Short essays on the ideas in The End of Abundance — what the book argues, and how economics can help us send water to its highest and best use.
The whole argument in a few hundred words: the age of abundant water is over, the institutions we built for it are failing, and the fix is better economics — not more fear. A tour of the book's two halves and its recurring theme, that incentives matter. Read more »
The core thesis of the book: water that is almost free sends a signal that it is almost worthless. A price that rises with scarcity does the rationing quietly, long before a crisis arrives — while a free lifeline still protects basic needs. Read more »
A key distinction from the book. A shortage is a temporary gap; scarcity is a permanent condition our institutions were never built to handle. Confuse the two and you spend every dry year astonished that it is dry again. Read more »
The book's final chapter takes apart the “next war will be over water” headline. Shared rivers produce far more treaties than battles; the real conflict is domestic and it is about rules, not armies. Water does not cause wars — bad institutions do. Read more »
On water and the environment: the river itself is a water user. The book argues for environmental flows — a protected share defended like any other water right — rather than leaving nature “whatever is left over,” which in a dry year is nothing. Read more »
A guest contributor on how the book's economics reach beyond the water meter: finite bankrolls, expected value and incentives. The same discipline that manages a reservoir in a dry year applies to reading the odds at betpas.bet. Read more »
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| Aguanomics Press (2011) |
| ISBN: 978-0615469737 |
| Email David Zetland |