Obviously the problem with entrusting free market mechanisms to deal with our water supply won't work without a free market. Look around the world at what has happened to those that have privatised their water. As for Nestle, half there shit is gmo so obviously they don't give a shit about there customers from the get-go as they're obviously looking at short term profits.
I have three kids with "compassion international" based in newcastle... 87 cents in the dollar gets to the kids, plus 100% of gifts at christmas and birthday go to my kids. I used to be with world vision until i realised so much was not going to the cause... Plus they lost my kid for over a year, took my money and didnt tell me about it even when i was writing to him... So sad. He was in east timor and to this day i dont know if he was killed in the war or if he survived. I think WV started off great but then became too commercial. Shiny.
I think you're talking about Enron? "The smartest guys in the room"? Theres a documentary of that name pretty much all Commerce/accounting students at universities watch, it's interesting, google it. That's a complex scam that ended up as nothing to do with the free market and was as crony capitalism a situation as they come, deceiving governments, auditors, suppliers, contractors, customers and shareholders by the million. A situation of endless broken contracts, legal deceptions, secret lobbying and broken promises is not the free market.
I think it is time to reassess your contribution if only circa 10% gets through to the recipient. There is better value and results for your money from other charitable organisations. Just for the record, we as a family, supported World Vision for many years.
Maybe it's more than 10%..not sure? I just keep hearing that % for most charities.I didn't mean to specifically mark WV just trying to make the point that most charities have big overheads and that even if a small % gets through then it's better than being a hater and not supporting them at all.
Privatising water is stupid! Would you want a foreign country like China owning the water in your rivers; they own enough of our fing arable land and...residential land! I say, no way! The people of Australia should own the water which should be controlled by the government! Atleast that way if the government f up we can vote them out! Exactly how do you sack a company that owns water? Three things the people of Australia need is: Ownership of water Ownership of energy Ownership of our soil! To allow non citizens or companies to own water, energy or soil is madness! Australia for Australians! http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=UKDLQWEvubc&feature=endscreen
LOL Scum bags who will roll over and get fucked up the ar are the people like you! Australia for Australians!
There is a big difference between paying for the convenience you desire (a flushing toilet and bottled water) and handing over water rights to private companies, isn't there? The processing, packaging, distribution, regulatory charges, taxes, other expenses and required profit for a company to provide you a plastic bottle leaching endocrine disruptors, pre-filled with treated water must be paid for. The money you exchange for the bottle of water the trade you make for the convenience of not preparing your own water. Likewise with the convenience of water distributed directly into your home, you pay for the convenience of using the water thus presented. That is a lot different from not being allowed to prepare your own water.
I don't know the details of this and frankly don't care to find enough to find out, but... As long as there is competition with water companies competing for your dollar I'm all for it. They will provide what the market wants at the best possible price. If it is the government handing over a monopoly and regulating other competitors effectively out of the market, then I don't think it is a good thing. When government creates a monopoly or cartel, eg. banks, people get screwed. When we actually get competition we get the best services possible (not always exactly what we want) at the best price possible. When it's govt owned we get crappy services at what is seemingly cheap prices but in reality we pay heavily for in taxes.
Think about the water you have access to nowadays. 1. If you already pay for it then it already is or can readily be privatised. It's been done many times successfully all around the world in many different types of countries. This should be a no-brainer. 2. If you currently have access to substantial quantities of currently free water with your own personally supplied infrastructure (from rainwater, rivers or bores for example) then you are already claiming the property rights to this resource but there is sufficient quantities available for your region that all of your neighbours do the same so there is no market. Privatisation already happens but there's no market. This should be a no-brainer. 3. If you currently have access to currently free water but there are not sufficient quantities either for yourself or for your region then it is a scarce resource. That scarcity therefore automatically has a market price and the people who have a legitimate first claim of the water resource (because the rain falls on their property for example) naturally have the property rights and they therefore have the right to keep their property rights fully to themselves (build large dams on their property to irrigate their cotton crops, for example) or should be allowed to sell the water to others. The presence of a traded market will allow the water to move to its highest value use. This should be clear. I own a property with a well. I can choose to keep all of it's capacity, give it away or sell it. 4. The issues arise when a previously abundant water supply becomes scarce (i.e. move from situation 2 to situation 3). This can happen in a few different ways but usually means that people downstream have built their local economy and infrastructure around a resource that technically came for free from someone else's unused property rights that no longer exists. A market needs to happen to clear the scarcity issue but how the property rights are assigned can differ and can cause a lot of angst. This is no doubt what people are worried about. If the person at the source used, say 50%, of the water that naturally fell on their property and the rainfall halved but their usage stayed constant, then the people downstream have lost 100% of their supply. Is this a legitimate use of the person's water rights? Of course. They probably paid a higher price for their farm because of the greater security of natural water supply. Is this socially a responsible thing and are they acting as a good neighbour? Possibly not, but it depends on what other options the downstream users have. If people are worried about the ability of the source of a river to be choked off then simply separate the water rights from the land rights and then they become tradable. Contracts can be easily drawn up to ensure that each user of the water resource get a minimum quantity despite volatility. Equally contracts can be drawn up that allow users to bear the volatility risk and have zero usage in certain circumstances (generally with some sort of monetary compensation). This is not technically hard to set up, but it can be hard to negotiate once people's prior expectations of their water "rights" are found to be inaccurate as circumstances change. The key is to make sure everyone understands whose water it is before it becomes scarce and then subject to normal market conditions. Once a previously abundant supply becomes scarce, it can be too late. People have made irreversible investments based on assumptions. Consequently the earlier the water rights can be allocated the simpler any market will function when it becomes a scarce resource. The incentives to store water from the good times for the bad times (i.e. build dams) or to install infrastructure to be able to smooth volatility (e.g. long pipelines or desalination plants) will only work when water is priced. Any other solution is sub-optimal and guaranteed to result in bigger shortages happening more often. Simple pimple.
