Deregulation is good, they said. Don't be an alarmist, they said.

? Yeah, actually, deregulated water would mean Amazon would have to pay the full price instead of a subsidized price for water.

And if it turns out that Amazon would still "win" the price fight over the people who lived there before Amazon came there, it's all good?

And who owns the water? Anyone with a plot of land who can access the watertable? Anyone with a plot of land next to a river? What about those downriver from that plot?

"Deregulation" is as meaningless as "defund the police". If you scratch the surface it can mean anything between total anarchy and "keep only this specific set of laws that I believe are good".

What's needed is regulation which promotes a wanted outcome.

I was responding to someone who made a joke about an obvious mispricing by the govt as being due to deregulation when it’s really the opposite.

As far as who owns the water, well for mineral water sources, I’d say the citizens do, and the best way to handle that is probably still to charge Amazon the same amount and then use the proceeds as tax revenue for the general welfare so the people don’t have to be so poor in the first place.

That means _everyone_ pays the higher price. Water is fungible. You can tax them if you want. But you can’t expect market forces to do it.

Wait, what? Utilities all over the world have rate systems that offer higher or lower prices based on who's paying. "Water is fungible" doesn't mean that you can't charge Amazon more for it than you do the little old lady down the street.

I'm not saying that the current rate systems in Mexico, or California, or XYZ place are perfect -- far from it! But there's no reason they couldn't be changed to fit society's goals.

Those are the result of heavy regulation, not deregulation.

Edit: and they’re still drastically biased. Eg farmers getting preferential rates for wasteful crops like almonds.

Your last sentence disproves the first.