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At the same time the right to water has been protected by UN as a basic human right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_water http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R

At the same time the right to water has been protected by UN as a basic human right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_water http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_water For this reason what happens when the price for water is raised and the consumers can't pay becomes a very interesting issue. Detroit has raised their prices and then started to cut off consumers that don't pay. Something UN has criticized Detroit for: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/26/united-nations-detroit-water-shutoffs_n_5533901.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/26/united-nations-detr... http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/u-n-to-intervene-in-detroit-water-shutoffs/ http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/u-n-to-intervene-in-detroit-water...

gaius 12y ago
It's the kind of "right" that only exists if other people provide it - people who quite reasonably, don't see your "right" as a reason they should work for free.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  This is also true of a right to own land, unless you are actually out there physically patrolling your property with an intent to stop someone from trespassing. And after you stop that person, who's to say you had the right to, and that the person's friends shouldn't come back and teach you the error of your ways? My point is, if you can't have water because someone else claims they own it, their ownership claim is backed up by the positive effort of others just as much as your claim to the water is, if not more so. "Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society." — Thomas Jefferson ( http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.... )
  - anon1385 12y ago
    >unless you are actually out there physically patrolling your property with an intent to stop someone from trespassing. It's worth noting that in some countries (Scotland, Norway) there is no such thing as trespass. So not only do you not have government assistance with preventing people walking on your land, you are not legally allowed to enforce that yourself either. On the topic of land ownership: A Scottish miner is walking home one evening with a brace of pheasants. He unexpectedly meets the landowner who informs him that this is his land and he better hand over the pheasants: 'Your land eh' asks the miner. 'Yes', replies the laird, 'and my pheasants.' 'And who did you get this land from?' 'Well, I inherited it from my father.' 'And who did he get it from?' the miner insists. 'His father of course. The land has been in my family for over 400 years' the laird splutters. 'OK, so how did your family come to own this land 400 years ago?' the miner asks. 'Well… well… they fought for it!' 'Fine,' replies the miner. 'Take your jacket off and I'll fight you for it now.'
    - arnsholt 12y ago
      At least in Norway, it's not quite that there's no notion of trespass. But it only applies to (from memory) within 100 metres of cultivated land and houses and such. So you can trespass, just not in the forests and mountains. The freedom to roam doesn't include the right to hunt wherever you want though. =)
    - arethuza 12y ago
      I don't think it's quite true to say there are no trespass laws in Scotland - there is still laws against aggravated and collective trespass and there is a rather long list of laws governing access to other peoples land. However, the general rule is that we do have a "right to roam" with the condition that people accessing land are sensible about it: http://www.outdooraccess-scotland.com/ http://www.outdooraccess-scotland.com/ Land ownership in Scotland is incredibly complex - I can recommend the book "The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it": http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No-Lawyers/dp/178027114X http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No-Lawyers/dp/178027114...
      - anon1385 12y ago
        That little story I quoted is actually from that book. I've yet to read most of it though.
        arethuza 12y ago
        I did recognise it - been a while since I read the book though! :-)
- gambiting 12y ago
  Hmmmm that's why we have democratic governments, and in some countries we have decided that since it's a right to have access to water, the government should handle distribution of water from our taxes. So people working at the facilities are still getting paid, but the water is provided for free* for any citizen. *yes, paid from the taxes, I feel like I need to point this out otherwise someone else will.
- JoachimS 12y ago
  No. It is a formal right that the United States among other countries has signed and thus mus adhere to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  Water as in a public water works is quite the public good. Given that water and sewage are closely related ( you can have sewage management without it, but it's riskier - we're talking outhouses, which require some management ), I'd be perfectly willing to help pay for poor people's water out of purest self interest. There's the problem of identifying who might be eligible, but I'm ignoring that for now.
slavik81 12y ago
This doesn't sound like a hard problem to solve. Give everyone a basic personal amount for free and charge for anything above that. Though basic individual usage is really not the problem, anyways. Households don't use all that much water, and most of it can be returned to the waterways after treatment. Water pricing is much more important for affecting the behaviour of businesses.
- muriithi 12y ago
  How will you define "everyone"? Will the government find out how many people live in a certain household and use that to arrive at a "basic personal amount" of water?
  - slavik81 12y ago
    There's lots of options, but a possible method would be to give a coupon code to individuals who ask for one. They could then apply it against the bill for their household. It's also not too expensive to err on the safe side and give out a generous personal amount. In the quantities that an individual uses, water is pretty darn cheap.
    - richthegeek 12y ago
      What quantifies as cheap? In the UK (central Manchester) we pay about ~£300 (~$500) per person per year.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - slavik81 12y ago
        I should probably have specified marginal cost. If I did my math right, it's a fraction of a cent per litre on the margin. The fixed costs are a large part of that total price.
  - rmc 12y ago
    Yes? "Want your free water supply for X people? Prove X to us"
icambron 12y ago
The right thing to do is decouple the pricing of water from the economic justice. Let water have a market price. Send money to poor people, which they can use on water or not water (it's crucially important that it's unrestricted money). You can even fund it with the extra revenue from the water sales. All the same benefits, but with less distortion. The value of money is that it enables markets; when markets fail poor people, instead of breaking the market (free parking in urban areas, rent control, etc), it's more beneficial for everyone to just give poor people money and let them participate.
madaxe_again 12y ago
Well, yes. Why do you think that the US and the UK, two profoundly pro-fracking (which isn't going to do anything nice to the availability and potability of water) nations, are both profoundly anti-human-rights - as are, inexplicably, their populaces, who seem to have forgotten that they too are human.
Omniusaspirer 12y ago
Detroit is an odd case because it's largely a case of exploitation by people who simply decided they didn't have to pay their water bill anymore- after all- who would dare to deprive someone of water?! That these people got bit in the ass on their delinquency doesn't really bother me. Here's a quote from the official report: "In May, for example, DWSD sent out 46,000 shut off notices. Of those, only 4,531 customers less than 10 percent of the total had their water service shut off for any period of time. Within 24 hours, 60 percent of the affected customers paid their accounts in full and had their service immediately restored. Forty percent of the remaining customers had their service restored within 48 hours." The people who honestly can't afford it should have mechanisms to waive their water bill costs but the above quote clearly shows that's a tiny fraction of the people who actually got shutoff notices. The trick of course is that many of these small minority needs to be proactively contacted by the city government since they're likely mentally ill/severely disabled and possibly lack the ability to take the initiative on their own.
- JoachimS 12y ago
  The thing is that all those arguments are fairly moot. The United States has signed the declaration of human rights and thus it cannot withhold water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...
  - icambron 12y ago
    Leaving aside the UDHR's enforceability in the US, the document doesn't actually include the word "water" or "drink". What it does include is this: > (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. IANAL and don't know much about international law, but I'm guessing that's what people mean when they talk about the right to water, since certainly water is necessary for health and on par with food and shelter, and it's reasonable to read water into that article. But it's hard to imagine that means the government can't use shutting off water as an enforcement mechanism for water prices. That would be largely the same as saying that right is actually not to have water, but to not pay for it. If you take that to mean "you don't have to pay for water", you're also saying you don't have to pay for clothes or housing. If I don't pay my rent, can the government enforce my eviction? Or does my right to housing supersede that? What if I have a huge house and piles of money? I think it makes more sense to say that you have a right to access water on reasonable and affordable terms. If you can afford water but opt not to, you're not being deprived of water in the relevant sense.

