Asklemmy

43948 readers

520 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

What's the craziest thing we just take as granted? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago by lom@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] jocanib@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

And we still get charged a fortune for it. Yay capitalism!

[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.one 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean you can collect rain water (or build your own bore hole), process it, treat it for storage, keep it, test it to verify that it’s still safe to drink, install and maintain a pumping system to provide pressure, provide adequate documentation and inspection opportunities, provide a traceable record of where it has come from, install a water water treatment system, provide the necessary permits to verify that you’re not draining polluted water into the ocean etc etc..

But I guess if you want someone else to do that for you, some salaries, know how and materials will need to get paid for, yes.

[–] jocanib@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, that's not how it works. If it was, there would be no privatised water companies because we're not all fucking daft. But we are ruled by kleptocrats so, you know. IMF Forces Water Privatization on Poor Countries

[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ve really tried but I’m still failing to understand your comment. You seem to be saying that if what I said was true, private water companies wouldn’t exist, due to the fact that people aren’t stupid. But we are ruled by people who steal and the IMF forces poor countries to private water processing.

Ok, so I get each individual word, but both as sentences and a paragraph I am either to thick to understand what you are saying or your explanation doesn’t make any sense.

If you try to to word it to me like I’m a dumb 4-year old I think we would have a better foundation for debate.

The best sense I can make of your statements is something along these lines: I (me, the author of this here comment) am dumb, because what I’ve described sounds sensible, but the real world is not sensible, and we can see evidence for that because private water companies exist. And they exist because our rulers steal from us.

Have I gotten close? Is that actually what you’re saying?

(If you have patience to reword things for me, please bear in mind that I do not live in the US, as you do, so my context is different to an American context).

[–] jocanib@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm not USian either.

There is no sense in allowing a private profit from a natural monopoly with no risk attached (we're never going to decide we can live without clean water and water is supplied geographically, you don't get to choose the provider). Demand will always be there and, as a society, we are much better off doing all the work you describe at cost. Lining the pockets of shareholders does not make any sense. But that is exactly what is happening.

I'm in the UK. It is an extremely sore point here: Water firms’ debts since privatisation hit £54bn as Ofwat refuses to impose limits

Ofwat is refusing to limit the soaring debts run up by water companies as research reveals the firms have outstanding borrowing of almost £54bn accrued since privatisation.

Customers are paying on average £80 or 20% of their water bill towards servicing debt and rewarding shareholders, according to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

The scale of debt, or gearing, taken on by the nine main water and sewerage companies in England is raising concerns about their financial stability as interest rates rise.

The level of net debt held by water companies is revealed as Guardian data shows the main water and sewerage firms in England have paid dividends to shareholders of £65.9bn up to 2022.

Note the £54bn in debt they're charging us 20% to cover (first para) compared to the £65.9bn they've doled out to idle shareholders (last para), mostly via tax havens, just to add insult to injury.

And the sewage they are spilling into our waterways because they have not invested in infrastructure. Why would they when they can hand the money to shareholders and rely on the govt not to make them meet even the most minimal of standards?

People are not stupid. There are overwhelming majorities in the UK for nationalising water (and rail, mail, energy, all the stuff that it makes no sense to privatise). But democracy does not mean shit when there's profit to be extracted. And the profiteers do their very best to make us stupid by insisting there is no other way and wearing everyone down until they believe it. Which is easy, because they own all the media so even if we don't entirely buy their bullshit, it's very hard to hear anything else above the din they're making.