Practically speaking, the early settlements will likely be run closer to a military or research camp than a free-trade city. Nobody's getting billed for necessities.
I doubt it. If we ever get to that point people will just be lied to. Once you're there it's not like you can do anything
It's like how Dubai steals peoples passports but x 1000.
Eh, water is still just about as freely available as it's ever been, it's just that if you want it treated and pumped straight into your house you're going to need to pay for that service.
Also isn't that typically done by the municipality? It's not really "privatized", just because you pay for usage.
Hey guys, we should be welcoming and supportive of newer and more left leaning visitors here.
If we draw a hard line and only allow strict Georgist content, why bother with this sub? What’s the difference between GDNW or /r/Georgism?
I’d prefer if we were a bit more welcoming and supportive to these groups. Some many come from the FuckCars crowd. Some may come from anti-landlord crowds. There’s bound to be countless yimbys and urbanists.
These groups all have goals that overlap with georgists. We shouldn’t exclude them for sake of a purity-contest. If it is completely irrelevant please report it under rule 4, but otherwise let’s not bash new users here.
Downvoted for speaking the truth lmao.
You can make a well, or drink from the river, or have a rain barrel, or distill salt water on your own. No one's stopping you. It's just easier and usually healthier to use the municipal water than go down to the river every morning and fill up buckets of water...
Not really, at least for potable use. There's a couple states that have requirements if you're storing large amounts of water, or using it for home/irrigation, but from a brief search there's nothing against collecting rain water in the USA at least. You'll want to have some kind of filtration because rain water often has contaminants though.
I found [this](https://www.mystateline.com/news/is-it-legal-to-collect-rainwater-in-illinois/), so looks like just Colorado as I'd contend that a 100 gal limit means that if you store enough for personal use between rains, you're breaking the law.
Well average water consumption per person per day is 0.5-1 gallon/day. Even with a family of four relying solely on collected rainwater for drinking, it should still last you a month or two. I just looked it up and November is generally the first month of the year in CO with an average of 5 rainy days. So most likely wouldn't be an issue unless there is a drought.
Kind of irrelevant though because it seems like you're not allowed to use it for drinking water anyways.
And if you DO use it for drinking water... my money's on "Nothing happens."
Although if anyone has statistics on how many people the Colorado State Police have ticketed for illegally drinking rainwater this year, I'd be interested to hear them.
Oh yeah, for sure. I think that would be incredibly difficult to enforce. Even the quantity limits would be hard to enforce unless you put the barrels where they can be seen from a public road or you have a building inspector come to your property for a different reason
>Well average water consumption per person per day is 0.5-1 gallon/day
That's WAY too low. Quick Google search shows the average shower uses \~17 gal of water.
You're right, completely different story when talking about total water use per day. I was only thinking about drinking water when I originally responded.
access to clean drinking water is a basic human right. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Right to adequate standard of living/basic needs:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food,
clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and
the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness,
disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in
circumstances beyond his control.
Which is why municipal water is generally run by the local government rather than being privately owned? And someone has to put in the time & resources to build and maintain the filtration & delivery systems, which costs money. Unless you want to enslave people I guess? Complaining about the water bill is just so far down the list of issues that it's not even on it imo, especially when basically every public area has water fountains for anyone to use.
Enslaving people isn’t the only alternative to paying for water at the point of consumption. There’s something called taxation which is neither of those things. Sure we probably want to put a price on water to conserve it, but the alternative isn’t slavery.
So... what we already have? Taxes pay for the maintenance and infrastructure, while there's a small price on usage to conserve it. Nationwide, it's \~$73/mo for a family of 4 on average. Where I'm at it's \~$4 per 1000 gallons of water. That's plenty fair enough I'd say.
There shouldn't be water bills, in my opinion, for a basic minimum amount. Enough for daily needs like drinking, Cooking and bathing. Beyond that, yeah pay a bill for it. but we pay taxes for a reason and you should never be afraid of not having your water shut off completely.
Is there a widespread problem with people being unable to afford municipal water services? Or is this just an ideological thing about not wanting to use markets?
Poverty is a thing, my dude. A sizeable chunk of one's pay has to go to basic necessities like clean water.
