Rusts error handling is almost identical to checked exceptions in practice. The reason it works is because there is no real equivalent to easily handle-able unchecked exceptions, and because macros and sum types make it very easy to wrap a lower level error in your higher level error and rethrow.
Basically, checked exceptions could have worked, if they were the only type, and had better ergonomics of use, and a language culture that emphasized correctness more.
Checked exceptions were wrong for Java, but that does not mean they are wrong universally.
Empirically, most people care more about making the trip efficiently then how exactly it's done. If all those people are motivated to not use cars, think of how much less traffic there will be for everyone else? It turns out that bike and pedestrian friendly cities are also some of the most car friendly ones for this reason.
That's one of the purposes of government regulatory agencies. Laws could be enforced entirely through courts, but regulators can fine on behalf of the ordinary people instead of those wealthy enough to sue.
Somethinf that would require the attention of thr intelligence services, like, say, getting an unwanted pregnancy in America. The government can and does change its standards, and the tools that can be used against you will be used against you.
The biggest trick ever played by the ruling elite was convincing people that private property rights and capitalism were somehow related to and necessary for democracy. Democracy should be that power comes from the people, but wealth creates unaccountable power structures that have far more power over the lives of most people then any government.
Such rights mean nothing when people lose their respect for them. Democracies work when a sufficiently vast majority of those within them belive that the systems are fundamentally good.
Lynching represent a public belief that whatever systems are in place are insufficient to bring justice. They happen regardless of what rights are declared in some legal text or whatever. The solution to building a better democracy always returns to building better, more trusted institutions, and building thr peoples trust that they are fair, and inalienable rights are just another such institution.
Water is a necessity. Making it unaffordable literally is a death sentence. Those who would mass murder poor people rather then have a yellow lawn are morally reprehensible.
You could charge tiered rates where the quantities we're talking about are incredibly expensive, enough to discourage use, without affecting what households that use far less pay.
(Or, you could, if this was legal under California law)
That would always wind up bankrupting at least some poor soul caught unawares. I would only support that if there were clear warnings delivered to the specific user in question beforehand (not a blanket notice to everyone that they might, but to one person indicating that they will be charged if they don't change, because they have already gone into a draconian penalty tier), in a way that you were absolutely certain the person had received notice.
Forest for the trees my friend, forest for the trees.
If every water user paid market rate, including industrial and agriculture, the residential rate would likely be lower than what it is right now.
You fell into the same classism distraction trap designed to cause residential users to go at each other’s throats rather than address the whale users.
This is a straw man, no one is suggesting to stop growing food on irrigated farmland but to focus on efficient irrigation and grow things more suitable for the limited water, see the suggestions from the SNWA
They literally constitutionally cannot ask the farmers, and you need a very mobilized populace to change the constitution. That's only going to happen when people see the consequences of inaction, and its probably better that happen gradually for useless laws then suddenly for all drinking water.
That's not the only way ballot measures and propositions have been passed. Previous governors have advocated for measures, got them on the ballot, and encouraged people to vote for them. The current governor could do the same.
Basically, checked exceptions could have worked, if they were the only type, and had better ergonomics of use, and a language culture that emphasized correctness more.
Checked exceptions were wrong for Java, but that does not mean they are wrong universally.