Privatize Water!
Jaime_Souviens @ Mon Nov 21, 2005 7:26 pm
Blue_Nose Blue_Nose:
Boy oh boy, Jaime...
That seems rash to me, that's all. You're suggesting they're not helping in order to protect their jobs.
You You:
They can't actually do anything to help, or they'd jeopardize their funding.
That seems rash to me, that's all. You're suggesting they're not helping in order to protect their jobs.
Sure.
Why do you find this surprising?
Blue_Nose Blue_Nose:
Why you can't explain why you'd say this, I don't know.
Don't blame me for the sudden lack of clarity in your posts.
Toro @ Mon Nov 21, 2005 7:31 pm
IceOwl IceOwl:
Do you have any thoughts of your own on this, or are you just a mindless propaganda drone?
Well, since you would sacrifice lives for dogma, we know that you ARE are a mindless propoganda drone.
As flattered as I am that you wonder about my opinion, surely its bizarre logic to call out someone for posting authoritative sources and data from knowledgeable sites.
Blue_Nose @ Mon Nov 21, 2005 7:33 pm
Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:
Sure.
Why do you find this surprising?
Why do you find this surprising?
No evidence? I guess that's as good an answer as anything.
dgthe3 @ Mon Nov 21, 2005 7:35 pm
Last year i watched a doc titled 'The Corporation' in my Impact of Science and Technology on Society class, and it was all about how evil big business is,and it was very biased indeed. One of the things they mentioned was that at least 1 american company owned all the water in some third world country. So that includes not only the wells, lakes, and ponds that may be on your property, but also the rain that falls on the roof of the house that you own. Surely fresh rain water cannot be contaminated, unless it is acid rain.
And we are also forgeting something with this providing water to the people: Most nations don't have enough. Thats why the government can't always provide it, because it isn't there. So while it may or may not be contaminated it doesn't really mater because there isn't enough water for them to drink anyway. We forget here in Canada where we have seemingly limitless amounts of water that the same is not true for everyone.
Now, i'm not sure how applicable all of this is to the specific situation, but i think it is relevent to the notion of privitization of water in general: when there isn't enough water for everyone, it will go to those who can pay for it, but at least it will be good water.
Jaime_Souviens @ Mon Nov 21, 2005 7:50 pm
Blue_Nose Blue_Nose:
Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:
Sure.
Why do you find this surprising?
Why do you find this surprising?
No evidence? I guess that's as good an answer as anything.
Oh, for pete's sake, Blue_Nose, what do you want, a complete analysis of the activities of every non-profit for the past century cross-referenced by donations and efficiency?
I'll get right on that...
Jaime_Souviens @ Mon Nov 21, 2005 7:53 pm
IceOwl IceOwl:
So far, your reasoning ability has proven to be piss poor. Try stuffing something other than one-sided paid-for newspaper articles into that tiny mind of yours, you might learn a thing or two.
And you've been brilliant. Posting the exceptions and omitting the conclusion to try to make the report seem to support your position.
You wouldn't know Reason if it bit you in the ass.
Blue_Nose @ Mon Nov 21, 2005 7:57 pm
I'd like any reasoning at all behind your allegations, or permission to ignore them entirely... one organization is enough, for simplicity.
It's hardly an attack on you; I'm as against the organizations I assume you've made reference to as you are, but I'm not going to accept that they propagate mass suffering for their own personal gains.
Blue_Nose @ Mon Nov 21, 2005 8:03 pm
IceOwl IceOwl:
Mass suffering through mass irresponsibility and willfull ignorance would be a more accurate way of putting it.
I'm talking about organizations like World Vision, just so you know...
Toro @ Mon Nov 21, 2005 8:03 pm
IceOwl IceOwl:
Do you read things entirely without context? The words you've highlighted cast doubt on your own argument, fool. Try again.
The point of that paragraph was to exclude what the study was not trying to prove. It neither proves nor disproves anything. But what the article does is give us a great deal of confidence that privatization reduced infant mortality rates.
IceOwl IceOwl:
$1:
Abstract: In the 1990s Argentina embarked on one of the largest privatization campaigns in the world as part of a structural reform plan.
$1:
In Argentina, diarrhea, septicemia, and gastrointestinal infections are three of the top ten causes of death for children under five (Ministerio de Salud, 1999
Yep, that project worked really well.
Are you kidding me? That's your conclusion? I don't know what fantasy utopia you live in (though I imagine Ottawa isn't it), but what matters is what otherwise would have been. And what otherwise would have been would have been more dead children.