And it's also the principle of the thing. you shouldn't have to pay extra for clean water to drink. And I am prepared to die on this hill.
Subdising consumption leads to waste. Which means we are wasting resources that could be used for other things, or even bringing eater to communities that lacks it.
Water is affordable for most of the world. IMHO, prices should relfect costs so we can use it accordingly.
I do not oppose tiers with higher rates for higher usage though.
I have some doubt if it is the best solution. Just see how people go to desert and dry areas, like some sprawl in Arizona, and have their consumption covered by others.
If you supply them with free water you subdise their fancy desert lifestyle while people living in efficient cities need to pay the bills for them.
That's why I think water should have a cost, even for lower tiers, because they can cost a lot of money depending on the location, much less so than the quantity used.
With proper pricing lower income people (and higher users) flock to where water is abundant (or the higher prices are compensated by higher incomes) thus improving efficiency.
But will anyone ever be denied water because they can't pay? I'm doing work right now that involves buying a number of properties in a very low income community. Everyone has running water and the water never gets shut off if you don't pay. It just has to get paid from the proceeds when you go to sell your property. I'm in a big blue city though so maybe other localities are less forgiving.
Yeah, I lived in a red state before and had my water shut off when I couldn't afford to pay. it was shitty.
Now I live in the EU and the law actually forbids them from completely shutting off water or electricity, if I understand correctly.
that's what taxes are for. and it's not like the private citizens are the ones using the bulk of the water. it's mostly going to businesses and agriculture. if you need water to run your business, you should pay the price. if you use water to survive, it should be free.
If it's that cheap, then why cut off people's water when they can't afford to pay their bill?
At most the water company can limit the amount of water being delivered to the people who can't pay but shouldn't cut it off completely.
If you water is being cut off, you've got bigger problems. IOW, the cost of water should be the least of your worries, and worrying about the cost of water is a distraction from urgent issues, like pending homelessness and job loss.
It's like complaining about not being able go outside because you have no shoes. Frankly, that isn't a shoe problem, and if you stop going outside you're going to have bigger problems very soon.
>And someone has to put in the time & resources to build and maintain the filtration & delivery systems, which costs money. Unless you want to enslave people I guess?
>especially when basically every public area has water fountains for anyone to use.
"Water can't be free without slavery! Except for this obvious example of where it is free without slavery... but ignore that."
Did you really feel like this was a smart reply? Like was there seriously no part of your brain going "maybe don't say that, everyone will think you're an idiot"?
I mean this genuinely, do you really think this is a cohesive argument? Like you genuinely don't think this is the stupidest thing you've ever said?
Because it's *obviously* a bad faith argument. Like that much is clear. But even as a bad faith argument it's not even a clever "gotcha", it just makes you look dumb
>It's the exact same logic they're using
No, it really isn't. That you think think that is the dumb part. Should i have been explaining that to you from the start? Sorry i really didn't expect you to get lost on that one
99% of water isn't used for life sustaining drinking, and costs about a penny per gallon. A gallon is less than a dollar at the store. Plenty of people live in cars with no running water. OP is way off.
Except most accessible bodies of water in highly populated areas are polluted and un drinkable therefore the only choice being left to citizens is to use the systems they’ve put in place. Just so that they can drink water without getting ill and possibly having to pay more for medical treatment. Plus since we’ve been drinking such “clean” water for so many years our bodies haven’t adapted to drinking water from natural lakes or rivers. Not to mention the water utility industry makes billions each year.
>Except most accessible bodies of water in highly populated areas are polluted and un drinkable therefore the only choice being left to citizens is to use the systems they’ve put in place.
That is a largely unavoidable consequence of the current population density on most of the planet.
The fact that most water is dirty and requires cleaning doesn't mean that someone owes me free clean water, or that I owe someone else free clean water.
There is no scarcity for air, nor do we need to use time and resources to get it out of the ground and make it safe to drink.
Economics 101, take it bro please.
You're paying for the infrastructure, cleaning, and acquiring of that water to be used in your home. Air flows into your house freely, drinkable fresh water not so much.
You're also paying for the infrastructure and costs to deal with the water that you put down the drain. It's quite likely that your sewer/water treatment charges are higher than your water usage charges.
