> That said, the general point of 'this is crazy bullshit, why do I have to cut back when they're sitting here wasting water on Almonds for nothing?!' is totally true. There is a LOT of bullshit about water in California.

OK let's start with that. In fact many Californian consumers now prefer oat milk to almond milk because they know they're basically drinking 10000 gallons of pure fresh delicious non-F-ed-up water per quart of milk they drink. They hate it because it sucks. It's just shit and they hate it. Almonds are rightly and widely hated. Hatred. Good because that hatred gets rid of them, gets rid of almond desertification.

So you're basically right in everything you say, but there is a distinction to be made presently. The water table. If it were a mineral, like copper, if its under your land hey, go for it. But with water, like oil, and lithium, sucking it out of one place drains everybody else (on the same aquifer, oil field, salt flat). It's regulated with oil, not with water or lithium. So if a neighbor farmer's sucking out water sucks out not only water under his land but water under my land, that's impinging on my rights. He doesn't get to suck out the water from under my land. Any more than he gets to steal my bed from under me (Proverbs).

California specializes in evictions and water theft, though. Landlords steal from you faster than you can take them to court, they end up covering for each other, I am a Roman Law hero and I can vouch.

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And moreover, there is due to be accorded to being a citizen in California independently of being a property owner in California. Like these farmers can totally split with 1000 gallons for a "city slicker" as they call them. Monthly water bill, or a pack of almonds? Same price really.

Instead of trying to sell them one quart of almond milk. That's the endgame, dry them out, salt their water, negreate their sustenance and then sell them back some terrible shit in terrible plastic at 100000000% the price.

Extortion.

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Realistically it's because the county is loyal to the land, so whomever owns the land gets crazy benefits, blind eyes, et cetera. Obviously has to pay for them, lobbying papering over direct bribes. Obviously there's bribes, nobody with power would allow such blatant shit without a payout, it just doesn't make Historical sense. Nobody does that. I think the police doesn't take direct bribes (I took a risk on the math that there was a 2% chance SFPD was corrupt, couldn't afford that risk so didn't call them up), but small county? Knows the mayor? Invites him to his land? Phone call away from anybody? Yeah bribes. Nobody does it differently, like ever. I don't know, Californians are very square, for sure some counties are square, but really...no. There's bribes. In addition to the lobbying, that's to paper them over. The lobbying gives plausible deniability, to say the favor was done for campaign contributions. But nobody cares that fucking much about their campaign contributions if they can't touch them even diagonally. And there's career paths formally known to lead to that campaign contribution money entering the pocket, I think a Republican lobbyist talks about retiring and becoming "a top lobbyist". If it's indirect enough, like fines or taxes, that's fine, but uh...no dude there have to be bribes. I can't keep denying it in any way, I just divine it, there's crazy bribes and payers and recipients tell each other there's no way for them to be tracked.

Goes back to the water table, or voltages, there's a current flowing out, that doesn't go anywhere. Then there's an equal current flowing over here, that doesn't come from anywhere. They're next to each other. You can't look at what is in between.

Must have some hell of a capacitor in between to not be connected.