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Should we pay for water?

Should we pay for water?

  • Total voters
    68
DVSentinel said:
You mean the same "state" that you constantly bitch about? The one that has never actually been able to efficiently do anything?
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The state doesnt do anything efficiently? Not a single thing?
 
Gonzo Rodeo said:
True.

And taxes are the labor of others. What you advocate when you claim water should be provided to all, is that all people have earned the right to have a commodity provided to them, completely irrespective of circumstances and the labor they have or have not provided. This is different than saying no one should be blocked from a source of water. I don't think you are going to find anyone - not even the most ridiculous caricature of a fat-cat capitalist - who thinks people should be blocked from resources. The common logical fallacy favored by those on the left side of the spectrum is to conflate access with provision. This is a clear example.

To illustrate the fallacy in effect, take the example of healthcare: I do not think I should pay for someone else's healthcare... and this does not mean I want the poor to die. I also do not think someone should pay for my healthcare, and this does not mean I want to go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt and eventual bankruptcy. It also does not mean I am rich, or cruel, or stupid. It means I advocate a market based approach to solving the problem largely created when the government started putting their dirty little hands into the health system.

In the case of basic staples of life, like water, labor should be required for use, be it the price of a well and a pump, or a fair use fee for municipal services. Baring that, go down to the river and boil your drinking water. I don't care. But don't expect me or the guy next to me to pay for it because you can't provide for yourself (barring mental illness and legitimate disability).

If the air we breathe required expensive treatment and capture systems in order to provide oxygen safely, I would also advocate people get off of their ass and find a way to earn this commodity, too.
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I believe water should be provided to individuals via the state at no extra cost.
 
ChezC3 said:
Of course not, don't take things out of context. This is one of those things which should be a shared minimal expense of the community. No one has to make affirmative steps to preserve but they should not be allowed to take affirmative steps to prevent.

Which is why I said a "cost plus" method should be established.

You may pay $10, but others, like me have had to pay upward of over $100/ a month. These kind of payments afford huge bloated salaries for bureaucrats.
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Sorry if I misunderstood you.

$100/month for water outside of a desert is nuts. Absent competition whoever's providing your water should be recouping their cost and perhaps a little profit - as you stated. Not sure about the bloated salaries though. Even 10 million or 20 million would only add a few dollars to the bottom line cost. Something else must be going on.
 
DVSentinel said:
Nope. Bet you cannot point out a single part of the government or a single program that is actually efficiently ran.
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The Marines
The Army
The Navy
The Air Force
NASA
NOAA

Your move. :)
 
Phys251 said:
If we made a ranked list of the most important inventions to modern society, I guarantee you that running water would easily crack the top 5. Maybe even the top 3. There is a very clear reason why access to running water and disease proliferation are inversely related. So your whole cost argument is pretty much shot. Having running water is AT LEAST as important as having police and other basic civil protections and institutions, no matter how much it costs to get it. The only alternative is to pack up and move.

Now if you're trying to say that people who live lavish lifestyles consume more resources and that they need to scale back, then tone down the rhetoric and in exchange, I'll hear you out. Because then you would find that we would have some common ground here.
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I think you need to reread the arguments and who is responding to whom. Your response to what I posted actually agrees with my post, that you quoted.

In fact you seem to now disagree with your previous assertion that individual rainwater collection should be allowed in a all places.
 
Lutherf said:
A municipal water system is hardly an example of a capitalist economy at work. It's actually quite the opposite.
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Gov't bailouts are hardly an example of a capitalist system but when huge parts of the economy fail something has to be done. Do you suggest people go without water if they can't afford it but banks, auto and insurance companies be given billions upon billions?
 
Gaius46 said:
Sorry if I misunderstood you.

$100/month for water outside of a desert is nuts. Absent competition whoever's providing your water should be recouping their cost and perhaps a little profit - as you stated. Not sure about the bloated salaries though. Even 10 million or 20 million would only add a few dollars to the bottom line cost. Something else must be going on.
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He doesn't say how much he's using.
 
clownboy said:
I think you need to reread the arguments and who is responding to whom. Your response to what I posted actually agrees with my post, that you quoted.
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Then you should have avoided the childish insults in post #48. Look, rephrase your position and let's go from there.
 
