5 ms·

There's a war being waged on whether or not we're going to allow certain institutions to belong to the commons. If certain industries had their way, every sip o

There's a war being waged on whether or not we're going to allow certain institutions to belong to the commons. If certain industries had their way, every sip of water and every breath of air would have an associated cost and market value. Can't afford to pay? It's unfortunate, but that's your own fault. Every time we encode and reinforce these systems through laws, market mechanisms, and now AI, we tacitly agree that people who cannot afford such things do not deserve them. If you can't afford private healthcare before the 0 cost system was implemented to decide that well... best of luck!

philjohn 4y ago
If you haven't, check out the musical "Urinetown". Private toilets are banned, and all of the public conveniences are owned by a megacord - the UGC (Urine Good Company).
- mort96 4y ago
  I love that pun. It's pronounced exactly the same as "you're in good company".
- to11mtm 4y ago
  TBH The ending of that musical ruined it for me; The people 'take back control' only to squander the water and die of thirst. Sooo... Corporations are bad, but people are bad anyway so it doesn't matter? IDK. Might be a product of it's age (bitter endings were big back then, right?)
  - philjohn 4y ago
    I read the ending differently - it's got two distinct parts. The first is a warning on populism - it falls apart quickly in the face of reality. Promising easy solutions to hard problems. The other is the Malthusian trap (explicitly nodded to with the "Hail Malthus") line.
CWuestefeld 4y ago
In principle, if we paid MORE attention to property rights around these resources, we wouldn't be in the situation we find ourselves with respect to air and water pollution, carbon emissions, and so forth. If there were an owner, somehow, of the air, or the air over my house, or something, then when other entities are trying to externalize their own costs (by way of dumping carbon into the air, say), then we'd be able to use vanilla tort law to recover those costs as damages. I'm not saying we should necessarily do that - obviously there are big questions about just whose bit of water this is, and how to determine who's causing the damages. But if we could somehow answer those questions, it seems like the market could supply the answer. That, to me, suggests that moving in the opposite direction is not obviously the best answer.
- zukzuk 4y ago
  Keep in mind property rights can have the opposite effect too — impinging on the greater good in favour of the property rights of the few. The obvious example being NIMBYism; for example higher density construction that would benefit the city gets blocked by low-density homeowners who don't want their property negatively affected.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  That seems to be more or less the approach we've taken to date and it's set up a whack a mole game that we appear to be losing. Get in trouble for air pollution, convert to water pollution, the media gets upset about some chemical you release, then convert it into something no one's thought to regulate yet. We don't have infinite time to play like this.
  - CWuestefeld 4y ago
    That seems to be more or less the approach we've taken to date I can't see this at all. Can you provide any example of property rights actually being vested in air or in water? By comparison, if we talk about pollution of the soil, we don't have very much of a problem there. I mean, it happens. Like people's oil tanks leak, but that's a big part of the reason that we no longer build houses with oil-fired heat. I knew an environmental attorney who talked about the horrors of the liability when a homeowner's oil leach into the soil. This has taught us not to do that anymore. But precisely because no particular entity owns the atmosphere, or (in most cases) the water, there's nobody that has standing to recover those externalized costs of pollution. So we haven't gone that route, and the problem remains largely unfixed.
alexpotato 4y ago
> If certain industries had their way, every sip of water and every breath of air would have an associated cost and market value. For those of you who think this isn't happening with basic resources like water, let me point you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War
- DrThunder 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - gotoeleven 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - harold_b 4y ago
      [dead]
    - tnel77 4y ago
      I had to double check to make sure I wasn’t on Reddit.
  - 8note 4y ago
    That fight being one of forcing power brokers to not monopolize on them - democratization, not conquering
cassepipe 4y ago
Maurice Godelier is a very interesting anthropologist according to me. I remember reading from him that one thing that he observed in all societies he studied is that some things are meant to circulate, to be sold, give, whatever, and some other things are meant to be kept/preserved. Maybe it's ok to keep some things out of the market's reach
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  We don't tolerate that kind of commie-talk round these parts.
DrThunder 4y ago
Ah yes, the conclusion the terribly government run health care system is that it's the private industry's fault and we should give that same inept institution more power over our medical care. Makes total sense. Everything costs something, it's just a matter of who you force that cost on to.
- hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
  Medicare Advantage plans are run by private companies. I think you might be confusing Medicare Advantage with traditional Medicare.
  - DrThunder 4y ago
    No, I understand that. You realize the government approves the plans right? You also realize the government still thinks the ACA was a god send? Traditional Medicare sucks too though. The fix for our medical system is to bring pricing down, while incentivizing innovation and not allowing your medical system to get overwhelmed by individuals that aren't contributing any money into it. You can have an argument about how to best do that but the current government backed options aren't cutting.
    - bandofthehawk 4y ago
      > not allowing your medical system to get overwhelmed by individuals that aren't contributing any money into it So your proposal is that we let the poor die?
      - DrThunder 4y ago
        Your proposal is that we wave a magical wand and suddenly medical care costs nothing and doctors, nurses, etc. don't need to be paid well? If we're going to play this silly game of absolutes, you're envisioning a utopia that cannot exist.
      - wombatpm 4y ago
        No. But until we acknowledge that we can pay for it directly, pay for it indirectly with packed ERs and dubious means testing and bureaucracy, or let the poor die are the only options we are never going to solve it
LocalH 4y ago
They already do this in some areas, in the US. There are places where you cannot legally collect rainwater that falls on your own property. The only reason they haven't started charging for air yet is because they haven't figured out the logistics to enable doing so /s

philjohn 4y ago

If you haven't, check out the musical "Urinetown". Private toilets are banned, and all of the public conveniences are owned by a megacord - the UGC (Urine Good Company).

