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Water is fungible. If they need to pipe in 1 gallon of water, who pays the extra cost? The entity that used the last gallon? The entity that used the most? Nah.
by jncfhnb 2y ago
Water is fungible. If they need to pipe in 1 gallon of water, who pays the extra cost? The entity that used the last gallon? The entity that used the most? Nah. It’s averaged out across all users.
You also cannot scale up these alternative sources at will. They need to be sustainably
commercially viable.
- Robotbeat 2y agoRight, so just make Amazon pay whatever is a commercially sustainable price. This shouldn’t be particularly hard.
- actionfromafar 2y agoDeregulation is good, they said. Don't be an alarmist, they said.
- Robotbeat 2y ago? Yeah, actually, deregulated water would mean Amazon would have to pay the full price instead of a subsidized price for water.
- actionfromafar 2y agoAnd if it turns out that Amazon would still "win" the price fight over the people who lived there before Amazon came there, it's all good? And who owns the water? Anyone with a plot of land who can access the watertable? Anyone with a plot of land next to a river? What about those downriver from that plot? "Deregulation" is as meaningless as "defund the police". If you scratch the surface it can mean anything between total anarchy and "keep only this specific set of laws that I believe are good". What's needed is regulation which promotes a wanted outcome.
- Robotbeat 2y agoI was responding to someone who made a joke about an obvious mispricing by the govt as being due to deregulation when it’s really the opposite. As far as who owns the water, well for mineral water sources, I’d say the citizens do, and the best way to handle that is probably still to charge Amazon the same amount and then use the proceeds as tax revenue for the general welfare so the people don’t have to be so poor in the first place.
- jncfhnb 2y agoThat means _everyone_ pays the higher price. Water is fungible. You can tax them if you want. But you can’t expect market forces to do it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ketzo 2y agoWait, what? Utilities all over the world have rate systems that offer higher or lower prices based on who's paying. "Water is fungible" doesn't mean that you can't charge Amazon more for it than you do the little old lady down the street. I'm not saying that the current rate systems in Mexico, or California, or XYZ place are perfect -- far from it! But there's no reason they couldn't be changed to fit society's goals.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago>> Water is fungible I call bullshit & shenanigans on this. Water is not money. A certain grade of crude oil can be fungible, but what about after it’s used? There are many types of water: potable clean water being essential to human existence, but other less pure types can be used in agriculture and industrial applications. Once water is used, or before it can be reused, processing and transportation is necessary, and that represents significant cost. The cost of processing or transporting money is negligible enough to make it really fungible and usable. Water is heavy, wet, and more volatile than that quarter in your pocket!
- samatman 2y agoThe existence of various grades of a commodity says nothing about whether that commodity at those grades is fungible. Mostly it implies the opposite, in fact.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoBut you can't then say unqualified that "water is fungible". Sewer water is not fungible with potable water. Greywater is not fungible with distilled or RO water. I'm not convinced that sewer water is fungible at all, considering its unknown content!
- samatman 2y agoPeople do this all the time actually. "Cotton is fungible", "oil is fungible". The grading is assumed.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoI will remember this next time Amazon tries to ship me Artesian Spring Deuterium or Tritium to me, and extra shipping/handling charges apply There are two tremendous storage reservoirs full of dihydrogen monoxide here, but only the cats and toddlers drink it. Birds have wised up.
- 2y ago