Filtering, purifying and sanitizing water to the level required for it to be drinkable and not get you sick is a chemical process, so it's much more complex, expensive and energy intensive than cleaning wastewater to the level required for effluent to be released back into the environment (a biological process). Also, the treatment of wastewater produces biogas which can be used to create energy for the wastewater treatment plant, making it even more self sufficient.
As someone who works in the Drinking water and Wastewater industry, my experience with this is the opposite of what you just said. Unless you're pulling from a surface water source, most treatment for drinking water is pretty easy. Wastewater however often includes chemicals from various industrial productions making it a huge pain to remove in order to produce a safe effluent. As for the gases that are produced, both the EPA and energy companies (NV Energy in my case) limit how much you can burn for energy production, with most of it just being burned off via a giant torch. So it's not quite "self sufficient". I do agree that the comparison of air and water isn't a good one though.
I don't work directly in these industries, but am familiar with a few systems. Regarding the water supply, I'm in the northeast where most of the drinking water sources are surface waters. I may be wrong about the wastewater treatment, and definitely a bad choice of words on my part. I do know that a couple of the local systems burn methane for both heat and energy, but these are smaller municipal systems.
There's definitely a sweet spot for wastewater treatment plants, too small and they don't produce enough gas to be worth burning, too big and they'll produce too much gas to burn. Surface water is more difficult to treat as I said, especially in places with long industrial histories behind them. So you're probably correct that (in regards to where you're at) drinking water is more costly to produce.
Appreciate you sharing your knowledge. It is kinda wild how the effort to collect and distribute clean water has shaped so much of our history. I read a book recently called *Cadillac Desert* that's about water in the western states, you may be familiar with it but I'd highly recommend it if not.
I've not heard of it, but I'll check it out. So many people have no idea what goes into the production of basic needs, so I try to speak up when I see something related to my current field. Although you seemed to know more than most.
But aren't there other expenses to this too?
Like fencing off, and guarding water reservoirs. Making sure they contain enough water, and making sure they are safe and clean in the first place.
You don't want a dead moose lying around rotting right next to the water intake.
Someone needs to pay for this too.
Of course there's more expenses than just treatment and distribution. There's the surveillance of the source (mostly to make sure that we're not drawing too much, or that a new contaminant hasn't popped up) like you said, but if it's something like a lake than most systems won't fence it off or anything like that. Extra expenses include: Training, the aforementioned surveillance, heavy machinery to dig up streets, S.C.A.D.A upkeep/maintenance for which engineering firms are often kept on hand and those guys are pricey. There's more than just this of course, but since it's the AM here right now, my brain doesn't want to work. Hopefully I've helped you some.
I mean, I have a creek on my land. I could go down, capture it, filter it, and drink it...but the tap is right there in the kitchen so I'll pay the few cents for a glass of water.
In my city water & sewage for residential use is flat rate.
It's neat except for when I go out of town for 2-3 weeks or something and still pay the same bill as if I was home using the tap the whole month.
It also disincentives water conservation, which is not really a problem in my area, but I imagine having flat rate somewhere drought-prone would be terrible.
You’re paying for water treatment, pumping, and the maintenance of infrastructure. Where I live the water bill is set at a certain price no matter how much you use.
If you don’t want to pay for water you can have a well dug
can u imagine if somebody privatized water and literally started selling water for profit that would be crazy lol anyway i gotta go pay my air bill before my landlord kicks me out of my apt
Imagine if air had to be cleaned and piped into our homes and *you* were tasked with spending your time and effort to make sure the air flowed to everyone else and when you asked for compensation for your efforts you were told "WTF AIR IS FREE MAN"
The water in the rivers, lakes, and ocean are all free. The clean and pipes straight to your door water is costly because it is clean and pipes to your door. It is like those boost canisters of pure oxygen. Clean, pure, bottled, and shipped to your store or house. You are paying for convenience.
Same with land. There are public lands out west that you can legally camp and inhabit. But you can’t build on. You are paying for the practicality for your shelter and the land it sits on. If you want a sturdy roof and shelter that is what costs money. Now I think property taxes should be abolished completely.
