The ‘fair’ price of water

There is one law that has applied in every society and almost throughout human history. The law of supply and demand. It is simple and does not need legislation. It creates what Austrian economist and academic Friedrich Hayek called "spontaneous order" and solves the problem of scarcity.

This law was "abolished" by force in the countries where communism prevailed. It was then decided that what used to be determined by countless human transactions should be centrally defined by the state. The "wise" bureaucracy of the Communist Party would know the needs of each home and would "fairly" distribute the products.

The system proved disastrous, and not only because it created massive corruption. During the 1930s, millions of people died of starvation in Ukraine (Holodomor), in a region that is Europe's largest grain producer. Of course, in totalitarian regimes human lives...