alt Hacker News> it's probably because it makes sense economically no?
Only because the government forces the cost of the water to be $0 for those who got in early, a policy that's causing extreme issues ecologically and causing the collapse of tons of environments and screwing over many millions downstream.
If we actually allowed the real price today it wouldn't be anywhere near economically sane to do such a thing.
Hmm. I live near some water intensive cultivations (olives, almonds, not USA) in a relatively dry area, but there's dam water at very cheap prices and obviously, for these products it's required, because otherwise you wouldn't have olive oils being sold at current market prices (already quite higher than just some 6 years ago), they would be astronomically higher. But this is to serve global markets. People in the region have done olive oil since forever without dam water, just not at this industrial scale.
But compared to meat and the whole chain of production required for that it certainly pales many moons below. Well, everyone loves their bacon.