"Maybe we forgot that we’re not subject to the government; the government is subject to us."
Nay,
The tables have been turned.
We've been hornswoggled, given the ol' Okie-Dokie, bamboozled, hoodwinked.....
When it comes to water rights you could all be thrown into a state of nature for 100 generations, and in the end the people then would come up with pretty much the same sort of agreements ~ the module of design in this case is hedged in by how much water there is, how much demand there is for it, and the level of technolgy available to make use of it.
Unless someone can revise the laws of chemistry those limitations are probably not going to change!