The interaction of supply, demand, and prices. Page (2005) TIBG 30, 3 compares two approaches to water supply: ‘there are those who claim that water is scarce and, like all scarce goods, it is best allocated through a market mechanism. Water must be turned into a commodity to be sold at the full price of its production, including environmental externalities, if it is to be efficiently and equitably distributed and conserved.…On the other side are those who argue that water, though scarce, is in its essence not commercial and that such a process of commodification…is little more than theft of a common good.’