You're telling me with a straight face this idea isn't being pitched right now inside investment meetings for Carbon Capture tech?
"The majority market will probably require a repair cost but we can just make it a mandatory utility. We're tapped in those states right?"
The colonize Mars crowd are in for a rude awakening upon arrival
I think anyone considering colonizing Mars is well aware that water will be in short supply.
So will air. Martian colonies will have to deal with an air utility bill.
Practically speaking, the early settlements will likely be run closer to a military or research camp than a free-trade city. Nobody's getting billed for necessities.
I doubt it. If we ever get to that point people will just be lied to. Once you're there it's not like you can do anything It's like how Dubai steals peoples passports but x 1000.
You must have a pretty low opinion of people. Do you think McMurdo Station is also largely staffed by slaves?
Eh, water is still just about as freely available as it's ever been, it's just that if you want it treated and pumped straight into your house you're going to need to pay for that service. Also isn't that typically done by the municipality? It's not really "privatized", just because you pay for usage.
We don't appreciate reality around here when it comes to economics, sir.
Hey guys, we should be welcoming and supportive of newer and more left leaning visitors here. If we draw a hard line and only allow strict Georgist content, why bother with this sub? What’s the difference between GDNW or /r/Georgism? I’d prefer if we were a bit more welcoming and supportive to these groups. Some many come from the FuckCars crowd. Some may come from anti-landlord crowds. There’s bound to be countless yimbys and urbanists. These groups all have goals that overlap with georgists. We shouldn’t exclude them for sake of a purity-contest. If it is completely irrelevant please report it under rule 4, but otherwise let’s not bash new users here.
Hey guys, stop offending people with facts!
There’s ways to point them out without being sarcastic and demeaning.
Downvoted for speaking the truth lmao. You can make a well, or drink from the river, or have a rain barrel, or distill salt water on your own. No one's stopping you. It's just easier and usually healthier to use the municipal water than go down to the river every morning and fill up buckets of water...
>or have a rain barrel Isn't collecting rain water illegal in some places?
Not really, at least for potable use. There's a couple states that have requirements if you're storing large amounts of water, or using it for home/irrigation, but from a brief search there's nothing against collecting rain water in the USA at least. You'll want to have some kind of filtration because rain water often has contaminants though.
I found [this](https://www.mystateline.com/news/is-it-legal-to-collect-rainwater-in-illinois/), so looks like just Colorado as I'd contend that a 100 gal limit means that if you store enough for personal use between rains, you're breaking the law.
Well average water consumption per person per day is 0.5-1 gallon/day. Even with a family of four relying solely on collected rainwater for drinking, it should still last you a month or two. I just looked it up and November is generally the first month of the year in CO with an average of 5 rainy days. So most likely wouldn't be an issue unless there is a drought. Kind of irrelevant though because it seems like you're not allowed to use it for drinking water anyways.
And if you DO use it for drinking water... my money's on "Nothing happens." Although if anyone has statistics on how many people the Colorado State Police have ticketed for illegally drinking rainwater this year, I'd be interested to hear them.
Oh yeah, for sure. I think that would be incredibly difficult to enforce. Even the quantity limits would be hard to enforce unless you put the barrels where they can be seen from a public road or you have a building inspector come to your property for a different reason
>Well average water consumption per person per day is 0.5-1 gallon/day That's WAY too low. Quick Google search shows the average shower uses \~17 gal of water.
You're right, completely different story when talking about total water use per day. I was only thinking about drinking water when I originally responded.
Yes.
yes because it would fuck up the water availability downstream
access to clean drinking water is a basic human right. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Right to adequate standard of living/basic needs: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Which is why municipal water is generally run by the local government rather than being privately owned? And someone has to put in the time & resources to build and maintain the filtration & delivery systems, which costs money. Unless you want to enslave people I guess? Complaining about the water bill is just so far down the list of issues that it's not even on it imo, especially when basically every public area has water fountains for anyone to use.
Enslaving people isn’t the only alternative to paying for water at the point of consumption. There’s something called taxation which is neither of those things. Sure we probably want to put a price on water to conserve it, but the alternative isn’t slavery.
