Monday, October 6, 2014

"Dear Fellow Health Club Member, Please Leave Me the Hell Alone"

As I noted recently, the number of members, at my health club, confronting me when I run the water while I shave is escalating.

In the old days, I used to be confronted once every six months or so. Now, it is once a week---and I only go to the gym three times a week. And, I generally go at 5:00 AM, when the place is fairly empty. I can't imagine what I would have to put up with during peak hours.

The escalation in the harassment is largely I suspect because the state is running many more drought warning water "shortage" propaganda commercials here in California.

I have put together a pamphlet that I have had printed up and that I am going to hand out to anyone at the health club who confronts me about running the water. The short essay is titled, Dear Fellow Health Club Member, Please Leave Me the Hell Alone: An economic analysis of the current water "shortage."


It is an in your face essay where I discuss why water should not be treated differently from any other economic good. It includes an analysis of how government regulation of water supplies leads to all the current water shortage problems. The paper also includes a discussion of the economic concept of prices as signals and the government regulation of water as a type of central planning that often leads to disaster.

I am having copies of the booklet printed up at Lulu, so if anyone wants a copy, you can order it for $3.49 here and it is available at Amazon in digital form here.



4 comments:

  1. don't worry...pretty (very ?) soon you won't have to worry about gym members bothering you, once the ebola spreads and the sheeple start to shun public gathering places like gyms, restaurants, cruise ships, etc etc

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  2. Curious: If I collected (let's say...) 100 gallons of water from the store (or stores), and I watered my lawn on a non-designated day, would it be illegal for me to do so?

    Or, if you, Bob, bought the water from another source and filled up an independent water tank for your shower and sink, and left it running, would it make a difference to those people who confront you? Probably, get a cognitive dissonance-like or confused state reaction.

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  3. This is fantastic. Keep us up to date on the responses you get from these pamphlets.

    We need someone in every neighborhood spreading the message like this.

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  4. “Never let a good crisis go to waste”, govt always manages to substitute market process with regulatory expediency whenever there is a problem. Hopefully we should be able to accomplish the opposite here, this definitely an excellent way to get people to read some good economics.

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