Author
|
Topic: water for sale
|
|
|
|
|
Proaxiom
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6188
|
posted 14 August 2006 11:42 AM
The idea of bottled water is not really the sale of water, it is the sale of a service. Drinking water is essentially free out of our taps, so no one would pay for it otherwise. The value-add (mostly mythical, IMHO) is in whatever purification they are supposed to have done to it. I think some companies also put something about 'glacier water' or whatever on the bottle, to further add value to the service in that they transported this water from some place where water is free to some other place where water is free, but is presumably of a lower quality.The bottled water market will never be meaningful in terms of overall water use. It's all the other uses for water that make a difference, especially industrial and agricultural usage. What we have to watch for carefully is someone moving water from a place where there is an abundance to a place where there is a shortage. This could cause problems. Air and water, as it happens, are public goods, which is why the government should make efforts to keep them clean. If it doesn't, it's inevitable that companies will step up to make money by offering purification services.
From: East of the Sun, West of the Moon | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594
|
posted 14 August 2006 11:16 PM
quote: Originally posted by Sven:
With regard to oil, does the USA pay below-market prices for Canadian oil or does the USA pay the world market price that everyone else pays?
Compared with Saskatchewan, Alaska and socialist Norway, Alberta receives the lowest per barrel oil royalties. And not one thin dime in green taxes is collected by Alberta for oil extracted from tar sands. Socialist Norway's Petroleum Fund is worth over $175 billion USDN. And that oil is offshore and more expensive to drill for and costs for sea-floor cleanup the responsibility of Norwegian government. Norway is a net creditor nation and uses oil revenues to pay for national daycare, well-funded socialized medicine and free university tuition for Norwegians. After paying down the highest per capita provincial debts in Canadian history, Alberta's Heritage Fund is worth about $12 billion CDN. Pathetic! [ 14 August 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594
|
posted 19 August 2006 05:26 PM
quote: Originally posted by Proaxiom: To actually answer Sven's question, oil extracted in Alberta goes for market price. The only time that wasn't true was when the NEP was in place, and the Canadian government forced companies to sell product below market price in Canada.
The Texas oil cartel artificially cut the price of oil in this part of the world in undermining the NEP at a time when world oil prices were actually soaring. Texas energy companies boo-hoo'd to Warshington about Canada's NEP and Foreign Investment Review Agency that Uncle Sam's lapdog in Ottawa at the time, Brian Baloney, scrapped the two governmental agencies to accommodate America's big business interests in Canada's black gold and other valuable raw materials. It was a "free market" storm we could have weathered given a tiny amount of leadership and backbone in Ottawa and Calgary. The truth is out now that the U.S. is the most wasteful and energy consumptive nation on earth, and Canada should be more responsible in aiding America to curb its voracious appetite for our stuff instead of appeasing big business interests. Canada should see some benefit with our two old line parties stepping aside in allowing foreign corporations to dominate our economy and siphon off our unparalleled natural wealth untaxed. Instead, and after 100 years at the helm in Ottawa and provincial Queen's Parks, our two old line parties are providing us with unbalanced trade agreements - crisis after crisis with our hard-fought for social programs - humungous national debts since Mulroney-Chretien - bottom of the barrel child poverty rates in a comparison of developed nations and a net-loss of full time payroll job creation in this country when comparing 14 year spans before and after FTA in 1989. Our two old line parties, Liberals and Conservatives, have allowed Canada to become little more than a repository of natural wealth for marauding multinationals to raid at will. No other developed country has handed-off its economic sovereignty to foreign control like Ottawa and the provinces have. There are rich nations with far less natural wealth than Canada used to own before FTA/NAFTA - and those countries rank highly wrt economic competitiveness and in measures of social democracy. Instead, Canada aims to line the pockets of big business shareholders by pawning off Canada's family jewels and silverware at firesale prices. To answer Sven's question, it's not a matter of market prices for oil - it's about seizing control of oil. Stealing the common from under the goose is the real "magic" of capitalism. Abra Cadabra! Not impressed you say?. Like Linda McQuaig says, It's the Crude, Dude. Our weak and ineffective leaders in Canada are selling us down the river. The truth about real oil reserves makes globalism based on widget capitalism the biggest lie of the century. Global choices will eventually become "socialism or barbarism." And paleoconservatives in the U.S. have already chosen. [ 19 August 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594
|
posted 20 August 2006 02:08 PM
Ya, I read that one-quarter of the Athabaska River flow is dedicated to oil extraction from tar sands. At some point, we will have to guarantee foreign-based multinationals access to our water before our own needs are met and at "free market" rates. from Hurtig's, The Vanishing Country, p. 113, 2002 quote: David Manning, former head of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, says that Canadian Natural Gas is replacing coal or diesel in New York and Massachusetts power projects, with the result that undesirable emissions are falling, and "every bus on Long Island runs on Alberta natural gas." Countering criticism from concerned environmentalists, John Manley suggests that increasing exports of Canadian natural gas will displace dirtier coal in the U.S. and be good for the environment.Meanwhile, surprise, surprise, the Alberta government has agreed to new coal-burning power plants to supply electricity for export to the U.S., and while most of Nova Scotia offshore natural gas flows to the U.S., the province imports expensive U.S. coal to power its electricity plants. ... Don't worry about natural gas shortages in Canada, the industry tells us. We should export all we can - there's plenty more where that came from. But a "blue ribbon team of scientists" presented quite a different picture in fall 2001. New reserves are undoubtedly going to be more difficult to find and more expensive to produce. Reserves have dropped by ten years since an earlier study only four years ago(in 1998). Many natural gas pools may well be considered unmarketable.
Hmmm, sounds like a similar situation when Canada owned Husky Oil and all the most northern, deep seated and most expensive to drill-for offshore oil rights while Imperial and the rest siphoned-off the easily accessed crude for us at Leduc. And now the Yanks are telling Dalton McGuilty that they won't mind if he builds nuclear power plants in our own backyard in order to meet our contractual obligations to supply them with even more electrical power. Keep it coming, they say. I guess American's themselves have no problem with building nuclear power plants in their states - it's just that we have free market obligations which hundreds of Ottawa lawyers signed us all up for and called it free trade several years ago. Mulroney and Chretien should have been lined up at dawn without blindfolds or cigarettes. Attention international shoppers, everything in Canada is now up for grabs, Sunday to Saturday, 24/7 !!! It's a blowout sale!!! [ 20 August 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
|