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The desert town of Rio Verde Foothills ought to be a lesson in what happens when you buy a home in places without the resources needed for human life. But some people are doing their utmost not to learn that lesson.

[Previous: Why libertarian cities fail]

If youve been waiting for an update on Rio Verde Foothills, here it is!

As a quick refresher, Rio Verde Foothills was a libertarians dream: an unincorporated community in the rural fringes of Maricopa County, Arizona, northeast of Phoenix. To those who bought homes there, it was a desert paradise, with peace and quiet, gorgeous scenery, predictable weather, and best of all, very little government.

Arizona law requires homebuilders to prove that they have reliable access to waterbut that often involves taxes. Showcasing their dedication to freedom, the builders found a way around this. As I wrote previously:

Arizona law requires homebuilders in active management areas to secure a reliable source of water expected to last at least a hundred years. However, theres a loophole: the law only applies to subdivisions of six homes or more. You can guess what some clever developers do: they simply build lots of subdivisions each consisting of only five homes.

But then they made an awful discovery. It turns out, even when you find a way to skirt regulations about water humans still need water.

Like the grasshopper and the ant of fable, the inhabitants of Rio Verde Foothills found a solution: parasitizing their neighbors who planned better than they did. Specifically, they were driving tanker trucks into the neighboring community of Scottsdale, filling up from the municipal supply, and carting the water home.

This went on for a while until Scottsdale, understandably, got fed up and cut them off. This was at the beginning of 2023. What followed was months of misery, as RVFs residents had to skip showers and baths, eat off paper plates, and pay through the nose to have water hauled in from elsewhere in the statean expensive and unreliable proposition.

Eventually, the state of Arizona stepped in and imposed a compromise, ordering Scottsdale to let RVF use their water supply for one more year as an interim measure. In the meantime, Rio Verde Foothills will get a new pipeline built to carry water to the community at enormous cost to residents. It will also have a strict limit imposed on future expansion:

As the media frenzy around Rio Verde Foothills reached a fever pitch last summer, the state legislature passed a bill that forced Scottsdale to provide water to the neighborhood through 2025. A few months later, a state regulator approved a long-term agreement between the community and a large utility called Epcor, which agreed to build a new water standpipe in the neighborhood and import a new water supply from elsewhere in Phoenix. Rio Verde Foothills residents will pay for the $12 million project through water bills that could be double or triple current rates. The deal also limits future growth in the neighborhood, allowing for just 150 additional homes to access the standpipe.

Its been an exhausting, exhausting fight for this community, and people are not happy with how much it costs, said John Hornewer, a Rio Verde resident who runs the neighborhoods largest water hauling company.

Turns out freedom isnt free.

This story should be a lesson about the folly of building or buying property in places without the natural resources needed to sustain human life. But it isnt being treated that way.

Incredibly, after this ordeal, some people still havent learned anything:

Theres an appetite for [reform], but I think that will be lost in the shuffle, said John Kavanagh, a Republican state senator who represents the Rio Verde Foothills area. The home builders will be aggressively lobbying against a lot-split bill, and youve got some members with a more libertarian slant who believe in the right to property being almost unlimited.

Indeed, home builders are now pushing the legislature to move in the other direction, arguing that the 100-year water supply standard is holding back the states economic growth.

While Arizona solved this specific problem, it didnt close the loophole that made it possible in the first place. In fact, developers want the laws about water availability loosened. These wildcat communities are still being built in places without an adequate water supply, and the people who move there will pay the price.

Theres a clear take the money and run attitude at work. As the climate gets warmer and drier, limits on water availability will make new housing developments almost impossible in increasingly large swaths of Arizona and other desert states. Its likely developers are calculating that their best strategy is to build houses as quickly as possible, sell them off, and get out of Dodge before more people realize this.

The desert communities being built today are going to end up as desiccated, uninhabitable ghost towns. But developers have no incentive to care, as long as they get paid and move on before the bubble bursts.

What were seeing, in Rio Verde Foothills and other wildcat communities, is Ayn Rands cornucopian attitude in action. Its the habitual libertarian mindset of assuming that natural resources are limitless and free.

Specifically, they assume that there will always be water, somehow, from somewhere, so theres no need to concern themselves with where it comes from. Just move where you want, and everything else will work out. The capitalist principle of supply and demand can overcome any problemeven nature itself.

Because of this blind spot, libertarians dont understand why regulation is ever necessary. In their mind, laws that govern where people can live are arbitrary government tyranny, not a reflection of any underlying physical reality.

In a warming world, that assumption is slamming into a brick wall of reality. Thanks to climate change, the American West is getting hotter and drier. The Colorado River, which sustains millions of people, is overstretched already. Its flows have fallen 20% since the turn of the century, and its likely going to get worse.

We may soon witness history repeat itself. The spectacular cliffside city of Mesa Verde had to be abandoned by its builders, the Ancestral Puebloan people, because of a prolonged drought that rendered it uninhabitable.

The climate-change-induced megadroughts coming to the West in the future may well be even worse. When will lack of water force people to give up and migrate elsewhere? Will our modern desert settlements become arid, crumbling ruins preserved as parks a thousand years from now?

Read more here:
Libertarians in the desertan update - OnlySky Media