Then the community is exactly forcing people to seek other, and way more expensive and way more inconvenient, sources of water. That's the opposite of a freedom.
Really? 'Why is the government providing potable water'? Because that's the point of governments: to provide a framework and the bare essentials of civilization.
And well, libertarian led governments are TERRIBLE.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...
The whole argument gets weirdly metaphysical. Not many people have a problem with local authorities removing things from the water. That is, I don't see many Americans demanding that their local authority provide them with completely untreated water. But apparently modifying the water by adding something to it is importantly different. You'd think that a more interesting discussion would be a practical one (about the pros of cons of treating water in different ways). But a certain current of American discourse would rather return again and again to essentially theological arguments. We must locate the original sin against freedom in our local water infrastructure!
Because there is a government monopoly on water, you need these protections to prevent government overreach, because this is the only way for the consumer to express their preferences.
Looking around the thread, the idea seems to be that there is some kind of important metaphysical distinction between the government "adding" something to the water that people could in principle add themselves or merely "filtering out" bad stuff like pathogens — and that this metaphysical distinction is somehow linked to the difference between positive and negative liberties. As an aside, I think this probably makes no sense on a chemical level, as you generally can't remove stuff without also adding something else. But in any case, this strikes me as a uniquely American perspective. I think a more common perspective is the following:
* Essentially no-one wants raw untreated water supplied to their homes.
* The local government therefore needs to decide in which ways the water is going to be treated.
* This has to involve some compromises (because there's one set of pipes).
* These compromises are boring practical issues of municipal infrastructure and have no interesting philosophical or political implications.
Oh, I very much understand the libertarian 'argument', and I dismiss it as childish anarcho-primativist horseshit.
Almost all (aside the rare Lefty libertarian types) libertarians utterly leave out the fact that helping each other and coming together collectively can fix problems in what amounts exponentiation, compared to the collective action problem of individualism.
If everyone generated their own power, then grids would be mismatched and slow everyone down.
If water grids were individual wells, we would tap out natural aquifers in short notice. By collectively coming together, desalination plants and mass water purification is doable.
Libertarian types will demand absolute indepenendence for everything, but also want the spoils of a framework of governance. But even when they get their own community, as I linked, they so overwhelmingly fucked it up.
Communism is a better idea than rugged right-wing libertarianism (the common one in the USA). Turns out, none of the richies want to pay for anything.
The issue arises when that water is fluoridated against the will of a significant portion of the population. It effectively forces dissenters to either accept it or go through the hassle and expense of sourcing their own water — which defeats the original purpose of providing low-cost, universally accessible water.
Today, the marginal benefits of fluoridation are questionable, especially with fluoride available in toothpaste. So forcing it on everyone, despite objection, becomes harder to justify — and that's why some places have stopped adding it.