Here’s what I came across today.
I have two things to say about this.
First and foremost, air has been privatized and sold for profit for decades.
Any time you want to bring air to breathe underwater, you have to pay for it. Any time you want your air filtered or purified, you have to pay for it. Any time you want your air to have a higher concentration of oxygen in it, you have to pay for it. This isn’t dystopia.
Second, you have no obligation to pay a water bill. No private company will charge you for collecting water from a nearby public river or stream. No private company will charge you for collecting rainwater.
Your water bill pays a bunch of people to work their butts off to pull water out of the ground, filter it, and move it all the way from where it came out of the ground into your house and out of your tap. You’re not paying for water. You’re paying for delivery.
It’s so easy to be cynical about the miracles that we take advantage of every day. But being a cynic is miserable.
Don’t get me wrong, corporations are dangerous. Take Pfizer for instance. Pfizer famously paid out the biggest criminal fine in history, $2.3 billion in 2009 after the Bextra scandal. We must do everything we can to hold these companies accountable for the harm they do.
But I can tell you this: I’d rather live in a world with pharmaceuticals than a world without them. And I’d rather pay the national average of $35 a month for 2,550 gallons (worldpopulationreview) of filtered, potable water to be delivered to my taps than collect those gallons for free.
