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Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive. Water is a resource with a price, just like land or gasoline. If Google had a cheape
by kjksf 10y ago
Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive.
Water is a resource with a price, just like land or gasoline.
If Google had a cheaper way to cool their servers, they would.
If we have plenty of cheap water then we should use it to cool the server or for watering lawns or whatever.
If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so that it's cheaper for Google to use a different way of cooling.
If you make it about Google and cooling servers (and not about the price of water) then you might win a battle but you'll still lose the war because Google is only one of many entities that will eventually deplete water resources if they are not priced properly.
- RodericDay 10y agoAlso, old people have little to no economic use. We should dispose of them. Looking at everything as a psychopathic economic agent is fun!
- function_seven 10y agoThat’s a pretty uncharitable reading of parent comment. When things are not correctly priced, these issues will constantly crop up. A simpler thing to do would be to price common resources correctly and rebate those who have special needs (like old people, or the poor, etc.).
- olewhalehunter 10y agoEvery dollar spent keeping unemployed venerables alive is a dollar stolen from the young. Liquidating those near death should not be a controversial position.
- friedman23 10y agoWe use economics to understand how resources can be exchanged for human benefit. If google had offered 100 billion dollars for this water, none of us would believe it immoral for them to make this transaction because the money could be used for good by the community. Obviously however, 100 billion dollars is too high a price so the problem becomes not if it is immoral for google to take this water but what price is this water worth such that both google and the community come out ahead.
- ue_ 10y agoIn the case where the money goes to "the community", then sure, maybe. But are the people selling it doing it for the interests of the community? How is the money used to benefit the community? I am a Socialist myself, so perhaps that's why I am sceptical of the claim that 100 billion dollars would be enough to offset any kind of moral questions. Is it ethical to accept 100 billion dollars from an exploiter of labour?
- sctb 10y agoPlease don't post like this here. http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- michaelt 10y agoWater is a resource with a price, just like land or gasoline. I don't know about South Carolina, but as I understand it in the west of America this isn't the case, as the heaviest water users are subsidised by taxpayers. For example, in California alfalfa growers pay $70 for an acre-foot of water, while urban users in Los Angeles pay $1,000 per acre-foot. The growers use 34.1 million acre-feet a year, while urban use totals 8.9 million acre-feet a year. Needless to say, growers get very rich from this and make big political contributions; if they had to pay market rate they'd all be out of business pretty quickly. The political contributions work; voters widely support this baffling state of affairs.
- mikeash 10y agoIt still has a price. It just happens that the price is artificially low. That's why the comment you quoted said the price should be increased in this case.
- StephenConnell 10y agoCalifornia is a big state. Los Angeles is in a desert portion of the state. I have not researched where alfalfa is primarily grown but that is important information. You can see alfalfa test plots on this map are not in desert portions of the state. You can also see how much of the state is not a desert. http://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/-images/variety_map.gif http://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/-images/variety_map.gif Buying in bulk is different than buying just enough to drink. A bottle of water for $5 at a movie for example. Maybe the price of water in LA primarily covers infrastructure, not water. Their water does come from hundreds of miles away.
- setpatchaddress 10y agoNope. The water is largely coming through the same gross infrastructure. That map is not an accurate guide to regions of the state where arable water is directly available. Water issues in the west are complicated.
- sandworm101 10y agoSlightly different products. Water made available to a farmer, as in the farmer is allowed to pump it out of a local river, is different than clean and sanitized water delivered on demand through the tap in your downtown loft kitchen. The bottled water sold to passengers at 30,000 feet over the pacific en route to Japan is also a fundamentally different product. Water pricing is all about time and place, not necessarily volume.
- losteric 10y ago> Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive. Always? What happens when the market price of a biological necessity exceeds what some people can bid? If business utilization of a resource yields more economic value than the continued existence of some people, is the right choice to let them die?
- sologoub 10y agoSounds horrid, but this is the reality of many poor countries - we literally still have people around the struggling to find enough food to eat. Many of them are from countries with ongoing conflicts/wars, which likely cost more than the the food the people need to be properly nourished. To clarify - not saying it should be that way, quite the contrary.
- HarryHirsch 10y agoIf business utilization of a resource yields more economic value than the continued existence of some people, is the right choice to let them die? You mean Turing Pharmaceuticals raising the price of Daraprim to whatever the market will bear? People have issues with that, and for some reason for sixty years the price was closer to what the stuff costs to produce (i.e. USD 15 per dose, not USD 750. I'd like to know more about the ecosystem the original owners operated in, and why the price was so low for so long.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago> Economics beats morality. I can't tell if you're summarizing the problem or actually making a straight-faced assertion.
- Magnap 10y agoI read it as them saying "In practice, economics beats morality (so we'll have to change the economics of the situation if we want to fix this)".
- wyldfire 10y ago> If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so that it's cheaper for Google to use a different way of cooling. Agreed. But we always seem to fail to price-in the externalities for natural resources. Just like carbon dioxide emissions from energy production.
- themihai 10y agoThe government could change the economics with a tax on cooling down the servers with water so I believe the morality can beat pure economics.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- URSpider94 10y agoEven in this case, the business is operating on an economic basis. The state has just adjusted the costs to demand a different economic outcome.
- throw2016 10y agoMaybe there is a balance to be found. I think at the moment there is overwhelming interest in proper policy on environment and resources. There are tons of restrictions like zoning, and nearly any environmental, industrial, safety, labour regulation that sit outside the economic context.
- ew6082 10y agoAnd this is a 100% economic decision. With 1.5 million gpd, they would likely just be shotgunning groundwater through their cooling water system instead of using a closed loop system with chillers, and requisite power bill. Just another example of the tragedy of the commons.