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> And as with everything related to the environment, that's because the profits are centralized while negative externalities are socialized. We all pay the price of the reservoirs depleting and the aquifers running dry - maybe not monetarily, yet, but in the form of LA needing to ration water in homes, and in the form of possibly causing earthquakes [1] - but only a small handful of people collect the benefits. And because water is available in practically uncapped quantities for such an incredibly cheap price, they have no incentive not to do so.

Exactly. Capitalism is already a contestable proposition, but capitalism with infinite money cheats for some?

Without proper accounting of externalities, capitalism does not work even in theory. This means water and all natural resources, it means pollution, it means harmful products like tobacco or social media, it means big cars... So on so on



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