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Clean water is only valuable if someone can get for it greater than what it costs to extract. The aspect you're missing isn't a definition of value, but a mode

by bmelton 10y ago

Clean water is only valuable if someone can get for it greater than what it costs to extract. The aspect you're missing isn't a definition of value, but a model of sustainability. If there's industry enough in an area that there is some other way to pay for water extraction, production, cleaning (see Nevada) -- then water can be sold at a loss because it supports something else, and is sustainable so long as there a mechanism to keep it being so. The problem in Michigan is that the other way to pay for it isn't working, and the government doesn't have the revenues or a profit model to keep it going otherwise. Again, this would be true whether the government were capitalist, socialist, socially democratic, totalitarian or anything else. Economics are true whether or not your ideology agrees, but it shouldn't be controversial to assert that trying to sell luxury goods to Liberia (the poorest area in the world, last I checked) is fruitless, it should be easy enough to replace "luxury goods" with "water", or any other product and still be true.

macawfish 10y ago
I hear you saying that in Nevada, clean water is [economically] sustainable because of [gambling]. But I'm talking about ecological, biological sustainability, insofar as human life is concerned. So yeah, I'm dodging your financial model of sustainability altogether, intentionally, because in this case my entire ideological basis is irreconcilable with your model. water is not a product in my religion, as it is in yours
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  You're asking the wrong question. It isn't a question of whether the people of Flint should have clean water. The question is whether people should continue to live in Flint. And if the answer is no, spending a hundred million dollars to install pipes there makes no sense.
  - Applejinx 10y ago
    A related question is: should every single place to live be subject to the same conditions that produced Flint? I see a fundamental viewpoint conflict between the concept 'what created Flint was a persistent course of governance action stretching way back to the 60s and only exacerbated by municipal choices to destroy the infrastructure, and this is basically criminal behavior' and 'Flint is what it is because when subjected to natural law with all other things being equal, it was a big loser and never justified its existence. It atrophied rather than growing and thriving, and all such places should pretty much be disbanded, if possible before they deteriorate to such an extent.' Depend on it, if places to live have to operate on the basis of 'outcompeting OTHER places to live' just to exist at all, everywhere will be Flint except for a few places that are San Jose and San Francisco, with comparable rents (that being the primary metric showing you how much they won!). As soon as you sentence locations to economic death for losing that game, that's the inevitable result. This is because suffering or injured people, OR places, by definition are at a competitive disadvantage to places and people with no injury. It's redefining civilization as mercy killing, and this is a choice (and a choice that doesn't automatically have to be made in only one way).
    - bmelton 10y ago
      Places don't have to compete other places to be worth living in. Places where water extraction and delivery is relatively cheap, for example, need not produce very much in the way of value to be justified. Moreover, economic value can be created, and is not zero sum, meaning that two people, or two places may create value without being parasites on each other. The important thing though is just that somebody has to create some form of value -- value can be minimal, and value can be isolated, but there must be someone doing something of value for the math to work out, and for a variety of reasons, a tax-funded commune is very unlikely to work except in areas that are rich in resources, which Michigan is not known to be. (Though I could be very wrong on that)
      - macawfish 10y ago
        That's the thing here, Michigan has some of the most clean, abundant sources of water in the country, and $100,000,000 is not very much money for a long term investment of this much importance.
jahaja 10y ago
> Economics are true whether or not your ideology agrees This is not true. Hence the old name Political economy. There's no such thing as objective economics - much to the annoyance of usually libertarians. And to add to this discussion there's no way that this would happen and not be fixed where I live no matter the profitability of the municipality itself. If the municipality couldn't pay for it, the state would. And the sustainability, or "is it worth it? profitable?", question would barely come up because access to clean water is culturally deemed more or less a right.
- chii 10y ago
  people are just arguing over each other because the other's point of view is unimaginable. on the one hand, providing basic necessities which is deemed a basic human right, like clean water, is a no brainer. it should be done regardless, and if the city cannot afford it, it ought to be subsidized by an out of city entity like the state. on the other hand, what's the worth of these human lives? if it cost more money to keep a city running than the productivity it produces, it makes sense to cut it out. it leaves the resources that would've been allocated to be used elsewhere.
  - jahaja 10y ago
    Yes, the latter is deeply unethical in my book. If the same standards of "economical/business sense" are applied to more things, of equal necessity, it would create a completely dystopian society.
  - bmelton 10y ago
    For me, it's less a question of ideology and more of a question of where the money comes from. If the money is there, and will be there again in the future, then it doesn't really matter where it comes from, and I'm not suggesting that people should be denied access to water. However, if (in what I suspect is an extreme hypothetical) this $100 million dollars only guarantees water access for a few years, and they'll be asking for handouts when this money is spent, then the question of whether or not its sustainable should probably be asked. My only objection to the OP's assertion is that you can just build infrastructure out of tax dollars and call that sustainable. You can't, and it's been shown time and time again that it isn't tenable without some very special circumstances or conditions. There are circumstances applicable to Keynesian economics, but just paying one group of people to shovel holes in the day, and another group of people to fill them back up in the night time just doesn't work unless somebody, somewhere is producing something of value enough that it can subsidize this behavior. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, or perhaps he's not stating his case clearly, but that seems to be basically what he's suggesting.

