Should water be free, and accessible to all regardless of ability to pay?
70% of Earth is made of water, but only 2.5% of it is fresh water, and most of that water is frozen in ice or deep in the ground.
It takes substantial capital investments and operations expenses to provide clean drinking water to every home and business, and someone must pay the bill.
The activists' solution is to pay for it with taxes, rather than water utility rates.
However, this leads to overuse(see California), as water users don't see a connection between their usage and costs. This IMO is an environmentally poor approach.
Activists also mean that allocation of water on a large scale (i.E., between utilities or industries, not between individual residents who normally just buy water from a utility) should be determined by the public, i.E., politicians, without the functioning of market economic forces. If one smaller city owns water rights, the activists would say that citizens of a larger city should be able to come and take those water rights based on political power, without compensating the smaller city.
According to the activists, "privatized" or "commoditized" in this case means that water may be allocated by property rules and transferred or exchanged for money. Personally, I believe a property rights and market system works better than a political one, since it allows the two cities to agree on the terms of a transfer, whereas under the political system, whoever has more votes will be able to impose their will on others. While there is a place for such actions in a democracy, we also need to protect the rights of the minority, and property rights are one of the best ways to do that... IMHO
70% of Earth is made of water, but only 2.5% of it is fresh water, and most of that water is frozen in ice or deep in the ground.
It takes substantial capital investments and operations expenses to provide clean drinking water to every home and business, and someone must pay the bill.
The activists' solution is to pay for it with taxes, rather than water utility rates.
However, this leads to overuse(see California), as water users don't see a connection between their usage and costs. This IMO is an environmentally poor approach.Activists also mean that allocation of water on a large scale (i.E., between utilities or industries, not between individual residents who normally just buy water from a utility) should be determined by the public, i.E., politicians, without the functioning of market economic forces. If one smaller city owns water rights, the activists would say that citizens of a larger city should be able to come and take those water rights based on political power, without compensating the smaller city.
According to the activists, "privatized" or "commoditized" in this case means that water may be allocated by property rules and transferred or exchanged for money. Personally, I believe a property rights and market system works better than a political one, since it allows the two cities to agree on the terms of a transfer, whereas under the political system, whoever has more votes will be able to impose their will on others. While there is a place for such actions in a democracy, we also need to protect the rights of the minority, and property rights are one of the best ways to do that... IMHO
