Fresh water cost $1 per cubic metre. The availability of fresh drinking water in some countries is a political problem not a technological one.
That really depends on where you are, infrastructure, and economies of scale. The statement is ridiculous by itself.
If I pumped a cubic meter of drinking water here and mailed it to you, it would cost much more than $1. If I instead built pump and piping from scratch to provide you with a single cubic meter at your location, it would also cost way more. Especially if I could source neither parts nor know-how locally and instead had to ship them around half the globe.
Appeal to authority is not an argument
Yup. For example in Finland it costs between 1-3€/m3 depending on where you are in the country.
Then again it's "the land of a thousand lakes" and while most of the water isn't drinkable (at least according to "health standards", anymore, due to human activity) you can still drink from the lakes/streams in Lapland. And there are aquifers everywhere.
We've somewhat created this problem ourselves. Back in the day you wouldn't even consider settling anywhere without a reliable water source. Nowadays if the environment can't support you we'll just come up with some high-tech solution and have more babies and in the process we become dependent on state infrastructure. People like Elon Musk want higher tech and more people, and while I'd like to agree with him I don't see that as realistic, given human nature and the current landscape around the world.
Ok, that was a bit of a derail.
I really like innovation like this though. As long as someone can supply the materials for the device, it really improves quality of living in many places.
Today we have energy crisis in Europe and who would expect 5 or 10 years ago that situation will go that bad, that rationing of energy will be considered? There are already some predictions that water scarcity problem will get worse, so it's very good that there are already prototypes that might provide cheap conversion of salt water to clean water. Future seems to be about minimizing costs and decentralization, so we can better sustain all people and save environment.
That's putting it mildly. I recommend the book "When the Rivers Run Dry" if you feel like you don't have enough reasons to despair.
If it had, we'd have used less of them and used more alternatives like insulation. Just like farmers would use less water if they had some incentive to use less than every bit they could get their hands on.
The saltwater piping (and especially pumps if needed) does not build or maintain itself, and this filter is unnecessary for river, well or rain water. It may be useful for salt lakes, but these are likely to go first.
If you really need it for some reason, solar or other distillation is good enough on small scale.
Even within the US aquifers that millions of Americans rely on for freshwater are being depleted at an accelerating rate.
There comes are point where these are empty and the ground collapses.
Prices of water are very regional and can become very costly.
Your logic is not sound.
A perfect anologue is the resent post regarding famine. Famine is a political failure. Yes, certainly, technology could prevent famine. If everyone on earth had a synthesizer to generate food then it wouldn't be an issue! So it must be a lack of technology keeping people hungry. Or, hear me out, what if the politicians stopped starving people to death through failures in governance ?
Almost exclusively in the modern world, famine is caused by politicians. So the answer lies in removing the cause of the problem. Developing technology to counteract the cause of famine, a cause that should solve the problems of food distribution....? It makes very little sense.
Merely convincing the populous that food could be in short supply has caused people to hoard food, thereby making a short supply. This caused people to starve to death while the hoarders looked on the starvation as evidence of the need to hoard food.
Technology cannot correct stupidity
meanwhile melting permafrost releases methane, destroys buildings, and creates swamps. It does not create viable, drinkable rivers