Henry Ergas, Bundanoon, bottled water, and a mug punter born every minute of the day

(Above: the sweet shops of Bundanoon).

Not content with saving Australia from the national broadband network, Henry Ergas is determined to save the small town of Bundanoon from its anti-bottled water folly. Bad economics not harmless, his header shrieks, and then he's off at a canter into the latest incorrect political thinking calamity:

Last Saturday, Bundanoon made headlines as the first town in the world to stop the sale of bottled water. Nestled in the hills of NSW's southern highlands, Bundanoon, with its environs of spacious country homes, seems more likely to figure in magazines such as Town & Country, if they still exist, than to be splashed across the world's press.

But no sacrifice is too great to save our planet and the good people of Bundanoon, when next they feel the hark of the bubbles, will have to break out a bottle of Bolly rather than bellow for the Perrier.

Which of course entirely misses the point, because the canny burghers aren't just giving the water away. This, from that esteemed paragon of reporting news from the south, the Illawarra Mercury, under the header Bundanoon gives up bottled water:

Retailers in the Southern Highlands town will now only sell refillable water bottles. The basic Bundy on Tap bottles will sell for $3.50 - around the same as a commercial bottle of water - while a commemorative bottle will sell for $29.

Bottles can be refilled for free with chilled filtered water available in stores. From today, four filtered water stations on the street will operate 24 hours a day and another water station has been installed at Bundanoon Public School.

29 smackeroos for a commemorative bottle as the curious punters who land up in town to gawk at the hicks as they sell the punters fancy bottles and then offer them the bonus water for free?

By golly, Henry could do with a bit of that kind of spirit while reviving his currently in financial trouble consulting business.

Henry also resolutely misses the point about the Bundanoon action - which apart from generating commemorative bottles at 29 bucks a hit - is ostensibly designed to draw attention to environmental concerns, on the basis of what's now routinely termed localism.

Henry buys the argument and tries to prepare an economics brief to tear it down:

The paradox, of course, is that Australian consumption of bottled water is far more likely to be too low than too high.

If the choice really is between the bottled stuff and the flow of the tap, then it is surely relevant that water charges in Australia are generally below efficient levels.

Were water charges to fully reflect costs, including the value of otherwise forgone environmental uses, demand for imported water should and would rise.

Far from being derided, those annoying young women one sees sipping water hauled from the fjords of Norway should therefore be hailed as public benefactors who selflessly ignore distorted relative prices to help save the Murray.

I recognise what irks the voters of Bundanoon is that bottled water comes in bottles. That it indeed does is difficult to argue with. But tinned tomatoes come in tins, silken tofu in plastic and designer muesli in cardboard boxes. If we are to ban packaging, let's be even-handed about it.

Which is as charmingly stupid and irrelevant set of points as only an economist could muster, when Bundanoon, when you think about it, is acting like any small, desperate, huckstering for attention country town.

When, for example, was the name of Bundanoon last on Henry Ergas's lips, before the current outcrop of interest generated by the bottled water ban? Who knows - he might have travelled beyond the Hume highway, beyond the Illawarra highway to the gateway to the Wingello State Forest - but I doubt it.

Now maybe he'll make the trip, to gawk or marvel at the economic folly of the small town of plastic bottle rebels. Why he might even laugh at their naivete and fork over 29 bucks for a commemorative bottle. Well maybe he wouldn't go that far, but he might buy a pie with sauce before heading on his way.

You see, every small town needs a gimmick. Where I come from boasts the greatest country music festival in Australia, and quite possibly the world, and when you come to think about its breadth and dimensions, almost certainly the universe. Nearby, even the small hamlet of Nundle manages a Chinese themed festival (a riff on the old gold mining days, even if the Chinese were hated in those days), and an art competition, and a day dedicated to a great dog race.

Scratch most country towns, and you can find them busy working out an angle to attract the punters, from the classy - like Mudgee mixing wine and classical music - to the contrived. And into that honeyed trap has stepped the verbose Henry to babble on about how the burghers have missed the point.

Still, if he doesn't make the trip immediately, they've no doubt reserved a space for him on the 17th April 2010 when Bundanoon turns into Brigadoon:

For one day every year the mythical village of Brigadoon rises from the mists, and Bundanoon in the Southern Highlands become Brigadoon - one of the world's largest Highland Gatherings.

Hundreds of pipers and drummers, a street parade, massed bands, Highland Games (toss the caber!), and hundreds of stalls, displays and activities.

Bundanoon is Brigadoon normally attracts up to 20,000 visitors from around Australia, and is one of the major events of the Southern Highlands.

Not to be missed! Whether you are of Scots ancestry, or looking for one of the most enjoyable and interesting of days out with the family, a trip to Brigadoon (perhaps on the steam train) will be a day to remember.

Lots of things to do and see, and heaps of activities for the kids to join in.

Go Henry. Fun for all the family, and you get to keep your commemorative 29 buck bottle and fill it from the tap at home! For free!

Never mind, I'll keep on drinking bottled water as Henry demands, nay, as he insists, as a way of making a point about freedom and choice and anti-wowserism and being trendy and keeping up with the young in Scandinavia, but I'm afraid this time it's Henry who's missed the point with his ideological zeal for freedom of choice, and his rant about economics:

However, it would be more sensible to simply ensure prices for packaged goods reflected any otherwise unaccounted environmental costs they may cause, which, on the best estimates available, are likely to be extremely low.