DVSentinel said:
Nope. Bet you cannot point out a single part of the government or a single program that is actually efficiently ran.
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Easy. The FAA. Plane crashes are pretty rare here. Mid air collisions as well.
 
DVSentinel said:
Exactly how is forcing people to provide something to others different from slavery? Oh, right, socialism is slavery.
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:lamo :lamo You do know slavery means you are property and you are being forced to work on someone elses behalf.
 
clownboy said:
Nonsense. Again, your cost plus method is already in play. Your water bill is based upon your usage and at a rate determined by the community's usage.
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:yawn:

and that's why water reclamation workers bring home 6 figures. Now stop with this sillyness.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
I believe water should be provided to individuals via the state at no extra cost.
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Define "extra" cost. And just who, exactly, is "the state" that does this providing? And how do they provide?
 
clownboy said:
Then you have no clue as to living without someone else supplying your water or how water districts work.
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Lived on land that had its own well for half my life, a father who in part of his career worked for the Water Dept. of a village, and actually know, like had dinner with last week a water reclamation executive with the City of Chicago


but yeah, no clue...

:lamo
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Easy. The FAA. Plane crashes are pretty rare here. Mid air collisions as well.
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Not sure that that's the right measure. Just read Dave Soucie's book "Why Planes Crash." He's a former FAA Accident Investigator and he claims that the FAA does a horrible job because

a) they have a dual mandate to regulate and promote aviation, those mandates are largely mutually exclusive and the FAA errs too much on the side of promoting aviation and,

b) both the FAA and NTSB do not go deep enough into crash analysis to identified systemic problems that are at the heart of all aviation accidents.
 
Gaius46 said:
Sorry if I misunderstood you.

$100/month for water outside of a desert is nuts. Absent competition whoever's providing your water should be recouping their cost and perhaps a little profit - as you stated. Not sure about the bloated salaries though. Even 10 million or 20 million would only add a few dollars to the bottom line cost. Something else must be going on.
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and I'm 3 miles away from the largest fresh water supply in the country. :shock:

Yeah, something's going on alright, the City of Chicago...;)
 
Gaius46 said:
Not sure that that's the right measure. Just read Dave Soucie's book "Why Planes Crash." He's a former FAA Accident Investigator and he claims that the FAA does a horrible job because

a) they have a dual mandate to regulate and promote aviation, those mandates are largely mutually exclusive and the FAA errs too much on the side of promoting aviation and,



b) both the FAA and NTSB do not go deep enough into crash analysis to identified systemic problems that are at the heart of all aviation accidents.
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Disagreement to how a organization is ran does not equate to non efficient. Overall the FAA is a efficient agency because it accomplishses its major goals.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
There will be a tax rate in which everyone pays that goes to providing water services.


The federal government


Through a state enterprise.
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So, the labor of others. Got it. You are advocating the theft (removal, redistribution, reallocation) of the labor of people in favor of others, irrespective of the labor input of the individual.
 
Gonzo Rodeo said:
So, the labor of others. Got it. You are advocating the theft (removal, redistribution, reallocation) of the labor of people in favor of others, irrespective of the labor input of the individual.
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Taxation=theft? This argument? How is it "in favor of others" when its applied to everyone?
 
TheDemSocialist said:
The state can guarantee it is provided to all households. Something can be provided to you and still be considered a right.
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The more time I post on this forum the more I'm convinced that Herbert Spencer was right when he said socialism always involves slavery. Services can not be human rights for the very reason that they call for the labor and resources of others to be provided. It doesn't matter if government is providing the service or if a private individual is providing it because the fact remains it takes the labor and resources of others to be provided.
 
grip said:
Gov't bailouts are hardly an example of a capitalist system but when huge parts of the economy fail something has to be done. Do you suggest people go without water if they can't afford it but banks, auto and insurance companies be given billions upon billions?
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Absolutely not!

Municipal systems are necessary for certain functions but they shouldn't be confused with capitalist activities.

As far as bailouts and "too big to fail", that's just bull****. Better to let a diseased entity that either can't be fixed or refuses to be fixed die. Their carcass serves as food for new and, hopefully, more sustainable entities.
 
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