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Should we pay for water?

Should we pay for water?


  • Total voters
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Is the supplying of water a basic human right?

If you consider all the things the gov't spends our money on (defense, roads, bridges, justice system etc), should one of them be a simple necessity?

It’s a basic human right: water. But could the United Nations soon help the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department provide the service to struggling customers?

And while Garner says water is “a God-given right,” she says there is a cost to move water from the water resource to the customer and that the infrastructure costs money.

Nearly Half Of Detroit Water Customers Can’t Pay Their Bill « CBS Detroit

Collecting water from public places or from the rain should be considered a right. However you do not have the right to force someone else to employ filtration and purification methods on that water and/or deliver it to your cup without just compensation.

For what it's worth, the water running through my house is collected from a stream running through my property into my cistern. I had to buy the tubing, the cistern, the plumbing components, the water pump, and the filter with my own money. I also buy the electricity that runs the water pump. I do not have a right to be furnished with potable water. I have a right to gather it from my rooftops or that stream running through my property. What I do with it beyond that is my business and responsibility.
 
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You can install a well or some sort of tank that holds large qunaitites of water or rent from a well.


Uhhh.. You do realize many non-socialists hold this same idea right? Its not strictly a socialist idea.


What about it.

What? Equal cost / equal misery? On the market spectrum, that's definitely to one side, and it's not the free market side.
 
Is the supplying of water a basic human right?
Oh stop trying to socialize everything. Utilities cost something to disperse, the recipients should pay that bill. Now go away.
 
Subsistence is a birthright as far as I am concerned.

Oh sure, as long as you working in the field to provide MY subsistence is my birthright.

:roll:
 
Is the supplying of water a basic human right?

If you consider all the things the gov't spends our money on (defense, roads, bridges, justice system etc), should one of them be a simple necessity?





Nearly Half Of Detroit Water Customers Can’t Pay Their Bill « CBS Detroit

While I realize it may be impractical or impossible to implement, I'd be ok with making drinking water a fundamental human right. For other uses however it should probably cost, otherwise people will just waste it because they don't have to pay for it.

For all the nay-sayers, we spend TRILLIONS of dollars on ridiculous wars and give BILLIONS of dollars to foreign countries as aid, yet we can't afford the measly sum it would cost to subsidize drinking water?
 
What? Equal cost / equal misery? On the market spectrum, that's definitely to one side, and it's not the free market side.

Not everything in this country is revolved around the free market.
 
Of course we should pay for water, delivering safe clean water is not cheap.

Funny - I think the same but I don't depend on someone else to deliver safe clean water. I paid for a well to be dug, I paid for a pump to be installed, I paid for a water softener to be installed, I pay for the salt conditioning materials, I also pay for a 5 way reverse osmosis system to filter the water that I drink, and pay for water testing every 2 years.
 
Is the supplying of water a basic human right?

If you consider all the things the gov't spends our money on (defense, roads, bridges, justice system etc), should one of them be a simple necessity?

Nearly Half Of Detroit Water Customers Can’t Pay Their Bill « CBS Detroit

Yes we should pay for water, but we should expect those we pay to furnish it to do it with the highest level of competence, efficiency, and economy possible. Public water systems are a component of the social contract just as are shared roads, police and fire protection, electric grids, sewer systems, public schools, and other services that it makes sense to do together rather than each person providing his/her own private system.

Nobody can provide it for himself/herself without cost, and everybody should also pay his/her share of the public costs.
 
Take for instance not only the rainwater but aquafiers. Some places have demanded residents to fill their wells and link up to the main and pay for water. That company has no more right to that aquafier than the individuals sinking there wells but the coercive force of government actively denies them of what they've procured for themselves.

Put aside the government is the evil thing for a moment and think of why that might be. Maybe go back and read about the origins of the Dust Bowl. Once those farmers learned to tap the aquifer on the higher plains all was well. But as time has gone by and more people settled in an area that really doesn't support such a mass of people, more and more strain is on that water source.

Now, do we continue to allow folks there to sink and draw whatever amount they want, and to hell with the aquifer and any future the area has for us. Or do we prioritize and allow the farmers and the large agri companies, who feed millions, to have access and shunt the individual homesteads and urban development needs off to another source.

This is not some corrosive force, but good water and land management.
 
And when "the government" pays, who do you think pays?

Everyone but you??

That's my point, we already pay enough taxes on local, state and Federal levels for water to be supplied. If the gov't wasn't so wastefully inefficient and giving our money to failing corporations and other countries, they could afford to provide water and electricity.
 
When different companies compete with each other, prices stay lower. When there's no competition, they get higher and higher. And there's no competition with government. Therefore, it's best for everyone if utilities stay in the marketplace.
 
The reason I think the commodities and utilities are being partially gov't supported in today's age is because of the low wages, unemployment and rising costs of living.

From the 1970's thru the 2000's I paid for water and believed it reasonable, but I'm afraid when I read about Detroit having half the population unable to afford their water services. People here in the US, who have the means, think that nothing like an uprising can happen here, but if you deny enough of the populace the basics of living, they'll fight for it.

Even if it's only temporarily, I wouldn't support letting people en-mass die of thirst or hunger in the US.
 
While I realize it may be impractical or impossible to implement, I'd be ok with making drinking water a fundamental human right.

