Nestle CEO: Declaring water a public right "an extreme solution"

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

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American Live Wire

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTqvBhFVdvE&feature=player_embedded

[politicus]

HP.

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

Of course not, because he could very well afford privatised water.

[Napoleon]

What a dick.

[Torie]

Water rights exist out there worth billions of dollars. Water law is a blast.  Public versus private rights is such an awesomely complex web.

The dude is not talking about "access" to water (I'm sure he has no problem with navigable rivers being in the public domain for transit), but use or consumption of water, which has a price, which should be valued by the market. We all pay for water bills. You give subsidies for those who can't afford it. Whether farmers should get subsidies to grow stuff otherwise not economic to grow, because they are not paying for the full value of the water input, has been controversial since rocks cooled. I think the answer is in general no, but that's just me.

[badgate]

This doesn't even surprise me. Nestle sells large packs of water bottles at every grocery store.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Whenever I start thinking corporations are good, I see something like this.

[Lambsbread]

Whenever I start thinking corporations are good, I see something like this.

You think that in the first place?

[minionofmidas]

Corporations are as good or bad as their corporate culture and the people that thrive in it.

And thus pretty evil, even the "best" of them.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Whenever I start thinking corporations are good, I see something like this.

You think that in the first place?

By "good", I meant "not actively bad".

[Lambsbread]

Whenever I start thinking corporations are good, I see something like this.

You think that in the first place?

By "good", I meant "not actively bad".

You think that in the first place?

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Why should it?  Only the best and brightest of us should be drinking water.  There's plenty of Kool Aid and Diet RC Cola to go around for the plebeians. 

[muon2]

Most water to consumers around here is either by municipal utility or investor-owned utility. It depends who owns the pipes. In general there are no subsidies for low income users. So access but not supply seems to be the public guarantee.

A small fraction of the population pays to drill its own well, but that's only permitted when no utility is available to serve the customer, and if the well water meets certain standards. Farms tend to be the biggest user of this last category, but if they have insufficient well water, they have to buy from some other source. Even for those supplied by their own well the market influences drilling and maintenance.

[Oak Hills]

This guy can't be for real...

[DemPGH]

I guess there isn't a good way right at the moment to try to price poor people out of Oxygen (and maybe there isn't a shortage of that), so of course corporate culture will try it with water, at least if I understand this appalling suggestion correctly. So they'll price poor folks out of water and construct dumps and such things in the poor neighborhoods (I had a really awesome professor as an undergrad back in the day who had done a thesis on the location of dumps and things like that - political science or geography if I remember). But an obvious and total HP is this CEO. But most are HPs, it's just to what degree, and this is one of the worst, evidently.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I know I'll come across here as an HP, but I agree somewhat with the evil CEO in this case.  There are costs to providing potable water, and hiding those costs from its users inevitably leads to inefficient use of the resource.  By and large, most of live in water rich areas where potable water can be treated as effectively an infinite resource and the costs of providing it are so small, especially in comparison to our own wealth, that it seems silly to argue against it being a right.  However, in poor, water scarce regions our system may very well not make sense.

For example, rather than piping potable water to every domicile, in water scarce regions, it might well make more sense to pipe water only of a quality suitable for toilets and cleaning, which can be done more cheaply, and leave the relatively small amount of water actually consumed to be provided via other means. Once you get potable water distribution out of the pipes, it no longer is a utility but a good.  Utilities with their considerable infrastructure work best as public entities either run directly by the government or as government regulated monopolies.  Distribution of goods on the other hand generally benefits from having a multiplicity of private providers competing on price and quality.

Granted, he has an obvious self-interest in seeing potable water moving as far away from the public utility model as can be done. Still, simply poo-pooing the idea because of its source is ludicrous.  For areas with abundant access to high-quality water, such as most of Europe and North America, it's not a very good idea.  But for those areas with minimal access, I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.  Granted, ensuring adequate supplies of water to the indigent is a problem, but it's the same problem as with ensuring adequate supplies of food.  There is no reason why the systems in place for food cannot work for water.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I know I'll come across here as an HP, but I agree somewhat with the evil CEO in this case.  There are costs to providing potable water, and hiding those costs from its users inevitably leads to inefficient use of the resource.  By and large, most of live in water rich areas where potable water can be treated as effectively an infinite resource and the costs of providing it are so small, especially in comparison to our own wealth, that it seems silly to argue against it being a right.  However, in poor, water scarce regions our system may very well not make sense.

For example, rather than piping potable water to every domicile, in water scarce regions, it might well make more sense to pipe water only of a quality suitable for toilets and cleaning, which can be done more cheaply, and leave the relatively small amount of water actually consumed to be provided via other means. Once you get potable water distribution out of the pipes, it no longer is a utility but a good.  Utilities with their considerable infrastructure work best as public entities either run directly by the government or as government regulated monopolies.  Distribution of goods on the other hand generally benefits from having a multiplicity of private providers competing on price and quality.

