In Pennsylvania, residents are resisting a corporate takeover of their water system as state lawmakers attempt to change a law that incentivizes privatization.
Not shocking at all. Water and sewer should be run by your local government for public interest and not for profit.
When public services are run for-profit, services get cut down right up to the regulation line.
Why bother getting 99.9999999% of the bacteria and literal shit out of the water when regulations say I only need to get 98%? BTW I
bribedlobbied politicians to change regulations down from 99.99%. That was just unreasonable and everyone knows a little cholera is good for the heart.When public services are run for-profit, services get cut down right up to the regulation line.
Yep. And Republicans are getting elected and gutting those regulations.
coughuspscough
And why shouldn’t Nestle have a monopoly on water? They should be able to drain the Great Lakes and sell it to everyone else but the US if they damn well please!
Note: I’ve never said anything with more sarcasm in my life and now I feel like just by typing this out it’s already in the playbook for when Trump steals the next election.
Note: and now I need a drink.
It should be illegal to privatize any utilities.
Privatization means higher prices and worst service. Look at any private utility over the course of its lifetime to see a service that eventually fails to serve.
If you go to bed with capitalists, you wake up with fleas.
Also probably missing at least one kidney. Nothing personal, it’s just good business!
If you go to bed with capitalists, you don’t wake up, be cause you are full of valuable, harvestable organs.
To the surprise of no one who’s been paying attention ever…
Wow, its almost as if essential services shouldnt be profit driven, since they arent fucking businesses, they are fucking services.
But how are the oligarchs going to squeeze every last penny out of the peasants, if public services serve the interest of the public? Checkmate leftists!
No shit. The private companies aren’t buying it up to lose money. They want to profit, and that means they’re going to charge you as much as possible for as little as possible.
Remember when Flint changed water sources to save a few bucks and they poisoned the city?
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One thing that would help this whole situation is not living in sprawling suburbs and exurbs that require maintaining so many more miles of pipes per person.
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My sister is a civil engineer in PA and is familiar with this situation. She told me that basically these municipalities did not take care of their pipes, refused to raise any money for them, then, when they got old enough that the situation became critical, sold it off. Now this company comes along, has to make required fixes to the pipes, and has to raise the money to do so. The private company gets to be the bad guy, while the local governments, who neglected the pipes for a decade or more, don’t get heat.
All this said, if they weren’t allowed to sell it to a private company, there would be no “get out of jail free” card and maybe they would have pushed harder to take care of them damn pipes.
Point is, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as it looks on the surface.
She told me that basically these municipalities did not take care of their pipes,
So it’s bog-standard “let-it-break-and-then-sell-it-for-a-song” neolib shitfuckery.
It’s the same tactic for the NHS in the UK, the one remaining publicly-owned service the Tories can’t get away with selling off, so they’re letting it slowly die.