gaius 12y ago

It's the kind of "right" that only exists if other people provide it - people who quite reasonably, don't see your "right" as a reason they should work for free.

cbd1984 12y ago
This is also true of a right to own land, unless you are actually out there physically patrolling your property with an intent to stop someone from trespassing. And after you stop that person, who's to say you had the right to, and that the person's friends shouldn't come back and teach you the error of your ways? My point is, if you can't have water because someone else claims they own it, their ownership claim is backed up by the positive effort of others just as much as your claim to the water is, if not more so. "Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society." — Thomas Jefferson ( http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.... )
- anon1385 12y ago
  >unless you are actually out there physically patrolling your property with an intent to stop someone from trespassing. It's worth noting that in some countries (Scotland, Norway) there is no such thing as trespass. So not only do you not have government assistance with preventing people walking on your land, you are not legally allowed to enforce that yourself either. On the topic of land ownership: A Scottish miner is walking home one evening with a brace of pheasants. He unexpectedly meets the landowner who informs him that this is his land and he better hand over the pheasants: 'Your land eh' asks the miner. 'Yes', replies the laird, 'and my pheasants.' 'And who did you get this land from?' 'Well, I inherited it from my father.' 'And who did he get it from?' the miner insists. 'His father of course. The land has been in my family for over 400 years' the laird splutters. 'OK, so how did your family come to own this land 400 years ago?' the miner asks. 'Well… well… they fought for it!' 'Fine,' replies the miner. 'Take your jacket off and I'll fight you for it now.'
  - arnsholt 12y ago
    At least in Norway, it's not quite that there's no notion of trespass. But it only applies to (from memory) within 100 metres of cultivated land and houses and such. So you can trespass, just not in the forests and mountains. The freedom to roam doesn't include the right to hunt wherever you want though. =)
  - arethuza 12y ago
    I don't think it's quite true to say there are no trespass laws in Scotland - there is still laws against aggravated and collective trespass and there is a rather long list of laws governing access to other peoples land. However, the general rule is that we do have a "right to roam" with the condition that people accessing land are sensible about it: http://www.outdooraccess-scotland.com/ http://www.outdooraccess-scotland.com/ Land ownership in Scotland is incredibly complex - I can recommend the book "The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it": http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No-Lawyers/dp/178027114X http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No-Lawyers/dp/178027114...
    - anon1385 12y ago
      That little story I quoted is actually from that book. I've yet to read most of it though.
      - arethuza 12y ago
        I did recognise it - been a while since I read the book though! :-)
gambiting 12y ago
Hmmmm that's why we have democratic governments, and in some countries we have decided that since it's a right to have access to water, the government should handle distribution of water from our taxes. So people working at the facilities are still getting paid, but the water is provided for free* for any citizen. *yes, paid from the taxes, I feel like I need to point this out otherwise someone else will.
JoachimS 12y ago
No. It is a formal right that the United States among other countries has signed and thus mus adhere to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...
ArkyBeagle 12y ago
Water as in a public water works is quite the public good. Given that water and sewage are closely related ( you can have sewage management without it, but it's riskier - we're talking outhouses, which require some management ), I'd be perfectly willing to help pay for poor people's water out of purest self interest. There's the problem of identifying who might be eligible, but I'm ignoring that for now.