And let's understand the reason why water was privatized in the first place. From the paper
$1:
The privatization was also intended to reverse a long period of physical infrastructure neglect (Chisari et al, 1999). During the 1970s and 1980s there was little capital investment in most public utilities and indeed much of the physical infrastructure had seriously depreciated. After this long period of negative net investments, huge capital inflows were needed to improve both the quality and access to SOE services. While the public sector had no capacity to finance those capital investments, private firms generating positive cash-flows were able to obtain private financing. Indeed, the transfer of the SOEs to the private sector, mostly to large foreign companies, greatly improved the firms’ investment and access to credit markets (Heymann and Kosacoff, 2000; Galiani et al, 2002). Most of the privatized firms sold equity and bonds in international capital markets.
But to the fantasist utopian ideologues, I guess its better to have run down, dilapitated water systems than allow for, GASP!, private water networks!
Thematic-Device @ Mon Nov 21, 2005 8:09 pm
Toro Toro:
Thematic-Device Thematic-Device:
Water companies a often marginally profitable if at all even in rich western nations with every capability to fund them. In countries in the third world they pose hardly any attractiveness to foreign investment since you have often inhospitable climates to establish the infrastructure, to supply an already incredibly poor area.
Privatization is no panacea for this issue.
Privatization is no panacea for this issue.
There are two problems with this argument. First, Avro posted earlier a long post which said that water companies in the UK are making too much profit. So which is it?
Wow, it just baffles me how you can have so many logical inconsistancies in your reasoning... The statement that utilities tend to be marginally profitable as a whole... Whether there are a few sources where they are not does not disprove the trend. Nor do profitable companies in the UK disprove my assertion that companes will not be profitable in areas which are not conducive to water irrigation in general when the people are incredibly poor to begin with.
$1:
In France, water utilities are run by two of the largest water companies in the world. In America, water utilities are regulated monopolies that must appear before a public utilities commission and apply for rate increases, which are based on returns on capital and capital expenditures. Returns on equities for water utilities range from 10-13%, depending on the jurisdiction, which BTW is [i]lower than the average return on equity for US businesses.
And thus like I said, utilities tend to return relatively small amounts of profit. Granted they provide very stable amounts of profit hence why people still buy them as stocks. But they provide less.
$1:
Second, Suez and Vivendi, the two French companies, are also the two largest water companies providing foreign investment in the third world. Are these companies stupid? Do you know something they - with their thousands of employees and tremendous intrinsic knowledge - don't?
Gee the two largests water companies will also be the two largest investors when only looking at water companies. Who would have thought!
$1:
Besides, wouldn't it be good if they were "marginally profitable". I mean, the fear is that they're "ripping off" these poor countries, right?
They are marginally profitable to provide adequates of amounts of water here. In Africa it isn't profitable to provide to much of anyone outside of the cities (which benefit from being easy to lay pipelines for due to their closeness) and areas which already have easily accessible water. Without regulation they simply won't venture outside of what has already been provided.
$1:
The argument is false anyways. I've posted two in-depth academic studies detailing the benefits of water privatization.
I can find academics still arguing of how minimum wage causes unemployment despite extensive evidence to the contrary. I have posted the reasons why all working water supplies are either heavily regulated or government owned. If the laissez faire approach to water supplies works so wonderfully, howcome the US, Canada, the UK or indeed most any successful nation hasn't undertaken it?
$1:
When countries have no or inadequate water networks, banning private investment is a death sentence placed on those who would otherwise receive water because of dogma.
Private investment only cares about the areas where it is profitable. The areas where it is profitable already have water because they were the easiest to supply in the first place.
$1:
Thematic-Device Thematic-Device:
It is not false the IMF and world bank have been massive advocates in the removal of government regulation and oversight on the practices of business, while not related to water privatization, the effects of such deregulation can be seen not least in argentina, which allowed for companies to literally strip the country of its financial assets overnight.
You've just admitted your argument is not related to water privatization, so why did you bring it up? But thanks for acknowledging that, especially since one of the studies I cited looked at the net benefits of water privatization in Argentina. Now if you want to start a thread about the incompetence of the Argentine government and how the IMF tried to bail them out, be my guest. My organization owned tens of millions of dollars of Argentine bonds so I'm more than happy to go toe-to-toe over Argentina and the IMF.
My arguement had nothing to do with water privatization specifically, it had to do with the destructive deregulation which the IMF forces down the throats of every country it can. The very same destructive deregulation which comes under the guise of water privatization.