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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

No.

That is a completely backwards way to see things. Consider this: Flint, MI had a widely publicized water crisis due to cost cutting in water treatment and supply. Due to these cost saving measures, over 10,000 children got exposed to high levels of lead. Again, I repeat: this was due to cost saving measures from a financially bankrupt city/state. At the same time this happens, companies are allowed to generate millions in profits from these very same resources?

You say Nestlé selling you bottled water doesn't impact "an African kid getting water", well excuse me but it very well does. If the state charged a fair price for the water, fair in light of the obscene profit they are set to make from processing that water, then those millions in revenue could be used, oh I don't know, to properly treat water so tens of thousands of children don't get poisoned, maybe.

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I don't see how the Flint Water Crisis is connected to Nestle. That was a political decision from the government reeling from the fallout of the loss of US car manufacturing in the area. The company wasn't stealing the town's water as far as I know.

> I don't see how the Flint Water Crisis is connected to Nestle.

Part of the reason municipalities are short on money for their water systems, is that companies get the same water (or at least, from the same watershed) for free.

Is it so wrong to ask Nestle to at least pay the same rate you and I and every other citizen pays for water? Why can't they pay municipal rates for municipal water, like Coca-Cola and all the beer breweries do.

> Is it so wrong to ask Nestle to at least pay the same rate you and I and every other citizen pays for water? Why can't they pay municipal rates for municipal water, like Coca-Cola and all the beer breweries do.

Yes, it is unreasonable, unless Nestle taps into municipal supply like all other municipal customers.

It's absolutely fascinating to me how corporations can have so many tireless defenders of their rights.

I wonder if you would feel as strongly about citizens being poisoned as you do about corporations being made to reasonably compensate the state for the natural resources they use to line their pockets.

> It's absolutely fascinating to me how corporations can have so many tireless defenders of their rights.

This specific corporation happen not to be a customer of a municipal water system, which means that that this specific municipal water system does not get to charge it.

Let me convert it into a non-abstract thing - I'm going to make an educated guess that you drink either coffee or tea. Why are you not paying for coffee or tea that you got from a place A to a municipal cafeteria that exists in the place A municipality even though you are not getting your coffee or tea there?

> I wonder if you would feel as strongly about citizens being poisoned as you do about corporations being made to reasonably compensate the state for the natural resources they use to line their pockets.

The citizens were being poisoned because the democratically elected, pro people, anti-corporation government decided that people of Flint, MI, did not need super clean water that much.

I'm no corporate apologist, but I have trouble seeing how Nestle should pay the people who aren't supplying their water for the water they use.

On the other hand, if Nestle did bottle Flint tap water in their product you can be the crisis would have never happened. They would own that municipal water department in all but name.

Screw same rate, even. They are making more than enough money to be made to pay a fair amount, in relation to the profit they're earning.

You keep using the word "fair". What do you think it means?

No, enlight me. What does it mean to you?

It doesn't matter what it means to me, but your intended meaning is essential to interpreting your proposal that they should pay a "fair amount".

Because the cost of municipal water is driven by pipes and treatment equipment, not the water itself.

>Part of the reason municipalities are short on money for their water systems, is that companies get the same water (or at least, from the same watershed) for free.

>Is it so wrong to ask Nestle to at least pay the same rate you and I and every other citizen pays for water?

This is a misconception, in Michigan at least. Flint is not short on water. They are short on functioning pipes for moving the water. Getting access to the Great Lakes' unlimited supply of water was never a barrier. That water is effectively as non-scarce as air.

If you want to go to the GL, and "BYO filtration" and suck the water out to drink, that is free for you too, just as much as Nestle.

Michigan municipalities charge for water because of the cost of filtering and distributing it, not because it's so scarce it has to throttle demand.

Nestle is profiting from the service of putting it in a bottle that you get to keep after purchasing, not from getting underpriced water in Michigan.

(California is a different story, where water is scarce, and Nestle is making that problem a little bit worse, but CA has a more general problem with sane incentives for water usage -- e.g. use-it-or-lose-it policies for farms -- that are mostly unrelated to the Nestle deal.)

Nestle undoubtedly sold more bottled water during the fallout.

I recently moved to rural midwest from the pacific northwest and have insisted on tap water my whole life, but I am now drinking bottled water in fear of what happened in Flint.

Poisoning a town's water supply to sell more bottled water is a rather cartoonish scheme. The risk/reward ratio is way off, since it would be curtains for the company if this scheme were ever uncovered and the added sales would be very modest on a global scale. It's too tinfoil hat for me to believe without evidence.

The suggestion above is of correlation, not causation.

But then you are hating on a corporation from benefiting from a crisis it had nothing to do with.

There are plenty of reasons to hate corporations, there is no need to invent crazy new ones.

How am I "hating" if I didn't blame them for anything, or say anything hateful? Or, what did I say that is hateful? I will apologize to Nestle for it. Is that what you want?

I'm missing the connection between water infrastructure in Michigan and the wellbeing of children in Africa.

Basically they are saying tax water nestle uses and use the money to improve water access elsewhere.

That's the gist of it, yes.

So if Michigan were collecting more tax revenues, you think it's likely they'd spend it on improving water access for people on other continents? They don't even take care of locals yet.

That's not what I'm saying, of course. I specifically gave the example of Flint MI.

It very much seems to be what you're saying:

> You say Nestlé selling you bottled water doesn't impact "an African kid getting water", well excuse me but it very well does.

First, cost-cutting may be a but-for cause of the Flint Crisis, but it's not a proximate cause. Any non-negligent engineers could have easily done the cost-cutting safely. If I get hit by drunk driver going to church, going to church didn't REALLY kill me.

Second, Nestle has nothing to do with Flint. Nestle didn't outbid Flint for safe water.

Third, Michigan is charging a fair price for water since it has such a surplus.

Fourth, there is no nexus between michigan tax revenue and african drinking water. You could use that logic on anything.

So, we charge Nestle for water. Good. Now Nestle executive decides to move to another State and what you get is just a bunch of unemployed folks as well as several businesses losing the contracts they used to have with Nestle.

The question, in this global world, is wether Nestle is paying the fair "International price" given that the transaction is net beneficial.

Yeah, the state might be getting less comparing to yesterday. But remember this is the 21st century and things have changed. Many businesses will just move instead of dealing with your issues adapting to the new order.

well ideally the new state would charge Nestle and if Nestle kept moving the federal government could pass legislation or even import tariffs if Nestle decided to move overseas.

It is a hostile approach instead of trying to understand how globalization is shifting the grounds. As Nestle gets more global and expand sales abroad, the % of its sales in the US gets smaller. By pushing its' operations outside the US, you are giving it more reason to fight.

Think about it. Corps have paid taxes to government because it mainly provided infrastructure to operations and protection. If you are building your product aboard, selling it abroad, keeping the profit aboard, trading the stocks abroad (if you push WallStreet out too), etc... Why would these mega-corps still wants to pay taxes to the US gov?

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