@Background Pony #352F  
I don’t think she needs any permission at all. That same episode had her get away with literally being like “I’m changing the law. Pray I don’t change it any further!” after her school failed to get accredited due to safety and quality concerns XD

@Badumsquish  
Maybe the people of Manehattan didn’t like her, so they refused to give her cab rides. Perhaps she receives a mixed opinion from her constituents for frivolously dipping into public funds, so could this be the explanation?
 
And how much permission do you think she’d need before having access to public funds (that would become private)?

@Background Pony #352F  
I think she can just dip into the taxpayer’s money whenever she wants. I mean, she built this palace on a whim:  
 
I mean, you could buy Kenya for what it would have cost for that real estate alone XD
 
That’s just a gag at Rarity Takes Manehattan when she tried and failed to hail a cab XD

So my question is how Twilight even earns an income and whether she has to hold a second job just for those benefits.
 
Also, how come she can’t even hail a cab? Is she hated by Ponyville’s and/or Canterlot’s population enough that no cab driver would stop for her or do they stop for her, but just overcharge her and mistakenly think she can afford to pay the fare?

It is not easy to be a princess.

@YetAnotherBrony  

 
I have no choice but to agree there c:

@Badumsquish
 
Very true for BOTH your replies!

@GlitchyShadow  
Maybe, but it’s more fun to pretend like either she’s that corrupt/uncaring/whatever or like has so much stuff on her plate that stuff like that goes unnoticed :P
 
“What do you MEAN you’re not getting paid, Twilight?!” kind of thing :D
 
@YetAnotherBrony  
The way I see it, one reason why fanon exists so we can have fun with things that can’t or shouldn’t be in actual canon. It would be heartbreaking if it actually turned out in canon that Celestia was that corrupt or uncaring, but as a punchline in a four picture story it’s funny :D

@GlitchyShadow
 
I said as much on a shitpost-picture that asked which political party would each of the Mane 6 vote for.

@Drasvin  
I think the mere idea of a pony upsetting or letting their beloved princess down is enough to motivate them to do some work, all the greed we see is that of private employees or companies and we barely see inside the inner workings of the Equestrian govt. because who the hell except for brony nerds like us would care about that so it’s impossible to know.
 
@YetAnotherBrony  
It’s boring, for many, but it’s whats canon, whether we like it or not.  
Honestly I’m just jealous of these ponies, no politician on earth is this good, and the few people that truly care about the average person are screwed over by the political establishme- oh no am i rambling about politics on a silly pony picture again

@GlitchyShadow  
Celestia is also only one (immensely powerful) pony. There’s only so much she can do. The slack has to be taken up by bureaucrats and appointees, which might not be as caring and pure as the Princess. Also the simple machinery of bureaucracy can bog things down at times.

@GlitchyShadow
 
Probably.
 
But that makes for a boring story, doesn’t it? Which is why Trollestia, Molestia, and Tyrantlestia are so popular.
 
We humans are so jaded and anti-authority, we’ve utterly convinced ourselves that NOTHING and NOBODY does ANYTHING just because it’s the “right thing for their citizens”.

@Badumsquish  
Well the government (led by freakin’ Celestia, the most good hearted and well intentioned character on the show) would do the right thing for their citizens, right?

@Lawful Girly  
Hagglers just means there exists more independent vendors than industrial ones.

@GlitchyShadow  
I dunno, if anything the ponies have shown to be pretty greedy and self-serving more often than generous. Besides, it’s just a joke XD

@GlitchyShadow  
Haha, have you SEEN the kind of haggling they do (for reference, Putting Your Hoof Down)? They’re almost as money-grubbing in Equestria as in Griffonstone, and nowhere is that more obvious than in HMOs and insurance. Not that socialized medicine is any better, given the wait times and drain on your pocketbook even when you’re healthy…
 
We can’t tell for sure, though; when they kick Dash out of the hospital in Read it and Weep, that could be either because she’s no longer considered injured enough to keep occupying a bed when there are others waiting, or because her weatherpony insurance policy ran out.

Equestria is a perfect magical place with benevolent leadership, you think they’d have universal health coverage, right?
 
or has someone already said that?

@Soarinjack
 
Her education wasn’t free, but being the personal student/protégé of the local demigod-ruler is pretty close to getting a full-ride scholarship (which is when the college pays for your tuition, room and board, your books, your lab fees, living expenses, everything! Some even pay for studying abroad!).

@thps48  
Yes in the dam

@Solar’s Wrath  
Wouldn’t there be motorized waterwheels somewhere? >w<

@Drasvin  
Its getting really tiring to even talk about this, you know this is a show that think so little about these kind of detail that the staff openly admit that some stuff like the Alicorn potion is just a stupid plot device that indeed make no damn sense and they didn’t had better imagination to make things flow correctly.
 
Its an electric barrage end of story because they have oven and microwave and other electric things.

@Drasvin  
So, they go both ways? (stabbed lol)

@Solar’s Wrath  
River flows an fluctuate in level from rains and melting snows at the head-waters. The water level of the reservoir behind the dam can fluctuate, but generally will have a large enough amount of water to not risk water shortages unless there is an extended drought (like many water reservoirs in California/Nevada are in danger of). A dam also gives an additional benefit of protecting the downstream areas from flood surges (in-case the pegasi up-stream get too liberal with their rain quota)  
And being near the ocean doesn’t really help with water supply. Ocean water is too salty for drinking or several other applications and desalinization is an extremely expensive process. In real life, most coastal cities rely on groundwater and/or water transported from reservoirs further inland.  
It’s also fully possible for a population center to use more than one method of obtaining water. London, for example, has both a dam on the River Thames and wells that tap into groundwater to provide potable water to its residents.

@Drasvin  
The water reservoir was at Ponyville. Also, they have enough rivers that they don’t need any dam and most other cities are near ocean.

@Solar’s Wrath  
There are a few reasons to still need the dam. One: a tornado cannot store mass amounts of water, it only transports. Two: the tornado requires a large amount of coordinated effort, requiring a total of 800 wingpower to overcome gravity. Rainbow Dash, one of, if not the fastest flier we know of, only generates 16.5 wingpower. It would take just over 48 pegasi of Rainbow Dash’s caliber to generate the tornado, and again, this work must be coordinated and flying at full tilt can be very tiring if done for an extended period of time. Three: The tornado wouldn’t lend itself well to distributing the water in a measured means across the members of the populace. It’s meant to transport hundreds of gallons of water (Maybe thousands, not entirely sure how much water the rain factory would need for a year) up to Cloudsdale’s rain factory.
 
The large tornado could potentially be used to transport water to Ponyville, but it would still need a reservoir of some kind to hold the water. The dam provides a large reservoir of water and the weight of the water will create pressure that can be used to force the water down pipes to transport to water to Ponyville (and potentially outlying areas) where the pressure can be reduced, and delivered to the ponies’ homes and places of business in a simple, on-demand manner. And the large reservoir helps protect the water supply from fluctuations in supply(how much rainfall the area gets) and demand (how much water everypony is using, or if Spike wants to take an enormous bubble bath again)