I remember learning about this in environmental science class in a Canadian university, that even though Canada has more drinkable water per capita than pretty much any country in the world, huge swaths of the Indigenous populations here are under boil water orders because their water supply is unsafe to drink directly (and there are obviously many doubts whether simply boiling it helps to any meaningful extent). This is what colonialism and systematic discrimination looks like and needless to say this stuck with the entire class, as was the realization that even though we all find it disgusting, none of us can meaningfully do anything about it in the current political climate (which is a pretty frequent realization in environmental science tbh).
I know who she is, my checkmarks were meant to say that I have an MBA, Six Sigma certification, and as a C-level executive of a manufacturing company, I probably posses what people will call “lawful evil” or “corporate greed”, since revenue maximization comes with the job title. There’s still a line I don’t want to cross.
I mean just ignoring the obvious counter examples in africa where water is scarce in some places and the recent water shortage in Gaza, lets take a europe-centric view point.
You claim that water is free because you are allowed to extract it from the ground. The ground isn’t free. You need to pay for owning it both initially and most countries impose an anual tax on landowners. You pay for the allowance to do anything including digging for water on your own land.
This, of course, assumes that you even have the opportunity to own land. In many places in europe it is getting prohibitively expensive to buy land, and the wealth distribution inequality is getting more extreme. So many people are literally unable to pay for the allowance to dig for their free water that you claim exists.
Yes there are some municipal water accesses but those exist because they are not used in an exploitative way. Yes there are water sources in public forests but those aren’t controlled because they are not used in an exploitative way.
Water is for all intents and purposes that go beyond occasional refreshment not free.
Hahaha seriously?! Thanks for the laugh, that was a good one.
But really, where are you talking about? Because even affluent countries still charge for water. There’s a definite cost to purifying and maintaining a clean water supply.
Water is free in every pub and restaurant. There are free water refill stations in most train stations and malls. There are plenty of water fountains in the parks and on the streets. And then you have 20 cubic metres abstraction allowance per day gov.uk/…/check-if-you-need-a-licence-to-abstract-… Considering that the average person in Britain uses around 150 litres per day, 20 bloody tons per day is more than enough. You only pay for convenience if you want. Water is free otherwise.
You wrote comment 6461913, and then pasted a link to it 4 more times. Why are you so desperate to argue that your experience is the only possible experience? I feel like I just watched a Dunning-Kreugerempathy 0% speedrun.
Truly a world traveler. You’re right, why don’t the peoples on reservation land just go down to the local mall and fill up at the bottle station? So obvious!
I, too, have lived in all of the world’s 195 countries and can say with authority that none of them, not a single one, doesn’t offer free water in their pubs. Not even pubs in places like Saudi Arabia. You can go into any pub there, even if you’re a woman and get free water.
Thanks for keeping on reading, continuing to learn, and not getting discouraged. Everybody is one of those lucky 10,000 about something, every day. (Well, unless you’ve stopped learning, or you’re dead.)
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