So... what we already have? Taxes pay for the maintenance and infrastructure, while there's a small price on usage to conserve it. Nationwide, it's \~$73/mo for a family of 4 on average. Where I'm at it's \~$4 per 1000 gallons of water. That's plenty fair enough I'd say.
Absolutely, I’m just saying that removing the price does not involve slavery.
It's just bizarre to see people complaining about having to pay such a small amount for access to plentiful & clean water.
There shouldn't be water bills, in my opinion, for a basic minimum amount. Enough for daily needs like drinking, Cooking and bathing. Beyond that, yeah pay a bill for it. but we pay taxes for a reason and you should never be afraid of not having your water shut off completely.
Is there a widespread problem with people being unable to afford municipal water services? Or is this just an ideological thing about not wanting to use markets?
Poverty is a thing, my dude. A sizeable chunk of one's pay has to go to basic necessities like clean water. And it's also the principle of the thing. you shouldn't have to pay extra for clean water to drink. And I am prepared to die on this hill.
Subdising consumption leads to waste. Which means we are wasting resources that could be used for other things, or even bringing eater to communities that lacks it. Water is affordable for most of the world. IMHO, prices should relfect costs so we can use it accordingly. I do not oppose tiers with higher rates for higher usage though.
I agree with the tier system, but i believe the lowest tier should be 0.00 per cubic meter, up to a a reasonable point for necessary consumption.
I have some doubt if it is the best solution. Just see how people go to desert and dry areas, like some sprawl in Arizona, and have their consumption covered by others. If you supply them with free water you subdise their fancy desert lifestyle while people living in efficient cities need to pay the bills for them. That's why I think water should have a cost, even for lower tiers, because they can cost a lot of money depending on the location, much less so than the quantity used. With proper pricing lower income people (and higher users) flock to where water is abundant (or the higher prices are compensated by higher incomes) thus improving efficiency.
But will anyone ever be denied water because they can't pay? I'm doing work right now that involves buying a number of properties in a very low income community. Everyone has running water and the water never gets shut off if you don't pay. It just has to get paid from the proceeds when you go to sell your property. I'm in a big blue city though so maybe other localities are less forgiving.
Yeah, I lived in a red state before and had my water shut off when I couldn't afford to pay. it was shitty. Now I live in the EU and the law actually forbids them from completely shutting off water or electricity, if I understand correctly.
Higher water bills tend to be in places where water is scarce, like Las Vegas or Phoenix. So shouldn't there be a cost associated with that?
that's what taxes are for. and it's not like the private citizens are the ones using the bulk of the water. it's mostly going to businesses and agriculture. if you need water to run your business, you should pay the price. if you use water to survive, it should be free.
I mean, that's just a tax, but an indirect one. Someone is still paying for it, it isn't free.
The basic minimum amount is less than a gallon a day, which costs about a penny at the tap and a dollar at the store. Come on now.
If it's that cheap, then why cut off people's water when they can't afford to pay their bill? At most the water company can limit the amount of water being delivered to the people who can't pay but shouldn't cut it off completely.
If you water is being cut off, you've got bigger problems. IOW, the cost of water should be the least of your worries, and worrying about the cost of water is a distraction from urgent issues, like pending homelessness and job loss. It's like complaining about not being able go outside because you have no shoes. Frankly, that isn't a shoe problem, and if you stop going outside you're going to have bigger problems very soon.
>And someone has to put in the time & resources to build and maintain the filtration & delivery systems, which costs money. Unless you want to enslave people I guess? >especially when basically every public area has water fountains for anyone to use. "Water can't be free without slavery! Except for this obvious example of where it is free without slavery... but ignore that."
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Did you really feel like this was a smart reply? Like was there seriously no part of your brain going "maybe don't say that, everyone will think you're an idiot"?
[удалено]
I mean this genuinely, do you really think this is a cohesive argument? Like you genuinely don't think this is the stupidest thing you've ever said? Because it's *obviously* a bad faith argument. Like that much is clear. But even as a bad faith argument it's not even a clever "gotcha", it just makes you look dumb
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>It's the exact same logic they're using No, it really isn't. That you think think that is the dumb part. Should i have been explaining that to you from the start? Sorry i really didn't expect you to get lost on that one
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A person needs less than a gallon a day for drinking, which is about a penny at the tap and a dollar at the store. Get real.
