That was widely ridiculed, but despite how it sometimes seems policy makers are not so stupid to believe saving water from cups not drunk would make a meaningful difference directly.

One of the big hurdles for changing human behavior at scale is improving awareness. Even people who want to conserve their water usage benefit from frequent reminders to actually make changes stick. Being reminded the state is in a drought every time you go to a restaurant was an effective way to keep lots of people regularly conscious of the issue. Even if they complained about the method.

This is a great example of how patronizing policies developed by intellectual authorities backfire in the real world.

The premise is, the general population is too stupid to do the right thing themselves and need to be reminded of the drought by being inconvenienced by completely ineffective performative policies.

All this actually does in practice is diminish trust in authorities to make good decisions. If the drought policies are bogus, which other ones are too? Fuel economy standards? Air quality? OSHA?

Instead of this nonsense - just allow the market to set the price of water based on what’s available.

Of course, the answer there is usually “Oh but there are special interests that need to be able to consume as much water as they want without paying more for it, even in a drought!” And thus as usual the problem is not the personal conduct of individual citizens but corrupt and spineless politicians who are not actually interested in solving any problems.

Well it didn’t work. I don’t elect my representatives to change human behavior at scale.

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