In California, Stingy Water Users Are Fined in Drought, While the Rich Soak

[Igel]

16. Part of the problem was a desire to distribute the pain fairly.

If you lived in a district with higher water use your district had a steeper water reduction target.

Apple Valley, 28%. Los Angeles, 16%. That was billed as fair. Hit the heavy users at a collective level, don't just have a common 19% or 20% reduction for every district. District-level targets make sense--local authorities can decide how best to deal with local issues and circumstances. Contracts for water are at the district level, where districts pull together a variety of water sources to meet demand and have different mixes of people connected to a municipal water supply or to wells that draw from regulated (or unregulated) aquifers.

So this particular family suffers under a 28% reduction, billed as "fair" at the time. Meanwhile, those in LA used less on average and had lower targets.

Except there are exceptions and individuals for whom it's not fair. Suddenly we redefine "fair" from district level to individual level. We shift the definitions, we shift the conversation, because we don't like some individual consequences. In small districts there will naturally be fewer extreme outliers; in large districts, there'll be more.

It works the same with averages and distributing consequences. In every case where penalties or perks are distributed to a group there are outliers. To some extent the commons is always abused. It's only a tragedy when it's over-used (or when the few people who overuse it are so well-publicized that it appears that it's being vastly over-used and abused). We're very sensitive to being treated unfairly, as we define it (and insensitive to being treated too generously, since we deserve it). Take a recent bit of research: You're happier making $12/hr if everybody else makes about the same for similar work than you are making $15/hr if others are making $19/hr for the same kind of work. You may be worse off in absolute terms, but you're not worse off in relative terms. ("Envy" is often closely synonymous with "fairness".) Every rule that tries to be fair will have examples of what appears to be unfair. Exceptionless rules, zero-tolerance rules, don't usually work out well. We've tried zero tolerance in all sorts of places in society and invariably they're still unfair to somebody, even if they're billed as perfection itself ahead of time.

The vast majority of Angelenos are conserving water. It's unclear whether or not the "Wet Prince" is, in fact, given this article. Has he reduced water usage by 16%? Can't know. But it's unfair that he's using so much more. Again, we change the goalposts based on exceptions.

This finds allies among those who want to the state to regulate every household. The problem is, that this would also have bad individual consequences for some.