https://lemmy.world/comment/6461060
"clean water pls"
le enlightened mayo: "simply walk 200 miles to your nearest mall"
I once saw a post making fun of another post lamenting about how workers are forced to stand for no reason instead of being allowed to sit.
The top comment was “capitalism allows you invent a chair if you wanted to sit.”
Sounds like they're the real pinkos, not us.
Supercapitalism is still relevant, right?
Well, I did, but then I got arrested for loitering cause I had no money to buy anything
Tangentially related to this thread sorta, lived in San Antonio. There's a major bus station by one of the largest malls. Right next to it. But there's two sets of fences between the station and the mall and nothing between, DMZ style.
The red is the best walking path.
Can't have poors in the mall
Bring some wire cutters in case you're running late to your job at The Gap
What kind of psychosis makes people think "we must fence in our curb strip"?
I got in trouble at a job once for giving someone a cup of water when they asked. Boss told me I should charge a whole dollar for it, because of the cup (I said "sure" and kept giving it away anyway). Policy in most places seems to be to not engage with someone unless they intend to spend money.
Normal and functional country.
Isn't the water in Flint still literally poisonous?
There's like a dozen towns and a few large cities with unsafe drinking water.
Actually most of the US has unsafe drinking water, and there are over a million kids in the US at any given time currently suffering from acute lead poisoning. The EPA's 15ppb action level is much higher than it should be, and even in spite of that nearly half of Americans are getting water above the action level limit thanks to cheating on water testing, deferring action, and local governments outright lying to people.
I was going to make a joke about our site's "ppb action level" but over a million kids with lead poisoning is just fucking bleak, goddamn
I live in the Global South and I drink water straight from the tap because it's safe, meanwhile the US is sending ungodly amounts of money to Ukraine and Israel while children's brains melt from heavy metals back home
The issue is far from localized to the US. A third of water in Canada is above the more reasonable 5ppb limit here. Many global south countries don't even really bother with testing for things like lead or cadmium because there are far more prevalent contaminants to worry about.
So, yeah. Like 1/2 of the world is basically just letting kid's brains melt from lead and doing nothing about it. Test your own water, you're likely to be surprised.
And plane heads have been crybullying an entire planet into allowing them to keep blasting leaded AVGas exhaust directly into the atmosphere where it's most poisonous for the most people. We've had a functional unleaded Aviation fuel with 80UL since 1981 and these dudes just keep screaming "Waaah you're making my casual hobby less fun! What about all those poor farmers who have to fly their own planes to cropdust, are you gonna force them to buy a new plane???" Even though that's bullshit, the excuse has been working for 40 years! 91UL has been commercially available since 2003, and nobody even cares that it requires at worst a retune.
If I were to put on a tinfoil hat for a second, I'd say that the lead poisoning is on purpose. We saw how it sucked the empathy and critical thinking out of older people, maybe thats the idea. Easier to keep capitalism going when no one has the mind to stop it.
That's very very tinfoily. Not wanting to pay for maintenance is significantly more likely.
That's too structured of a plan for capitalists to pursue. You gotta remember: capital is brutish and lazy above all else.
The EPA's 15ppb action level is much higher than it should be
This is a disgusting fact.
To think that the US has set a ppb level like that, which they not only meet but regularly exceed, and meanwhile hexbear has no defined ppb action level and it's definitely not meeting a 15ppb daily posting level routinely.
Lift your game, guys.
Yet people still use it, indicating market demand for water regardless of the lead content
if you can poison the air enough it doesn't matter as much that the water is too
Reminder that Flint got huge amounts of press coverage and international outrage because it was white America
Are you kidding? 56% of people in Flint are black, it's a famously black city!
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/flintcitymichigan
Good point. Clearly I don't know my US demographics.
I've edited my comment above pointing out that I was completely wrong. I'm going to retcon this as "Michigan is recognisable to the western world".
This user is incorrect. Flint is 56% black according to the census. Flint's lead in the water is a classic case of systemic racism!
Hey now, don't say that! Seeing that the guy is British, he most likely wants to expand his world...by having his country copy America!
(Unironically, watching Britain's Americanization has been horrifying.)
watching Britain's Americanization has been horrifying
and funny, because you get a lot of American-isms introduced into the language because of TV/internet. It's also occurring all over the Angloid countries, especially countries like Australia and NZ. I guess the main downside is the awful politics has become more awful because they've imported the "culture war" nonsense.
"Oy, ah yu dis whole woke thingy? Won' be havin' nun of dat here ya soggin' git!"
Privatisation of water treatment has done wonders to help England on the way to not having clean drinking water. The old infrastructure they’ve been coasting on is starting to fall apart now. Love all that raw sewage straight into water systems.
But at least some people made money, and isn’t that what it is all about after all?
But His Majesty's government graciously allows you to take 20 cubic meters of filthy river water per day! How could you possibly need more? /s
(this is apparently what "abstraction allowance" is)
brb going to live at the pub. I'm glad I only need water during business hours.
"Stop banging on the door; I'm having a shower! Water is free in this country! And get hoses so I don't have to bring my own! When I come back to wash my kid there better be proper facilities!"
Ethical life pro tip: if you riot hard enough they'll bring out the water cannons to deliver water to you.
Also, even if it were a good argument, which it isn't, why would UK law apply anywhere else?
My £40 a month water bill begs to differ.
I'd @ this lemmyworld moron but you know how it is.
There is a guy at my climbing gym who fills up two gallon jugs at the end of every session.
I'm 99% sure that account is a troll. They previously argued with me that an Asus router can do everything a business grade firewall like opnsense could do, then proceeded to stick their head in the sand and provide no counter when I pointed out several limitations of consumer router hardware and features that even replacing stock firmware won't get you. Their trolling becomes super obvious really quickly.
I'm seeing increasing numbers of posters whose communication style is literally trolling.
It appears they don't understand that they are trolling, because they think it is a normal and effective method of discourse participation. They don't recognize trolling as trolling - especially not their own.
Going to Applebees for half-apps somewhere in the middle of the Sahara and pouring as many glasses of water into my CamelBak as they will refill.
Yes water is a basic human need. So it's most important. However, real free cannot exist. In the Netherlands, a country that is quite social, water is not free. We have some of the purest tapwater the world knows. People work for that, big systems have to purify that water and in turn need to be maintained. It's expensive. I don't mind paying for water if it gets me the best quality water in the world, from my tap. It's not expensive, in fact it's cheap. If this becomes free to me, I think that quality wil suffer.
Then again. I live in a country that values human life and doesn't slave away for capitalism completely.
Except everything you've said is true of public roads and those are somehow free. Literally nobody is talking about this straw man of "true free". Nobody thinks that potable water can be created, regulated, and distributed without the labor of many people. However the example of public roads, public schools, etc, show us that it is actually very much possible for essential services to be funded out of general taxes and be free and openly accessible.
Moreover, water access activism isn't necessarily even about drinking water in many places because agricultural water sources are being tapped unsustainably and distributed unfairly. Especially for indigenous peoples who rely on already precarious water sources to make their remaining land habitable, this has never been an issue that can be solved by going to the mall to fill up your drink bottle.
It’s not “waaah why is it not literally free” and it’s weird that chuds on the internet interpret it that way.
The complaint is not that it isn’t literally free. The complaint is that their water system was destroyed.
“Water is a human right” isn’t about a few cents for tap water. It’s a demand for water systems to be protected and not exploited with disregard for the impact of that exploitation.
