[jerf]

That's someone's opinion of the actual price, based on their opinion that the "water rights" ought to be more expensive because they think it would produce change they happen to agree with. In their opinion it ought to be a lot more expensive in other ways too.

But despite their opinion, no, it isn't that expensive. That sort of analysis heavily relies on telling you what you want to hear, and expecting that you won't dig into the analysis and realize that if you applied the same standard to everything else in the world you'd get absurd results all over the place.

[tsimionescu]

Sure. But the point is still that this kind of cost increase would not result in cows becoming more profitable, by definition.