I never realized until this week how much I take things like water for granted. It's never really occurred to me to think about where my water comes from or be concerned about it. It's just there. I mean, I know that in third world countries clean water is a huge problem. I've seen movies in class about the lack of clean drinking water, and church mission activities such as 30 Hour Famine often discussed it. My family has even donated money in the past to an organization that builds tube wells in third world countries instead of doing stockings for each other for Christmas. I know water is a problem, but I was shocked to see it be such an issue in such close proximity to clean drinking water.
Owning a natural resource like water doesn't seem right to me. We all need water to survive. Does this right belong only to those who can pay for it? Water isn't like a toaster, to use the example given in class. You don't need a toaster. Not having a toaster will not cause you any great distress (and if it does, you have bigger problems than not having a toaster). If you can't buy a toaster, than you simply don't have a toaster. No big deal. The lack of clean drinking water, on the other hand, will very much affect your life. If you have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for clean water and can't afford it, it's a problem. Like the family in the video, you end up with things like easily preventable diseases, overall lower level of health, and the social stigma of being "dirty". In cases like these, the market system does a great disservice to the people who are in the highest need of the product being sold, which is in this case water.
I can see how privatization is an appealing option to cities in financial trouble. It's a relatively easy option that at first appears to bring many benefits to the city. But although the immediate payoff is great, having for-profit companies handling something like the city's water ends up creating problems in the long run. You end up with large cost increases as companies attempt to make enough of a profit to satisfy share-holders. The efficiency of deliever often suffers as well. You end up with situations such as those in Detroit that were disucssed in the movie, where many citizens are without water, despite living in the world's wealthiest nation.
A good, healthy life shouldn't be something that is only available to the wealthy. It's unfortunately not realistic to think that we can provide everyone with clean water, no matter their circumstances. But does our inability to solve the problem for everyone excuse our lack of concern for those who we can help? We should be doing our best to help those in need, not making their situations worse by making something as essential as water so far beyond their reach.
I certainly agree that access to water is a right that all humans should have; however, water treatment plants are incredibly expensive for many nations and localities. By privatizing water, you create a setting where a private company has the necessary incentives to invest. While it does seem rather inhuman to put a dollar sign on giving people access to clean water, it is how our current market works. I don;t think that it is going to change either. Even countries with huge socialist infrastructures have a problem with water purification and treatment. Rural Venezuela is still plagued with a lack of access to clean water because companies fear to enter the marketplace there since Hugo Chavez continually threatens everyone with nationalization. I think we need to make it more attractive for companies to invest in 3rd world nations by granting things like tax benefits for the construction of the necessary infrastructure. This might make it more appealing to the board of directors at some huge corporation.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI agree Kristi, there seems to be a flaw in the logic behind treating essential commodities (such as water) like a regular market product. Like we talked about in class, the checks and balances that regulate free market trade can not and does not take necessity into account. I especially liked your comment on the "quick and easy" fix that privatization embodies. Governments are handing over communal resources to private companies out of, what appears to be, a momentary panic over debt and finances. typically profiteering is the only concern in these cases of water privatization, and those who advocate for it claim that they are doing it because they are the only ones who can handle the fiscal burden of creating and sustaining water delivery systems...yet even in the undeveloped nations of antiquity we see people joining together to make clean and usable water available to their entire community, and how?- because they made it a priority. If we do the same, we (the people) can contribute to establish these facilities, or demand them from our government (which would require us to demand a certain amount of accountability and responsible spending and representation for our tax dollars...).
ReplyDeleteCertainly there is more pollution today, which requires more and more (expensive) technology to provide clean water to our communities, but the privatization of these systems seems, to me, to be a myth of necessity created by those with special interests.
Certainly, the cost of establishing and sustaining water delivery systems is very high, and in developing nations this is a real problem, but it does not seem to necessarily follow that the only logical step to solving this problem is privatization. In fact, an extremely easy solution would be for the world's philanthropic leaders (such as the world bank) to simply make other demands, that do not involve controversially privatizing these resources, in order to qualify for aid, which could then be used to establish these water systems...but I suppose that is a bit like asking a duck not to quack. The point is, that simply because advocates for the expansion of free markets tell us that their is a necessity behind privatization of water, this does not preclude the availability of other options for solving this problem of water distribution