Of course, merely getting prices right would hardly seize the world's attention. But it would have the great benefit of not preventing those who enjoy the taste of fizzy water, or who hanker for those strange combinations of water with what are loosely described as flavours, from indulging their preferences.

I think that passes for an attempt at humor from Henry, but it's hard to tell when someone so dessicated isn't in fact just sounding like a coconut. Hmm, perhaps it's time for him to make a booking to see the play Dimboola, staged in Dimboola by Dimboolans for the paying punter, with the next performances on Friday 30th October and Sunday 1st November as part of the 150 years celebration - not to mention that there's now water in the Wimmera, and the town still offers bowls, a brass band, a DMSC Hall of fame Dinner, a concert, a birdwalk and a school open day. And so much more!

But yes, I think Henry is trying to be frivolous, and even - dare we say it funny - though that might best be left to an expert like Jack Hibberd.

This is not to say that prohibitions have no place. After all, Moses brought down from the mount 10 commandments, not nine relative price signals. You shouldn't be free to murder me, no matter how much pleasure you would derive: the optimal number of murders, at least of me and a few others I can think of, is strictly zero. But why shouldn't you be free to drink water from the oases of the Sahara, if that is what you want and are willing to pay for, rather than that provided by the oh-so-prosaic water utility?

That said, Bundanoon's ban, however ill-conceived, only affects the people of Bundanoon, who, after all, have brought it on themselves. No such inhibitions afflict the national Preventative Health Taskforce, which would have us all live in flinty rectitude.

Yep, these verbal pyrotechnics are a bit like watching an elephant dance after it's suffered an anal probe. It's funny, but not entirely in the way the elephant might imagine.

Which is funny really, because Ergas purports to be a sensual hedonist of the first water, terribly upset by the Preventative Health Taskforce suggestion that we might be better off getting a little slimmer and drinking less.

Usually this is the turf of a Miranda the Devine logic trap. First rabbit on about how ladettes should turn into ladies and stop their binge drinking ways so they can be demure and learn to sew, and then get outraged about big brother nanny state bureaucrats turning us into an Orwellian nightmare by attempting to tax alcopops.

Henry doesn't bother with any of that. No, he thinks it's a great idea for us to all get as bloated as elephants and pissed as parrots.

For a start, the taskforce is just being a bunch of Savonarola Pollyanna wowsers, and second their calculations are all wrong.

Like somehow the drongoes think that when you've had a third drink, somehow the health benefits of the first two drinks will disappear, as if by drinking in excess you'll somehow fuck your brain cells or perhaps affect your kidneys or your liver. When it's well known that you have to have at least ten drinks within the half hour before that happens.

Just like the well known health benefits of cigarette smoking only kick in when you're on forty a day, so that you too can develop a healthy understanding of the joys of emphysema.

But Henry isn't really that concerned about health issues, not when he can roll out that all time favorite adjective of those dedicated to a world of choice:

It would have been better if the taskforce had grappled with these issues before dispatching us to a future in which an Orwellian national prevention agency sends tobacco control workers to implement strategic goals of smoking reduction.

Yep, Orwellian yet again! If that dedicated socialist George Orwell knew how many times the likes of Ergas abused his name in the cause of free markets, he'd be revolving in his grave faster than a Stalinist sent to a gulag.

And after all this, since perhaps, it might seem silly of Henry to suggest that getting lung cancer or rotting your brain with grog is hardly the most sensible of activities, how to round out a very Seinfeldian column about nothing?

Well of course there's the standard mealy-mouthed Savanarola, Pollyanna waffle disclaimer:

None of this is to denigrate well-meaning efforts to improve our lot.

WTF? So we've been reading the standard diatribe about choice and costs and Orwellian futures to find out that none of this is to denigrate well meaning do gooders and wowsers and their interfering ways? Please explain:

But woolly thinking is no way to save the world. And reliance on bad economics, a preventable disease that has reached epidemic proportions, is or should be a crime. Until it becomes one, the world will not be safe for drinkers. Not even of bottled water.

Woolly thinking? Henry old chum you're the one with the wool, and you're likely to get fleeced by an expert shearer.

Please, please make sure Henry Ergas never gets to Bundanoon. They'll have the 29 bucks out of him for the commemorative bottle quicker than a flash, and he'll think he's being handsomely treated when they fill it full of water, leaving just enough room for him to toss in a dose of gin, so he can wash down the smoke from his coffin nail ...

(Below: and since silly old Henry doesn't know how to play the country game, here's a cap of the 'Bundanoon is Brigadoon' site, proudly displaying its Bundy on logo. You can access the site here, and take pleasure in the news that the major sponsors include a couple of Scottish shortbread suppliers. Och aye.

But at the same time, since we live in Orwellian times, it would be remiss of me not to pass on in full the risk warning attached to the front page of the web site:

RISK WARNING - Wingecarribee Shire Council, Bundanoon Highland Gathering Committee Inc - CIVIL LIABILITY AMENDMENT (PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY) ACT 2002
The recreational activity you are about to engage in or be a spectator at may cause you physical harm. For example, because of the risk of being injured by • tripping and falling • being proximate to vehicles and machines • collision with an object • something that falls or is propelled forcefully on you • a support giving away unexpectedly and • other kinds of accidents including things done or left undone negligently in the management of this activity.

Och aye).