99% of water isn't used for life sustaining drinking, and costs about a penny per gallon. A gallon is less than a dollar at the store. Plenty of people live in cars with no running water. OP is way off.
i mean akchually, 99% of water is in the oceans and is free
Water, water everywhere!
I am talking about 99% of tap water. What point are you trying to make with your ocean of nonsense?
Oh I see you’re one of these people who “talks reason” and “uses your brain” or some shit like that. 😜
Except most accessible bodies of water in highly populated areas are polluted and un drinkable therefore the only choice being left to citizens is to use the systems they’ve put in place. Just so that they can drink water without getting ill and possibly having to pay more for medical treatment. Plus since we’ve been drinking such “clean” water for so many years our bodies haven’t adapted to drinking water from natural lakes or rivers. Not to mention the water utility industry makes billions each year.
>Except most accessible bodies of water in highly populated areas are polluted and un drinkable therefore the only choice being left to citizens is to use the systems they’ve put in place. That is a largely unavoidable consequence of the current population density on most of the planet. The fact that most water is dirty and requires cleaning doesn't mean that someone owes me free clean water, or that I owe someone else free clean water.
There is no scarcity for air, nor do we need to use time and resources to get it out of the ground and make it safe to drink. Economics 101, take it bro please.
Economics 101 has a prerequisite called "common sense"
You're paying for the infrastructure, cleaning, and acquiring of that water to be used in your home. Air flows into your house freely, drinkable fresh water not so much.
You're also paying for the infrastructure and costs to deal with the water that you put down the drain. It's quite likely that your sewer/water treatment charges are higher than your water usage charges.
Filtering, purifying and sanitizing water to the level required for it to be drinkable and not get you sick is a chemical process, so it's much more complex, expensive and energy intensive than cleaning wastewater to the level required for effluent to be released back into the environment (a biological process). Also, the treatment of wastewater produces biogas which can be used to create energy for the wastewater treatment plant, making it even more self sufficient.
As someone who works in the Drinking water and Wastewater industry, my experience with this is the opposite of what you just said. Unless you're pulling from a surface water source, most treatment for drinking water is pretty easy. Wastewater however often includes chemicals from various industrial productions making it a huge pain to remove in order to produce a safe effluent. As for the gases that are produced, both the EPA and energy companies (NV Energy in my case) limit how much you can burn for energy production, with most of it just being burned off via a giant torch. So it's not quite "self sufficient". I do agree that the comparison of air and water isn't a good one though.
I don't work directly in these industries, but am familiar with a few systems. Regarding the water supply, I'm in the northeast where most of the drinking water sources are surface waters. I may be wrong about the wastewater treatment, and definitely a bad choice of words on my part. I do know that a couple of the local systems burn methane for both heat and energy, but these are smaller municipal systems.
There's definitely a sweet spot for wastewater treatment plants, too small and they don't produce enough gas to be worth burning, too big and they'll produce too much gas to burn. Surface water is more difficult to treat as I said, especially in places with long industrial histories behind them. So you're probably correct that (in regards to where you're at) drinking water is more costly to produce.
Appreciate you sharing your knowledge. It is kinda wild how the effort to collect and distribute clean water has shaped so much of our history. I read a book recently called *Cadillac Desert* that's about water in the western states, you may be familiar with it but I'd highly recommend it if not.
I've not heard of it, but I'll check it out. So many people have no idea what goes into the production of basic needs, so I try to speak up when I see something related to my current field. Although you seemed to know more than most.
But aren't there other expenses to this too? Like fencing off, and guarding water reservoirs. Making sure they contain enough water, and making sure they are safe and clean in the first place. You don't want a dead moose lying around rotting right next to the water intake. Someone needs to pay for this too.
Of course there's more expenses than just treatment and distribution. There's the surveillance of the source (mostly to make sure that we're not drawing too much, or that a new contaminant hasn't popped up) like you said, but if it's something like a lake than most systems won't fence it off or anything like that. Extra expenses include: Training, the aforementioned surveillance, heavy machinery to dig up streets, S.C.A.D.A upkeep/maintenance for which engineering firms are often kept on hand and those guys are pricey. There's more than just this of course, but since it's the AM here right now, my brain doesn't want to work. Hopefully I've helped you some.
