> History also shows us that when the government runs collective farms that have no profit, people starve.

Yes? I'm not sure what you're implying here.

The argument isn't "farms shouldn't profit", the argument is "farms should pay for the water they're turning into profits".

How can life be sustained with free water? Who is going to provide it?

Which life?

If we're talking about basic necessary water for humans, that's a tiny little fraction of use and easy for cities to provide.

For anything else the water doesn't need to be free or actively should not be free, depending on which use you look at.

Water used to grow food goes in the second category.

Using water hungry cash crops for luxury foods rather then more better more native crops that actually better prevent starvation, is the reality.

Using a scare resource in an unsustainable way results in bad incentives and thus bad outcome for people.