St. Maximos' Hut

I am at a water conference at Texas Tech University. One of the keynotes today was by Maude Barlow, a Canadian water rights activist.

Barlow is a passionate, engaging speaker. But she's making arguments that make me want to yell out "We're all gonna die!" - her views would lead to the deaths of millions from water shortages because she advocates a complete socialization of water (complete with "a tax on financial speculation" to pay for all the public water in the Third World). She persistently attempts (pretty effectively too as a speaker) to claim the moral high ground without addressing any of the consequences of her views.

This sort of argument is wrong, morally wrong, because it denies a reality just as real as gravity - creating an unregulated commons, or worse a commons controlled by a Leviathan government, will not work. How do we know? We look at the experience of the twentieth century - non-market societies failed every single time.

We'll see if I can figure out how to address this tomorrow when it is my time to speak.

There was a tremendous response from a San Antonio attorney, whose name I will add later.