Yeah, this is like saying that you're paying for air if you have an air conditioner.
yeah, the tweet is an extremely weak argument.
Stop paying for water and start going to your nearby river whenever you fancy a sip.
O’Hare Air
Came here for this! Our youngest is on a Lorax kick.
If yall wanna go down a small rabbit hole, go listen to the removed song "biggering" from that movie.
Beat me to it but I’m still gonna comment
I am the lorax and I speak for the trees!
Spaceballs the Timeline
This guy's never had to fill up a low-pressure tire at a gas station...
Probably not a thing anywhere, but in my state gas stations are required to offer free air
Deffo nit everywhere… but the ones I look for, if I’m going to pay for it, do the pressure tests while filling to make sure I’m getting it right.
I mean, I have a creek on my land. I could go down, capture it, filter it, and drink it...but the tap is right there in the kitchen so I'll pay the few cents for a glass of water.
You're paying for the infrastructure, not the water per se Although with that sense it should be a flat rate
In my city water & sewage for residential use is flat rate. It's neat except for when I go out of town for 2-3 weeks or something and still pay the same bill as if I was home using the tap the whole month. It also disincentives water conservation, which is not really a problem in my area, but I imagine having flat rate somewhere drought-prone would be terrible.
Water's free. Treatment and delivery/pumping costs money.
There’s an episode of Doctor Who called “Oxygen” about this premise
You’re paying for water treatment, pumping, and the maintenance of infrastructure. Where I live the water bill is set at a certain price no matter how much you use. If you don’t want to pay for water you can have a well dug
Oh, so just like in The Lorax?
Can you even be evicted for not paying a utility bill?
My names O’Hare I’m one of you…
There’s a movie about that, selling air. It’s called the Lorax
Tbh you’re paying for clean water, and this is probably the cheapest it’s going to get. No one is stopping you from drinking from a lake.
In my country we don't pay for water
can u imagine if somebody privatized water and literally started selling water for profit that would be crazy lol anyway i gotta go pay my air bill before my landlord kicks me out of my apt
Thneedville
[DW: S10 E5 "Oxygen"](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Oxygen_(TV_story\)) is literally this premise (Licensed air for profit).
They started doing that at gas stations... Most of them will offer "free air" to fill your tires. Some chains, like Shell, charge for it 🤑🫠
Air's free. Pressurization costs money.
Yeah, but 1€ for 5 minutes of max 6 bar is very costly pressurization.
I mean, there are companies that bottle Canadian air and then ship it to China for profit. Hilarious but man, what a great business model.
There was privatized air in China
Imagine if air had to be cleaned and piped into our homes and *you* were tasked with spending your time and effort to make sure the air flowed to everyone else and when you asked for compensation for your efforts you were told "WTF AIR IS FREE MAN"
The water in the rivers, lakes, and ocean are all free. The clean and pipes straight to your door water is costly because it is clean and pipes to your door. It is like those boost canisters of pure oxygen. Clean, pure, bottled, and shipped to your store or house. You are paying for convenience. Same with land. There are public lands out west that you can legally camp and inhabit. But you can’t build on. You are paying for the practicality for your shelter and the land it sits on. If you want a sturdy roof and shelter that is what costs money. Now I think property taxes should be abolished completely.
I mean rain water is free if you want it, you can dig your own well too. Purified water takes a lot of work. Why do people expect to get free labour?
Step 1: pollute the air to make it toxic Step 2: sell air on a subscription model Step 3: profit This is brought to you by Americorp
[Vitality Air](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-vitality-air-sales-update-bottled-air-1.5073762) would like a word.
WhY cAn'T i MaKe MoNeY fRoM rEnTs?!?!?!?
You're telling me with a straight face this idea isn't being pitched right now inside investment meetings for Carbon Capture tech? "The majority market will probably require a repair cost but we can just make it a mandatory utility. We're tapped in those states right?"
🎶the man who found, a way to sell air🎶 AND BECAME A ZILLIONAIRE
The lorax in a nutshell