mort96 4y ago
I love that pun. It's pronounced exactly the same as "you're in good company".
to11mtm 4y ago
TBH The ending of that musical ruined it for me; The people 'take back control' only to squander the water and die of thirst. Sooo... Corporations are bad, but people are bad anyway so it doesn't matter? IDK. Might be a product of it's age (bitter endings were big back then, right?)
- philjohn 4y ago
  I read the ending differently - it's got two distinct parts. The first is a warning on populism - it falls apart quickly in the face of reality. Promising easy solutions to hard problems. The other is the Malthusian trap (explicitly nodded to with the "Hail Malthus") line.

CWuestefeld 4y ago

In principle, if we paid MORE attention to property rights around these resources, we wouldn't be in the situation we find ourselves with respect to air and water pollution, carbon emissions, and so forth. If there were an owner, somehow, of the air, or the air over my house, or something, then when other entities are trying to externalize their own costs (by way of dumping carbon into the air, say), then we'd be able to use vanilla tort law to recover those costs as damages. I'm not saying we should necessarily do that - obviously there are big questions about just whose bit of water this is, and how to determine who's causing the damages. But if we could somehow answer those questions, it seems like the market could supply the answer. That, to me, suggests that moving in the opposite direction is not obviously the best answer.

zukzuk 4y ago
Keep in mind property rights can have the opposite effect too — impinging on the greater good in favour of the property rights of the few. The obvious example being NIMBYism; for example higher density construction that would benefit the city gets blocked by low-density homeowners who don't want their property negatively affected.
jrumbut 4y ago
That seems to be more or less the approach we've taken to date and it's set up a whack a mole game that we appear to be losing. Get in trouble for air pollution, convert to water pollution, the media gets upset about some chemical you release, then convert it into something no one's thought to regulate yet. We don't have infinite time to play like this.
- CWuestefeld 4y ago
  That seems to be more or less the approach we've taken to date I can't see this at all. Can you provide any example of property rights actually being vested in air or in water? By comparison, if we talk about pollution of the soil, we don't have very much of a problem there. I mean, it happens. Like people's oil tanks leak, but that's a big part of the reason that we no longer build houses with oil-fired heat. I knew an environmental attorney who talked about the horrors of the liability when a homeowner's oil leach into the soil. This has taught us not to do that anymore. But precisely because no particular entity owns the atmosphere, or (in most cases) the water, there's nobody that has standing to recover those externalized costs of pollution. So we haven't gone that route, and the problem remains largely unfixed.

alexpotato 4y ago

> If certain industries had their way, every sip of water and every breath of air would have an associated cost and market value. For those of you who think this isn't happening with basic resources like water, let me point you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War

DrThunder 4y ago
[flagged]
- gotoeleven 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - harold_b 4y ago
    [dead]
  - tnel77 4y ago
    I had to double check to make sure I wasn’t on Reddit.
- 8note 4y ago
  That fight being one of forcing power brokers to not monopolize on them - democratization, not conquering

cassepipe 4y ago

Maurice Godelier is a very interesting anthropologist according to me. I remember reading from him that one thing that he observed in all societies he studied is that some things are meant to circulate, to be sold, give, whatever, and some other things are meant to be kept/preserved. Maybe it's ok to keep some things out of the market's reach

CatWChainsaw 4y ago
We don't tolerate that kind of commie-talk round these parts.

DrThunder 4y ago

Ah yes, the conclusion the terribly government run health care system is that it's the private industry's fault and we should give that same inept institution more power over our medical care. Makes total sense. Everything costs something, it's just a matter of who you force that cost on to.

hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
Medicare Advantage plans are run by private companies. I think you might be confusing Medicare Advantage with traditional Medicare.
- DrThunder 4y ago
  No, I understand that. You realize the government approves the plans right? You also realize the government still thinks the ACA was a god send? Traditional Medicare sucks too though. The fix for our medical system is to bring pricing down, while incentivizing innovation and not allowing your medical system to get overwhelmed by individuals that aren't contributing any money into it. You can have an argument about how to best do that but the current government backed options aren't cutting.
  - bandofthehawk 4y ago
    > not allowing your medical system to get overwhelmed by individuals that aren't contributing any money into it So your proposal is that we let the poor die?
    - DrThunder 4y ago
      Your proposal is that we wave a magical wand and suddenly medical care costs nothing and doctors, nurses, etc. don't need to be paid well? If we're going to play this silly game of absolutes, you're envisioning a utopia that cannot exist.
    - wombatpm 4y ago
      No. But until we acknowledge that we can pay for it directly, pay for it indirectly with packed ERs and dubious means testing and bureaucracy, or let the poor die are the only options we are never going to solve it

LocalH 4y ago

They already do this in some areas, in the US. There are places where you cannot legally collect rainwater that falls on your own property. The only reason they haven't started charging for air yet is because they haven't figured out the logistics to enable doing so /s