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If you have competent government bottled water shouldn't be better than tap. I prefer tap because I find bottled tastes too little.
by alkonaut 3y ago
If you have competent government bottled water shouldn't be better than tap. I prefer tap because I find bottled tastes too little.
- acuozzo 3y agoHow could anyone know if their state government is competent? What if it's mostly competent, but the agency in charge of the water supply is the bad apple that spoils the whole bunch?
- margalabargala 3y agoHow could anyone know if the for-profit corporation selling them water is competent? If a bottled water company decided they could save a tiny amount switching to a plastic type that was legal but might give you cancer in 10 years, do you trust them not to do that? Anyone making that decision is thinking short term. By the time the harm becomes public they've enriched themselves and left. Government is less likely to knowingly poison you, and is probably about equally likely to unknowingly poison you.
- acuozzo 3y agoIs anyone involved in the Flint, MI crisis in prison right now? Private companies are not immune from consequences. I agree that it's still possible to be poisoned by bottled water, but there are a greater number of incentives in place to lessen the likelihood of it happening.
- yongjik 3y agoThe problem is that it's the job of the government to ensure that private companies meet their consequences. So, if you cannot trust government, you cannot trust private companies to not poison you either. I guess it's possible to have governments break down just enough to screw up the local water supply while not quite rolling in the bed with multinational companies yet, but I doubt such an arrangement would be stable for long.
- acuozzo 3y agoThere are free market consequences as well though. People at large very easily get spooked by a brand when numerous alternatives are available.
- orf 3y agoOf course! The free market consequences of people switching en-masse to another brand owned by the same conglomerate :)
- orwin 3y agoIsn't it what happened after a river contamination/Chemical spill scandal in WV? The company declared bankruptcy rather than pay the cleanup bills, but the owner and executives just started a new one, hired the same management, and everything is fine (for them), since taxpayers paid for the cleanup? I think the name of the company was "Freedom Industries", which makes it even more of a typical american "urban legend", but it is actually true. [edit] just looked it up, its called "Elk river cheminal spill" on wikipedia, and the exec actually used the same address and the same phone number to set up Lexycon LLC, the new company: they know they'll get away, they don't care to hide anymore.
- yongjik 3y agoMarket consequences for something like drinking water is such a wild concept. Forget lead, imagine how many can get dysentery before the bottled water business stops blaming random local Chinese restaurants the consumer went to the day before.
- margalabargala 3y agoSure, the survivors can swap to a new brand. Shame for everyone who died in the cholera outbreak though. Better hope that new brand isn't just the old one with a new label slapped on.
- alkonaut 3y ago> How could anyone know if their state government is competent? One way of knowing would be that you can see trustworthy water testing. That there are consequences (political, legal) for public officials when there is wrongdoing. That society seems to function. How would you know a company bottling water isn't incompetent?
- int_19h 3y agoIf you're concerned about this kind of thing, the only rational way to go about it is to test your water regularly (whether you drink from the tap or buy it bottled). Everything else is basically putting your trust in a bunch of random people whom you don't really know.
- binary132 3y agoWelp, time to build my own water lab
- Galatians4_16 3y agoTime to croudsource your water monitoring {1} 1. https://hackaday.com/2022/04/02/monitoring-water-quality-using-lots-of-sensors-and-machine-learning/ https://hackaday.com/2022/04/02/monitoring-water-quality-usi...
- BurningFrog 3y agoWith competent government, many big problems would disappear!
- matheusmoreira 3y ago> If you have competent government That's the biggest "if" I've ever seen.
- Galatians4_16 3y agoThat's an oxymoron. You might temporarily have competent individuals in government, but the organization as a whole is not incentivized for competence. Same goes for corporations, especially bigger ones.