Water, Water Everywhere...

"... nor any drop to drink." [from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge]

The poem's stanza is this:
　
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

　This came to mind as I read a piece about free markets, water, and government's affect on the economy from the Mises Daily. The piece opens with these words: 　

"Scarcity is an important aspect of our lives as it affects us everyday, although many people may overlook it when they generally enjoy high standards of living."

　

Water is a subject which I, like most living things, see as important to me. I have often wondered why, for example, when they were designing and building the interstate highway system why they didn't consider adding an aquaduct system alongside it. This was, of course, an afterthought and one others have since rued the lack of. You see, nature doesn't do a very good job of water distribution. There is an abundance (actually, a glut) of water in some places and a paucity in others. An aquaduct system would have been quite useful in mitigating the vagaries inherent in Nature. The system could be used to move water from very wet places to the very dry. But we had no visionaries back then who could foresee the need for such a thing.
　

It's a pity. Thoughout human history we have been at the mercy of the whims of Nature. It's not like there weren't floods and droughts throughout our history... some of them we have even named... yet we had no one, apparently, who considered the the possibility of a need for a nationwide, interstate, aquaduct system. I find that odd because I began to contemplate such a thing in my teens... as I first learned of the interstate highway system. We do it on a local basis (and in some areas even on a multi-state basis): we build canals to move water where we want it (mostly for farm use) and we build reservoirs to hold it in storage for those times when drought threatens but look ahead? Plan for future water needs?
　

I could be wrong... perhaps someone did contemplate such a system but couldn't convince the "bean counters" of the time to allocate the money for it.
　

Truly a pity.

 If the spacing in this post seems odd to you... rest assured that it looked odd to me also but I could find no way to fix it. I am still having problems with browsers and Blogger.