by bmelton 10y ago

macawfish 10y ago

I hear you saying that in Nevada, clean water is [economically] sustainable because of [gambling]. But I'm talking about ecological, biological sustainability, insofar as human life is concerned. So yeah, I'm dodging your financial model of sustainability altogether, intentionally, because in this case my entire ideological basis is irreconcilable with your model. water is not a product in my religion, as it is in yours

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
You're asking the wrong question. It isn't a question of whether the people of Flint should have clean water. The question is whether people should continue to live in Flint. And if the answer is no, spending a hundred million dollars to install pipes there makes no sense.
- Applejinx 10y ago
  A related question is: should every single place to live be subject to the same conditions that produced Flint? I see a fundamental viewpoint conflict between the concept 'what created Flint was a persistent course of governance action stretching way back to the 60s and only exacerbated by municipal choices to destroy the infrastructure, and this is basically criminal behavior' and 'Flint is what it is because when subjected to natural law with all other things being equal, it was a big loser and never justified its existence. It atrophied rather than growing and thriving, and all such places should pretty much be disbanded, if possible before they deteriorate to such an extent.' Depend on it, if places to live have to operate on the basis of 'outcompeting OTHER places to live' just to exist at all, everywhere will be Flint except for a few places that are San Jose and San Francisco, with comparable rents (that being the primary metric showing you how much they won!). As soon as you sentence locations to economic death for losing that game, that's the inevitable result. This is because suffering or injured people, OR places, by definition are at a competitive disadvantage to places and people with no injury. It's redefining civilization as mercy killing, and this is a choice (and a choice that doesn't automatically have to be made in only one way).
  - bmelton 10y ago
    Places don't have to compete other places to be worth living in. Places where water extraction and delivery is relatively cheap, for example, need not produce very much in the way of value to be justified. Moreover, economic value can be created, and is not zero sum, meaning that two people, or two places may create value without being parasites on each other. The important thing though is just that somebody has to create some form of value -- value can be minimal, and value can be isolated, but there must be someone doing something of value for the math to work out, and for a variety of reasons, a tax-funded commune is very unlikely to work except in areas that are rich in resources, which Michigan is not known to be. (Though I could be very wrong on that)
    - macawfish 10y ago
      That's the thing here, Michigan has some of the most clean, abundant sources of water in the country, and $100,000,000 is not very much money for a long term investment of this much importance.

jahaja 10y ago

> Economics are true whether or not your ideology agrees This is not true. Hence the old name Political economy. There's no such thing as objective economics - much to the annoyance of usually libertarians. And to add to this discussion there's no way that this would happen and not be fixed where I live no matter the profitability of the municipality itself. If the municipality couldn't pay for it, the state would. And the sustainability, or "is it worth it? profitable?", question would barely come up because access to clean water is culturally deemed more or less a right.

chii 10y ago
people are just arguing over each other because the other's point of view is unimaginable. on the one hand, providing basic necessities which is deemed a basic human right, like clean water, is a no brainer. it should be done regardless, and if the city cannot afford it, it ought to be subsidized by an out of city entity like the state. on the other hand, what's the worth of these human lives? if it cost more money to keep a city running than the productivity it produces, it makes sense to cut it out. it leaves the resources that would've been allocated to be used elsewhere.
- jahaja 10y ago
  Yes, the latter is deeply unethical in my book. If the same standards of "economical/business sense" are applied to more things, of equal necessity, it would create a completely dystopian society.
- bmelton 10y ago
  For me, it's less a question of ideology and more of a question of where the money comes from. If the money is there, and will be there again in the future, then it doesn't really matter where it comes from, and I'm not suggesting that people should be denied access to water. However, if (in what I suspect is an extreme hypothetical) this $100 million dollars only guarantees water access for a few years, and they'll be asking for handouts when this money is spent, then the question of whether or not its sustainable should probably be asked. My only objection to the OP's assertion is that you can just build infrastructure out of tax dollars and call that sustainable. You can't, and it's been shown time and time again that it isn't tenable without some very special circumstances or conditions. There are circumstances applicable to Keynesian economics, but just paying one group of people to shovel holes in the day, and another group of people to fill them back up in the night time just doesn't work unless somebody, somewhere is producing something of value enough that it can subsidize this behavior. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, or perhaps he's not stating his case clearly, but that seems to be basically what he's suggesting.