Planting almond trees now doesn't necessarily require confidence that the state is going to bail them out. Because almonds are a high-value crop, even significant increases in the price of water will not make them uneconomic to grow.

I think we agree that farmers should be paying more for water in any case. Alas, the Rube Goldberg-esque legal structure that's grown up around water rights since the 1800s makes this much harder to implement than it should be -- and that is the real problem.