... just waiting for someone to quote Team America.

... not really - under the GP's rules, you'd be out of line with that.

"The 'invisible hand' (rich land owners with huge water rights in this case)..."

Sorry, you're misusing terminology. The "invisible hand" is the effect of the market - of people freely competing to efficiently allocate resources between alternative uses. When you instead refer to "owners with huge water rights", you're outside the market: "water rights" are a government largesse, not a market.

"I'm for just straight up taxing everything. ... Then you can use the revenue generated to balance the budget, institute another medicare expansion, etc..."

tax & spend - the environment is just an excuse

You're victim-blaming here. The invisible hand barely had a hand in what's been happening.

The "virtual water" concept is unnecessary just to improve on real-water scarcity. Just price real-water properly.

say what yo like, I'm still
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" What is the incentive for the BBC to spin ..."

To try to stay relevant - to try to justify their tax-income.

Yes, but it lets government bureaucrats play-act like they're entrepreneurs and brave businessguys and such.

"I think everyone already knew it was possible to print something that looks like a jet engine." ... except the university's funding agencies.

No word on whether the thing was ever powered up, or is simply a neat toy.

"will have to cite what regulations could possibly have been preventing Ma Bell from providing better service"

But it's not even that: regulations prevent innovation directly - that's just one of their indirect & unintended effects. When regulated as a public utility, the company is to some extent protected from competition (and thus the need to innovate and improve service).

If you think back to those transitions (like suddenly cheaper long distance), they coincide with -deregulation- rather than new -regulation-.

"if you actually HAVE competitors"

Well, it depends on the market area.
But think about it - should ISPness become a "public utility", do you honestly expect more or less competition to evolve there?

The competitors should make each other nervous.
The government squatting more regulation on us all should make us all nervous.