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> trading with water is... dangerous... Do you pay a water bill where you live? If so isn't that already "trading with water"?

by zodiac 6y ago

kevingadd 6y ago
Your water bill (theoretically) funds the infrastructure that treats and delivers your water. It's not as if you can bottle it at home and resell it on the market, in most cases you would need to set up a corporation and make an official deal with the relevant parties This is like claiming that paying your garbage bill or firefighting bill (in places that charge for it) is "trading" your sanitation or protection from having your house burn down. They're services, not products.
- zodiac 6y ago
  I guess I don't understand the difference between paying for "water-delivery-and-treatment-infrastructure-and-operational-costs", and paying for "water". I can't fufil these water futures by just transferring legal ownership of a piece of land (that I owned) that contains a saltwater lake. Even after defining what the difference is... I'd be interested in understanding what makes trading in "water-delivery-and-treatment-infrastructure-and-operational-costs" OK, but trading in "water" not OK
  - mola 6y ago
    The main difference is the isn't any speculation involved. No one have the financial incentive to create artificial scarcity. This is a major advantage when talking about the most basic of life needs.
    - zodiac 6y ago
      Why is there no incentive to create artificial scarcity in the "water-delivery-and-treatment" market?
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    When you buy bottled water you're buying water by volume at a price set by the company that manufactured it, pre-packaged. They set the price based on the costs they incur to bottle it - beyond what you would pay to get the same water as a civilian, in part because creating shelf-stable bottled water is more difficult and expensive than producing regular tap water. To get water, that factory is paying for delivery and treatment infrastructure and ongoing maintenance costs for their equipment. Your water bill similarly covers those ongoing costs. If you buy a pack of bottled water and it leaks, nobody from the bottling company is going to come patch that hole and refill the bottle. This is almost the same as the distinction between paying your electricity bill and buying a pre-charged battery.
- eru 6y ago
  Why do you make such a difference between products and services?
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    As an ordinary civilian I can't buy a year's worth of electricity and stack it up in the corner of my house (some sort of enormous tesla powerwall aside), and I can't buy a year's worth of tap water and store it in a giant tank in my bedroom. Doing that sort of thing would require a bunch of infrastructure that I don't own. Instead, I pay monthly to have both electricity and water available on demand, and the cost is based on how much I use. Long-term storage like that also would introduce additional problems, like the passive discharge of batteries or the need to store water in special containers that won't leach chemicals into it and won't allow the growth of naturally occurring algae. For water I could certainly buy a bunch of bottled water and keep it in the kitchen, but how am I going to run that through my faucets to wash my hands or run it through my showerhead? You can certainly do all that - and people in areas with limited access to tap water have to - but it's not something the average person is going to do. Where your tap water comes from is also a factor here. When I lived in a rural area growing up, our water was well water - there was literally no way for us to stock up a month worth of that in advance, because we relied on the natural return of water into the soil to ensure we had a supply to draw from in the well. Things like desalination also have limited throughput, so if you max that out the only way to get more water is to take it from someone else.

> trading with water is... dangerous... Do you pay a water bill where you live? If so isn't that already "trading with water"?

by zodiac 6y ago

> trading with water is... dangerous... Do you pay a water bill where you live? If so isn't that already "trading with water"?

kevingadd 6y ago

Your water bill (theoretically) funds the infrastructure that treats and delivers your water. It's not as if you can bottle it at home and resell it on the market, in most cases you would need to set up a corporation and make an official deal with the relevant parties This is like claiming that paying your garbage bill or firefighting bill (in places that charge for it) is "trading" your sanitation or protection from having your house burn down. They're services, not products.

zodiac 6y ago
I guess I don't understand the difference between paying for "water-delivery-and-treatment-infrastructure-and-operational-costs", and paying for "water". I can't fufil these water futures by just transferring legal ownership of a piece of land (that I owned) that contains a saltwater lake. Even after defining what the difference is... I'd be interested in understanding what makes trading in "water-delivery-and-treatment-infrastructure-and-operational-costs" OK, but trading in "water" not OK
- mola 6y ago
  The main difference is the isn't any speculation involved. No one have the financial incentive to create artificial scarcity. This is a major advantage when talking about the most basic of life needs.
  - zodiac 6y ago
    Why is there no incentive to create artificial scarcity in the "water-delivery-and-treatment" market?
- kevingadd 6y ago
  When you buy bottled water you're buying water by volume at a price set by the company that manufactured it, pre-packaged. They set the price based on the costs they incur to bottle it - beyond what you would pay to get the same water as a civilian, in part because creating shelf-stable bottled water is more difficult and expensive than producing regular tap water. To get water, that factory is paying for delivery and treatment infrastructure and ongoing maintenance costs for their equipment. Your water bill similarly covers those ongoing costs. If you buy a pack of bottled water and it leaks, nobody from the bottling company is going to come patch that hole and refill the bottle. This is almost the same as the distinction between paying your electricity bill and buying a pre-charged battery.
eru 6y ago
Why do you make such a difference between products and services?
- kevingadd 6y ago
  As an ordinary civilian I can't buy a year's worth of electricity and stack it up in the corner of my house (some sort of enormous tesla powerwall aside), and I can't buy a year's worth of tap water and store it in a giant tank in my bedroom. Doing that sort of thing would require a bunch of infrastructure that I don't own. Instead, I pay monthly to have both electricity and water available on demand, and the cost is based on how much I use. Long-term storage like that also would introduce additional problems, like the passive discharge of batteries or the need to store water in special containers that won't leach chemicals into it and won't allow the growth of naturally occurring algae. For water I could certainly buy a bunch of bottled water and keep it in the kitchen, but how am I going to run that through my faucets to wash my hands or run it through my showerhead? You can certainly do all that - and people in areas with limited access to tap water have to - but it's not something the average person is going to do. Where your tap water comes from is also a factor here. When I lived in a rural area growing up, our water was well water - there was literally no way for us to stock up a month worth of that in advance, because we relied on the natural return of water into the soil to ensure we had a supply to draw from in the well. Things like desalination also have limited throughput, so if you max that out the only way to get more water is to take it from someone else.