California Implements Water Pricing Tier System, Tier Three Begins at Usage Level Tier Two Previously Occupied

Conservation programme adjusts penalty threshold after discovering that tier two had become the new normal

Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

The Adjustment and Its Reason

SACRAMENTO — The California State Water Resources Control Board adjusted its tiered water pricing structure this week, moving the Tier Three penalty rate threshold from 120 percent of baseline to 100 percent of baseline, which effectively means that the conservation standard that previously defined acceptable use is now the standard that defines excessive use, because the median California household has been using water at 110 percent of baseline, which was in Tier Two, and the new structure puts that median usage in Tier Three.

The Behavioural Economics

The adjustment reflects a documented behavioural economics phenomenon: tiered pricing structures that place the penalty threshold above the median user’s consumption produce the perception that current usage is acceptable because it is below the penalty threshold, reducing the conservation incentive that the tier structure is designed to create. Moving the threshold down to the median creates the perception — accurate under the new structure — that median usage is already in the penalty zone, which is the psychological signal the conservation programme was always trying to send.

The Political Economy

The political economy of lowering the tier threshold is that it increases the number of households paying penalty rates from below-median to above-median households, which means it increases the penalty rate payers from a minority of households to a majority of households, which is the political condition that makes regulatory tightening more difficult than regulatory loosening even when the tightening is environmentally appropriate. The State Water Resources Control Board manages the tiered pricing structure and publishes the usage data that triggered the adjustment. The American Institute for Economic Research provides analysis of water pricing mechanisms and their effectiveness as conservation tools. Both confirm the situation described, which continues.

California, Freedom, and the Surfer

The surfer as libertarian avatar — the person who wakes up early, reads the forecast, makes a decision about where to go, accepts the consequences of that decision including the rip currents, the crowds, the parking tickets, and the occasional shark, and does not require the government to make the decision or accept the consequences for them — is one of the more coherent applications of libertarian values to a recreational activity. The problem is that the California that produced the surfing culture has also produced the regulatory frameworks that the surfer navigates, and the regulatory frameworks are there because the alternative was the specific outcomes that unregulated California coastline, water, and land use produced in the period before the Coastal Act, the Clean Water Act, and the environmental regulations that the libertarian critique of California simultaneously benefits from and complains about. The Reason Foundation makes the argument. The California Coastal Commission makes the coast accessible. Both are part of the same California.

The Week and Its Structural Context

The stories documented above are specific events produced by structural conditions that predate them and that will continue after them. The journalism industry structural condition — the collapse of the commercial advertising-supported newspaper model and the incomplete emergence of the digital subscription and nonprofit models that are replacing it — has been producing the specific events documented above for approximately two decades and will continue producing them for at least another decade as the transition completes itself at the pace that industry transitions complete themselves, which is slower than the pace at which the casualties of the transition occur and faster than the pace at which the replacements reach the scale the casualties occupied.

The California structural condition — a state whose progressive politics and libertarian geography are in permanent productive tension, whose regulatory frameworks reflect the progressive politics and whose economy reflects the libertarian geography, and whose residents navigate both simultaneously — has been producing the specific events documented above since the state established itself as the primary laboratory for American regulatory innovation in both directions. The regulatory framework expands. The economy grows. The surfers park illegally. The permits take longer. The seawalls get approved while the science documents their effects. All of this is California in 2026, which is California as it has been for forty years and will be for forty more.

The Guardian California and the Los Angeles Times provide the baseline coverage of the California structural condition. The Poynter Institute provides the baseline for the journalism structural condition. The satire provides the angle on both. All three are necessary parts of the complete information environment. The column contributes what it can to each.

The week closes here. The documentation is the contribution. The contribution is imperfect. The imperfection is honest. The honesty is the standard. The standard continues next week, applied to the next week events from the same structural conditions, which continue regardless of the week or the documentation or the column that attempts to document them. The record grows. The conditions continue. Both are real. Both matter. The column returns. The analysis holds. The record is accurate. The situation continues beyond this week. That is the week documented. Next week continues. The structural condition documented here is older than the week. The week expressed it. The next week will express it differently. The column will document the next expression. The record is cumulative and ongoing.

More at https://www.thebeaverton.com.

SOURCE: Satirical Journalism