for the water to go to the VERY MUCH firm and for JUST A BIT enterprises to only locate themselves in areas where water is plentiful. Which is just a long way of saying that there are certain kinds of water-intensive activities that don’t really belong in the arid portions of the United States, just as large solar power plants primarily do belong in those regions.

The other thing is that allocating by price lets different people make different sets of trade-offs. If water is scarce and you put a high value on having a grassy lawn but I put a low value on having one, then allocating by price will let you have a nice big lush lawn while I go without one and buy something else. Under other kind of schemes, I’ll get a so-so lawn that I don’t really appreciate, and you’ll have a so-so lawn that leaves you wanting more.

Ultimately, we’re used to the idea that a square foot of land quite properly costs dramatically more in New Jersey than in Arizona because space is more plentiful in Arizona. But why shouldn’t water cost dramatically more in Arizona where water is scarce? I dunno, though. I don’t have any kind of long-standing commitment to this position and am totally prepared to climb down in the face of a compelling alternative. The question, though, would have to be what policy goal is being advanced by adopting a non-market scheme — environmental concerns, public health, what?

With all due respect, I think Ross’s notion that “the only sure way for McCain to make the Iraq issue work for him is to make the debate about the recent past rather than the future, and to use the experience of the last two years – where (at least for the moment) he looks good, and Obama looks bad” is a little bit crazy. Once the past is allowed into the debate, the fact that McCain was a strident advocate for this costly fiasco and that — remarkably — he continues to think it was a good idea in retrospect will bury him.

The smart Iraq strategy for McCain is the one he was using before the current “Obama’s a flip-flopper” tactic came into vogue, namely one that’s less focused on lying about Obama and more focused on telling big lies rather than small ones. It’s absolutely vital for McCain to repeat, loudly and falsely, that there’s a very good chance of al-Qaeda taking over Iraq and using it as a base from which to attack the American homeland and that Obama believes he can appease al-Qaeda by giving them Iraq. He needs to say lots of stuff about how “unlike my opponent, I don’t think al-Qaeda will be satisfied with Iraq; unlike him I remember what happened the last time we allowed them to take over a country.”

The lie on which the war was initially sold, and the lie on which it retained its popularity, was that the war was directly necessary for U.S. national security in a very simple and straightforward sense. That required, yes, some whoppers but they were whoppers about the sort of thing (preventing a WMD terrorist attack on American soil) that would constitute a good reason for starting a war. All this “success of the surge” business is incredibly abstract and totally disconnect from anything real people care about — I can tell you which Americans have died because of the surge, but I have no idea which Americans are supposed to have benefited from it.

What are you interested in?