California Dreamin', Dessicatin', and Desalinatin'

CALIFORNIA GOVERNORE JERRY BROWN is doing all the right things.Don't water your lawns, turn off the water while shaving or brushing teeth,fewer flushes per day, group showers, the whole ball of wax. Extreme drought in California, too much sleet, snow and ice in New England, better cold in the midwest and south. Either the climate is becoming more volatile, or we have softened our memories of past winters and summers. Or maybe the proponents of global warming are working some illusional hoax by some mysterious means. Why not? Conspiracy theories are all the rage these days. While Calirornia parches, all the while there sits the magnificent and normally placed pacific ocean, tauntingly. Nuclear radiation and heaps of rubble are on their way from Japan, but have yet to arrive. Water can be purified of anything, including salt. A steady stream of pure clean water, borrowed from the ocean, caressing California! W're so accustomed to cheap water that we seem overly reluctant to raise its price by processing it.Ther is no shortage of water on Earth, only a shortage of human willingnes to build cities where it lingers and replenishes. Viva Las Vegas! For this commodity, supply and demand have both been historically high. Commodities such as legal advice, medical attention, and financial advice, remain costly no matter how high the supply, which, in the United States, is high. Do we perchance detect a crack in the magnificent edifice of Adam Smith? Since water is forever in high demand, shouldn't it be forever a bit more expensive, after the fashion of white collar services? And, by making potable water ever more abundant, shouldn't the cost of desalination be at least partially offset by greatly greater abundance? Sometimes, its just plain hard to tell the difference between free enterprise, monopoly, and socialism. But its comforting to know that there is no shortage of water, and never will be.