The amount of people here in the comments happily suggesting to let Google use the clean water for their AI datacenters and return dirty water to use in crops is a bit worrying
Either way, prices should determine what an effective use of resources should be. It signals the scarcity, allows it to flow to the most productive resources, encourages new production and sources, and provides revenue.
It does make sense that datacenters would be cooled just like your water-cooled PC but that's probably not very sustainable given the fact that they don't do so.
>Either way, prices should determine what an effective use of resources should be.
And with the AI frenzy, generating slop is considered way more important than people having access to water.
I might not want to sell the spare room in my house to creepy stranger, and I shouldn't have to outbid them if I already own it.
Who owns the water?
I have $1,000,000,000 and an insatiable appetite for both material and domination. My 9 neighbors, stupid naive fucks that they are, only have $100,000 in total and do not have imaginations sufficient to even begin to want all materials and power in the world.
So of course, when the sole owner of water comes along and offers to sell it, I buy it all for $100,001. I can really never have enough water, especially as I need to power wash my driveway everyday. (I absolutely cannot stand the sight of grime.)
Anyways I guess my point is, I’m glad we all understand that price determines efficiency. Once my 9 neighbors die of dehydration, I’ll be able to gather more materials and power with less obstruction and competition. Hooray!
Not that I'm in favor of using drinking water for cooling slop factories, but I guess the reason we don't see waste water being used for cooling is cost (unless governments start mandating that...)