Let me give you an example of Irrational Public Policy

So I was talking about irrational public policy, and I told this story of going to apply to get a permit for a toilet in my downstairs bathroom. I bought a house and I was remodeling it, and it had no downstairs facilities. So people were gonna have to go upstairs to use the bathroom. And there was a small utility closet that I could turn into a… a powder room. So I went down to the county and I wanted to apply to put a small toilet in and a small sink. And they came back and said, "You don't have enough water credits." Because the way the control water use in my town is you can have so many credits per house. And they said " You don' have enough water credits." And I said "Yeah, but that's really connected to water use; the toilet isn't connected to water use. And they said "yes it is!" and I said, "No, it's not. I'll prove it to you."

Now you have to understand, I'm standing at this desk trying to fill out an application, and I'm talking to the person in charge of the water credits and whether I can have a toilet or not. But there's a long line of people behind me, and they're all now leaning over, and they're listening. And I said, "Actually, the number of toilets has nothing to do with my water use," and they said, "Well, why is that?" And I said, " Because no matter how many toilets I have, it doesn't make me want to go to the bathroom more. I don't flush more. I can have fifty toilets. I go the bathroom exactly the same amount. " And he stood there and looked at me really confused. And I said, " You do understand, I won't flush more. I live in the house by myself." I said, "Really, the correlation that you need is the number of people living in a house and the number of toilets.  What you believe is that if there's more toilets in a house, there's probably more people occupying it. And that may or may not be true. And if there are more people, there will be more flushes and more water use. But you see, I live there alone, so adding another toilet will not mean more water use, so there's no reason to deny me that." And everyone in the back started clapping. There was mutiny at the county office!