Granted, he has an obvious self-interest in seeing potable water moving as far away from the public utility model as can be done. Still, simply poo-pooing the idea because of its source is ludicrous.  For areas with abundant access to high-quality water, such as most of Europe and North America, it's not a very good idea.  But for those areas with minimal access, I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.  Granted, ensuring adequate supplies of water to the indigent is a problem, but it's the same problem as with ensuring adequate supplies of food.  There is no reason why the systems in place for food cannot work for water.

The system in place for food doesn't work.  We grow enough food to feed the world.  And yet a huge portion of the world goes hungry.  Our private food system actively prices people out of adequate food... and we let grain rot in silos.

The privatization of water will only hurt people.  Because the purpose of any and all business is to make money... not provide people with a product.  Surely a massive behemoth like Nestle is a great example of that.  And that's why it would never work.

[bballrox4717]

I hate agreeing with this guy, but he's right. If food is privatized, why shouldn't water be as well?

Reality: we already pay for everything necessary in life. Our health, water, food, schooling, shelter, etc, whether it's through bills or taxes. You live as you earn. What matters is that people in other countries do not earn enough money for basic necessities. This is the issue that we need to fix. To try to help them through welfare is only going to exacerbate the problem.

[Mr.Phips]

Of course he thinks that, his company is one of the top water retailers. 

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Fun fact: he never actually said, "Access to water should not be a public right."  (Of course, I doubt that the original poster will actually admit that he didn't watch the video he posted so that he would've realized this).

He's talking about his opinion that water should be treated like it has a market value.

And I tend to agree with him.  That doesn't mean that only corporations should have access to water, and that's not what he's saying.  But if a corporation can go out and bottle water, they should have the ability to sell it.

[John Dibble]

Water is a resource to be managed, but it's one of the ones I'd rather the government manage given that it's a natural monopoly for which there isn't a good workaround. There are only so many sources we can get them from in a given area - so what, is a corporation going to buy the whole of a river or a large lake? That just doesn't work.

[Torie]

Snowguy, it is one thing to be able to grow food for a certain price. It is another for folks to have the funds to buy it. Two different issues. In that regard, I would note that an econometrics study by a professor at Iowa State in Ames, concluded that the ethanol heist pushes up the world price of corn by about 3 bucks a bushel. That one program is probably doing more to spread hunger in the poorest parts of this planet, than all the other ill conceived public policies combines, and indeed that one heist may more than offset all the transfer payments of one kind or the other to mitigate hunger.  Yet, few consciences among those in the know are shocked. If I had celebrity, I would make it my business for those in the know, to be a far larger cohort than those in the know at present. It's pure unadulterated evil.

And if you want beyond getting rid of the ethanol heist to push food prices down, think about revamping that wetlands law run amok, that keeps a lot of very efficient crop growing land out of production, in exchange for the government giving the wetland owners checks - like say to me.

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

Torie, do you have a link to that study?  I want to read more about this.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Torie, do you have a link to that study?  I want to read more about this.

Torie is right, corn based ethanol is a sham that only gets so much subsidies because of the political clout of Iowa. In fact, it seems like more energy is needed (not counting solar) than you get out. Definitely not a viable energy solution.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The system in place for food doesn't work.  We grow enough food to feed the world.  And yet a huge portion of the world goes hungry.

There's quite a difference between hunger and starvation.  Hunger is unfortunate, starvation is fatal and outside war zones and brutal dictatorships like the DPRK and Zimbabwe, famine hasn't happened for a long time.

Our private food system actively prices people out of adequate food... and we let grain rot in silos.

As if such waste only happens under capitalism.  The Soviet Union was notorious for letting large amounts of foodstuffs rot because the people whose job it was to transport the stuff never had any incentive to do so in a timely fashion.

The privatization of water will only hurt people.  Because the purpose of any and all business is to make money... not provide people with a product.

And how do they make money if they don't provide people with products?

Surely a massive behemoth like Nestle is a great example of that.  And that's why it would never work.

So you'd rather have only massive bureaucracies providing water?  Thanks, no.  If the people of Columbia, SC had had only municipal water to make use of a few years ago, they'd have at the very least suffered from thirst, if not death from dehydration.  Not because of any drought, but because the city has for years raided the water department for funds to use elsewhere instead of making the necessary infrastructure investments.  The city government right now is like an alcoholic who will admit to having a problem, but thinks limiting himself to one case a day should be sufficient, and there's certainly no need to attend AA or seek other counseling.

Water is too critical to be left to a sole source, be it public or private.

And if you want beyond getting rid of the ethanol heist to push food prices down, think about revamping that wetlands law run amok, that keeps a lot of very efficient crop growing land out of production, in exchange for the government giving the wetland owners checks - like say to me.

Torie, the benefits of having wetlands available for flood control and providing natural filtration of the water supply happen to be benefits that cannot be adequately priced by the laissez faire capitalism because the benefits do not accrue to the land owner in the way that raising crops does.  One can argue whether the government is paying too much for the benefits received, but in general, that sort of program is a good thing and while it needs to be carefully examined, it certainly should not be eliminated.  Perhaps eminent domain should be used instead so that the payment is made only once instead of yearly.