Letter: Simple economics: You pay for what you use

Friday, Aug. 13, 1999 | 8:46 a.m.

If you want to hark back to the extremely totalitarian and inefficient Soviet Union, visit Maryland, where officials apparently forgot that America is founded on personal and economic freedom, not as a society whose citizens are given a hotline to narc on their neighbors for unlawfully sprinkling their lawns.

Maryland officials mirror the obvious fallacious economic mistake by ignoring that if you want water use to go down, simply make people pay for the amount of water that they use. Are suggestions in favor of a free market for important supplies -- such as water -- anti-American?

If the argument for keeping water "free," save a hook-up charge, has merit, then we should make a law to force the electric company to stop their "profiteering" by charging us based upon the amount of electricity that we use.

Socialists would say we must seize the electric company and force it to allow everyone access to as much power as they want.

Of course we will then need to set up an elaborate bureaucracy and tax system to fund this system, but according to their fallacious economic logic this situation will create jobs and provide more work for our police.

Our police would enjoy the power that comes from answering calls and visiting the houses of people who leave their lights on when they go out to the movies.

AARON CLEMENS