slavik81 12y ago

This doesn't sound like a hard problem to solve. Give everyone a basic personal amount for free and charge for anything above that. Though basic individual usage is really not the problem, anyways. Households don't use all that much water, and most of it can be returned to the waterways after treatment. Water pricing is much more important for affecting the behaviour of businesses.

muriithi 12y ago
How will you define "everyone"? Will the government find out how many people live in a certain household and use that to arrive at a "basic personal amount" of water?
- slavik81 12y ago
  There's lots of options, but a possible method would be to give a coupon code to individuals who ask for one. They could then apply it against the bill for their household. It's also not too expensive to err on the safe side and give out a generous personal amount. In the quantities that an individual uses, water is pretty darn cheap.
  - richthegeek 12y ago
    What quantifies as cheap? In the UK (central Manchester) we pay about ~£300 (~$500) per person per year.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - slavik81 12y ago
      I should probably have specified marginal cost. If I did my math right, it's a fraction of a cent per litre on the margin. The fixed costs are a large part of that total price.
- rmc 12y ago
  Yes? "Want your free water supply for X people? Prove X to us"

icambron 12y ago

The right thing to do is decouple the pricing of water from the economic justice. Let water have a market price. Send money to poor people, which they can use on water or not water (it's crucially important that it's unrestricted money). You can even fund it with the extra revenue from the water sales. All the same benefits, but with less distortion. The value of money is that it enables markets; when markets fail poor people, instead of breaking the market (free parking in urban areas, rent control, etc), it's more beneficial for everyone to just give poor people money and let them participate.

madaxe_again 12y ago

Well, yes. Why do you think that the US and the UK, two profoundly pro-fracking (which isn't going to do anything nice to the availability and potability of water) nations, are both profoundly anti-human-rights - as are, inexplicably, their populaces, who seem to have forgotten that they too are human.

Omniusaspirer 12y ago

Detroit is an odd case because it's largely a case of exploitation by people who simply decided they didn't have to pay their water bill anymore- after all- who would dare to deprive someone of water?! That these people got bit in the ass on their delinquency doesn't really bother me. Here's a quote from the official report: "In May, for example, DWSD sent out 46,000 shut off notices. Of those, only 4,531 customers less than 10 percent of the total had their water service shut off for any period of time. Within 24 hours, 60 percent of the affected customers paid their accounts in full and had their service immediately restored. Forty percent of the remaining customers had their service restored within 48 hours." The people who honestly can't afford it should have mechanisms to waive their water bill costs but the above quote clearly shows that's a tiny fraction of the people who actually got shutoff notices. The trick of course is that many of these small minority needs to be proactively contacted by the city government since they're likely mentally ill/severely disabled and possibly lack the ability to take the initiative on their own.

JoachimS 12y ago
The thing is that all those arguments are fairly moot. The United States has signed the declaration of human rights and thus it cannot withhold water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...
- icambron 12y ago
  Leaving aside the UDHR's enforceability in the US, the document doesn't actually include the word "water" or "drink". What it does include is this: > (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. IANAL and don't know much about international law, but I'm guessing that's what people mean when they talk about the right to water, since certainly water is necessary for health and on par with food and shelter, and it's reasonable to read water into that article. But it's hard to imagine that means the government can't use shutting off water as an enforcement mechanism for water prices. That would be largely the same as saying that right is actually not to have water, but to not pay for it. If you take that to mean "you don't have to pay for water", you're also saying you don't have to pay for clothes or housing. If I don't pay my rent, can the government enforce my eviction? Or does my right to housing supersede that? What if I have a huge house and piles of money? I think it makes more sense to say that you have a right to access water on reasonable and affordable terms. If you can afford water but opt not to, you're not being deprived of water in the relevant sense.