Nestlé CEO Says Water Is Food That Should Be Privatized – Not A Human Right

[BethanyQuartz]

48. Nothing is Free

Nothing is free. Take that word out. Even if you are walking along and you see a cookie in front of a 'free food' sign, you still expend energy picking it up to eat it. Money is merely a symbol of resources, time, and human energy.

So the real question is, who should control access to water and who, if anyone, should be permitted to profit from that control?

The answer is not simple. One might say the people who own the land the water is on should control it. But what if a group owns the source of a river and decides to dam it up in order to keep it all for themselves?

One might say that the owner is whoever mixes their labor with the water to make it drinkable or safer to drink. This would seem to support companies like Nestle, until one asks a simple question: Why would any country or community allow a private corporation to access, purify, and then own the water supply? What stops communities from acquiring and using the technology to turn their groundwater, fresh water, and possibly salt water into drinkable water themselves?

That goes to the heart of the matter. Politics, war, colonialism stop communities from controlling their own resources. Corrupt governments installed by powerful nations for the benefit of corporations stop communities from purifying and controlling their own water. This is far more often the case than a lack of access to the technology and funds to implement that technology.

Therefore in a world with vast inequalities favoring a few wealthy nations, world organizations concerned with human rights and human health and philanthropists with similar concerns should assist nations that are unable to properly purify their own drinking water so that they can do so. Private corporations should be barred from interfering or profiting, not because water should be 'free', but because these corporations prey on people who have been put at a severe disadvantage by international politics.