> Water is sufficiently important to poor people (and their children) that you can't reasonably price them out of the market.
Where does it stop? Things cost what they cost. For instance, during famines, food shoots up in price exponentially. It's unclear whether you're talking about redistributive taxation and subsidies or price controls.
I'm ok with the former, and definitely not ok with the latter. Price controls are the easiest ways to guarantee shortages of a finite scarce good. Fortunately scarcity hasn't really been a problem for water in the Western world.
Yemen, however would beg to disagree.
Their most profitable crop, qat, requires huge amounts of water, and their capital is completely out of water[0]. Because they held the price of water artificially low, it was overused and now is gone.
When everything is a fundamental human right nothing is a fundamental human right. After a flood, do you want to get food, water, and shelter in there or do you want to be fiddling with fiber cables?
My whole point is that you might want certain things over other things.
None of those things you want is a human right. Want water? Dig a well. Want to eat? Grow some food. Want shelter? Build something. If somebody helps you out, its out of the goodness of their heart or a pre-existing obligation.
Saying something is a human right places demands on others which you have no right to do.
Where does it stop? Things cost what they cost. For instance, during famines, food shoots up in price exponentially. It's unclear whether you're talking about redistributive taxation and subsidies or price controls.
I'm ok with the former, and definitely not ok with the latter. Price controls are the easiest ways to guarantee shortages of a finite scarce good. Fortunately scarcity hasn't really been a problem for water in the Western world.
Yemen, however would beg to disagree.
Their most profitable crop, qat, requires huge amounts of water, and their capital is completely out of water[0]. Because they held the price of water artificially low, it was overused and now is gone.
[0] https://thinkprogress.org/yemen-humanitarian-crisis-water-54...