"Water for humans to drink" comes from the faucet. The bottled water industry shouldn't exist at all, other than as a niche product for areas hit by natural disasters, remote construction or work sites, and so on.
No, and it couldn't be, which the point that you seem to be circling. Markets aren't self-governing--they don't set the rules that they abide by (including which externalities are priced in and which aren't)--that's a function of government.
> Then the negative externalities should be properly priced in.
is what I was replying to, saying the market isn't going to naturally do this because capital doesn't actually care about negative externalities until forced to.
Right, I'm pointing out that it's a nonsense comment. "The negative externalities should be properly priced in" implies government intervention, and indeed the market cannot do it. At best you're violently agreeing with everyone in the thread.
Never lived somewhere with tap water you could smell from a foot away, and taste over the flavor of any tea brewed in it, no matter how strong, huh? And yes, that's in the US.
(though, sure, a home water filter might also solve that particular problem)
> a home water filter might also solve that particular problem
Yes. I don't see why it's an issue. A lot of houses have water softeners because hard water destroys appliances. An RO filter for the kitchen isn't a lot more expensive than that.
(And I've also lived in developing countries where the water isn't always safe to drink. Boiling or filtering worked fine).
Makes some sense, still, especially for renters, if they don't want to have to move the system and have a big (yes, it's big to some people) up-front expense. If it's just for drinking water, it looks like you can get over 2500 person-days of drinking water in the form of CostCo 16.9oz 40-bottle packs ($2.95 for 40 bottles) for the same price as a cheapish RO system (~$200—you can buy about 333.3 gallons of that Costco water for that). About half a liter of plain water intake per person per day on average, in the US, from what I can tell. Even if you double that to account for tea and coffee, that's about two years' drinking water for a couple.
Considerations: that's not even the cheapest filtered water one can buy, and the RO system has consumable filters (= more expense—frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the bottled water is straight-up cheaper, overall), maintenance, and installation to worry about.
I don't think buying bottled water regularly is necessarily irrational. FWIW, we do have an under-sink filter on our kitchen sink rather than buying bottled water, though I'm not convinced it's justifiable based on cost—we don't live in so-bad-you-can-smell-the-water land anymore, but the filtered stuff still tastes a lot better, and it's nice not to have to remember to stock up on water at the store, though we're so bad about maintaining the filter that I think if we did it right the extra time and more-stuff-to-remember would make buying drinking water more convenient after all)
Why not crank up the prices on bottled water instead? And if household water usage is minimal, why crank up prices on it at all? The reduction in demand won't make a dent in overall usage and it'll hurt a lot of poor people.
EDIT: Never mind, you said usage for drinking. I agree, things like lawns are wasteful. You could probably increase rates on households that consume more water.
A greater percentage of bottled water is drunk. Drinking being the most critical use of drinkable water. If there's a shortage that's the activity you want to most prioritise over others.
I didn't say household water use is minimal, I said a tiny portion of it is used for drinking. People use on average like 200L a day and drink like 3.
It's mostly used on showering, gardens, washing machines, toilets, pools, dishwashers. Activities that could generally be cut a fair bit. You crank up the price and my showers are definitely getting shorter, my non-existent garden pool and dishwasher would get removed if they existed, id pay attention to the water level setting on the washing machine instead of just leaving it on high, and only flush for shits. I absolutely do not believe people would eat a huge budget hit to keep these activities nor that they're already running at a much higher rate of water efficiency. Demand would plummet and more water would be available for drinking.
Everything hurts poor people more. That's how having a financial buffer works. It's basically the definition. Poor people are people who have few or no resources. You want resources to make life less painful. Cutting water use hurts poor people. Allowing things to get so bad that neighbours have water flow issues would hurt them more. It's not going to be the wealthy that go without in any scenario so "trying to fix it will hurt the poor" is a nothing statement.
> I didn't say household water use is minimal, I said a tiny portion of it is used for drinking.
I think you only read the first part of my comment and missed the edit.
Also if we're talking about drinking water, transporting it through pipes is way more efficient than putting it in plastic bottles and trucking it all over the place. Sorry, bottled water is a loser whichever way you look at it, even if it's primarily drunk.