What would satisfy such a right? Does someone have to refill the water bottle and bring it to you? Stick the straw in your mouth?

Drinking water doesn't need to be regarded as a fundamental human right any more than air does. We need it desperately, but it's ubiquitous enough that there's no point in declaring it a positive right. As a test, walk into any public place and claim to need a drink of water. See if you have trouble accessing some.

For all the nay-sayers, we spend TRILLIONS of dollars on ridiculous wars and give BILLIONS of dollars to foreign countries as aid, yet we can't afford the measly sum it would cost to subsidize drinking water?

We already do subsidize it. Government departments all over the country spend a ton of money annually on water collection and treatment as well as utility infrastructure maintenance and improvements to deliver it to where people live, whereafter we wash stuff with it and pour it down the drain, irrigate with it, and urinate and defecate into it.
 
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Of course we should pay for water, delivering safe clean water is not cheap.

This is correct. If you go to China everyone you know will say, 'don't drink the water.' And when you are there you will see the thermos of boiled water in every window sill. You will also see them drinking bottled water, and you will be encouraged to do so as well. We tend to think only other countries have problems with contaminated water. But where does your water come from? A well? A water district? Many water districts have processing plants that just recycle waste water from the sewer system back into the water it sells to you. Some get water from rivers which are very dirty. And others use wells, but the water is not clean enough by US standards, and so it has to be chlorinated. Our rivers, streams, lakes are contaminated, so I ask: Where in the US can you get potable water that is not the end product of human labor which costs money? Maybe somewhere there is a well that is not contaminated, but even here in rural KY, that is rare. I know of one that was just outside the water district that was so contaminated the health department mandated the water district to run lines to that house.
 
What would satisfy such a right? Does someone have to refill the water bottle and bring it to you? Stick the straw in your mouth?

Drinking water doesn't need to be regarded as a fundamental human right any more than air does. We need it desperately, but it's ubiquitous enough that there's no point in declaring it a positive right. As a test, walk into any public place and claim to need a drink of water. See if you have trouble accessing some.



We already do subsidize it. Government departments all over the country spend a ton of money annually on water collection and treatment as well as utility infrastructure maintenance and improvements to deliver it to where people live, whereafter we wash stuff with it and pour it down the drain, irrigate with it, and urinate and defecate into it.

In Europe you can't get tap water at a restaurant without paying several euro, but I think you're wearing first world blinders looking at the problem. Suitable drinking water is a scarce commodity in most parts of the world and many people die daily without it. In practice our government already has implemented a right to water -- water is a public utility in most places and as you already pointed out, it's subsidized. We have a right to education in this country, why should we not have a right to water as well? Fresh water is a scarce, natural resource whose ownership relies heavily on property law. What kind of situation could arise if the owners of all the fresh water sources decided to just stop selling or increase their prices 100 fold?

I know it's not super libertarian of me, but I simply think that the further our society progresses, more things should come under the umbrella of being guaranteed. (Not talking Iphones but rather basic necessities) We can afford to provide drinking water to the few people who still can't afford it. We give billions to other countries, and any one needy American citizen could have fresh drinking water for about 5 cents a day.

All of this is moot when it comes to the US because as we both kind of concluded, it's already pretty much defacto a right, and considering it's a natural resource I don't think it's too unreasonable to claim that it should be shared by all.
 
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Is the supplying of water a basic human right?

If you consider all the things the gov't spends our money on (defense, roads, bridges, justice system etc), should one of them be a simple necessity?





Nearly Half Of Detroit Water Customers Can’t Pay Their Bill « CBS Detroit

We have to make sure there is plenty of water for everybody in the most effective way possible. When people pay for water, it isn't wasted. If water was free it would be taken for granted and not respected.

It isn't about being nice or about who cares the most. It's about doing what works. Chose the method that works, then repeat.
 
No, water, along with the other basic needs to survive, should be a right. It's not that foreign of a concept.



In addition, to South Africa declaring housing as a constitutional right, as TheDemSocialist mentioned, Utah is essentially eliminating homelessness and guaranteeing housing as a right.

Utah is Ending Homelessness by Giving People Homes | NationofChange

One nation in the entire world, and there's no way they do it as is anyway. And no, Utah is not doing it.
 
The free market has many downfalls.

How would we know? We've never seen a completely free market.

(If this looks like the No True Scottsman fallacy used by socialists to explain away the failures of Soviet, Chinese, and Indian planned economies, that's because it is.)
 
This is correct. If you go to China everyone you know will say, 'don't drink the water.' And when you are there you will see the thermos of boiled water in every window sill. You will also see them drinking bottled water, and you will be encouraged to do so as well. We tend to think only other countries have problems with contaminated water. But where does your water come from? A well? A water district? Many water districts have processing plants that just recycle waste water from the sewer system back into the water it sells to you. Some get water from rivers which are very dirty. And others use wells, but the water is not clean enough by US standards, and so it has to be chlorinated. Our rivers, streams, lakes are contaminated, so I ask: Where in the US can you get potable water that is not the end product of human labor which costs money? Maybe somewhere there is a well that is not contaminated, but even here in rural KY, that is rare. I know of one that was just outside the water district that was so contaminated the health department mandated the water district to run lines to that house.

In Michigan, we have great well water. Sometimes you have to go really deep because the potato farms suck all the water out of the table at lesser depths, but the water is fantastic.
 
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