Fluoridated water

[GutZ]

the anti fluoride proponents often remind me of this:

 

http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2008/08/04

 

Outstanding!

 

I try not to insult people for lack of intelligence because many people dwarf me in that subject, but that's not even trying!

[abskebabs]

Murray Rothbard provided an interesting article on this subject before his death. I thought people might be interested in reading:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch59.html

[iNow]

The fact that what is actually added to the water is fluorosilicate (as the free acid or as the Na salt) is true, but a red herring. The stuff is derived from fertiliser manufacture and it might well contain traces of other materials. However the overall content of potentially toxic materials in water is strictly regulated.

If you add a ppm or so of H2SF6 to the water and it contains a fraction of a percent of, for example, mercury, then you are adding something like a few part per billion of mercury to the water. So what?

I think they call that "homeopathy," except what you propose above is still too concentrated to be considered "good medicine" by that cult.

[John Cuthber]

Intersting point.

From this site here (thanks to Google)

http://abchomeopathy.com/homeopathy.htm

 

"Homeopathic remedies (also called homeopathics) are a system of medicine based on three principles:

 

Like cures like

For example, if the symptoms of your cold are similar to poisoning by mercury, then mercury would be your homeopathic remedy.

 

Minimal Dose

The remedy is taken in an extremely dilute form; normally one part of the remedy to around 1,000,000,000,000 parts of water. "

 

 

According to this site

http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/NWF-3-26-04.pdf

rainwater already contains about 10 ng per litre which (if I have counted the zeros correctly) is about 10 times as much as the homeopathic "remedy". I wonder what the dilute their stuff with.

 

 

Incidentally,

"Also, in the UK electricity and gas has been privatised for a long time."

I know; 3 monopolies.

I still have one pipe connected to my house and no choice about whether or not it's fluoridated by lobbying the company directly because they know that I can't withdraw my custom. I might be able to get the government to force them to change- if enough of us did then the gorenment would change the law and the water company would respond to the demands of their customers.

Without such intervention, the water companies could do as they pleased.

[abskebabs]

Without such intervention, the water companies could do as they pleased.

 

As it involves the same kind of reasoning, I guess you would probably say everybody would be paid nothing without minimium wages, instead of their marginal productivity, because of the undefeatable domiant power the capitalists have over the labourers. Or the monopoly power of horse drawn cart companies would be so impossibly large that people would still have to resort to such primitive transportation.

 

The point I'm making is simple. Without external interference in the contracts individuals can make and the services they acquire, opportunites for monopoly pricing would be unstable.

 

If some company is charging unreasonable prices for a service or is not giving consumers the requested service then this creates an arbitrage opportunity which another can fill profitably, due to the price difference or poor quality of the product, even investing in the necessary infrastructure to make such a service possible. If it is not profitable to engage in this venture, then it probably means the other company already is charging the most competitive price.

 

Indeed, I enquired about this issue and some of the points you've raised on another forum, and I gained some interesting insights into how a private system could work. Wondered what your thoughts would be on this:

 

"Someone who purchases a residence and is concerned about water will probably want a guarantee from the water company that water will be provided at a certain price for a certain period of time. Or, the people a neighborhood or town that share the same pipe network could set up a system whereby different water providers input enough water into the pipes to serve the individuals who decide to patronize them (this is even easier with electricity).

 

The point is that people are going to want some control the price of water before they move in anywhere. A maliciously monopolistic water company will simply drive people out of the neighborhood and cause property values to fall, so the market will favor solutions that prevent this from occurring."

 

Needless to say, despite the government monopoly, I've already thought of various private solutions to get around this problem of mandatory medication... Maybe I become an exploiting capitalist still>!

[Sisyphus]

The government doesn't have a monopoly on water. It has a monopoly on public water mains, in much the same way as it has a monopoly on roads. The difference is that we really don't have a choice on whether to use public roads if we want to leave our own property, but nobody is forcing you to use public water. Objecting to flouride in the water is thus roughly equivalent to objecting to painted lines on the roads, although actually with less grounds, as, again, you don't have to use public water, and you can easily filter it yourself if you do. You can't, however, just decide to paint over the lines you don't like.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

You try laying an alternative pipe network in a small city and see how well that works out for you.

 

They're called government-regulated monopolies because they're natural monopolies that are regulated to prevent abuse of consumers. The government didn't say "Hmm, we should make water supply a monopoly," they said "it's a natural monopoly, so we'd better regulate them."

 

Water is a monopoly because of incredibly high natural barriers to entry. That's all. The governments are not imposing the barriers because they feel like it.

[John Cuthber]

"As it involves the same kind of reasoning, I guess you would probably say everybody would be paid nothing without minimium wages, instead of their marginal productivity, because of the undefeatable domiant power the capitalists have over the labourers. "

 

Why?

After all, I keep trying to explain that water is different from other commodities.

 

 

"but nobody is forcing you to use public water."

Count the pipes again.

It is utterly impractical for me to see to arrange my own water supply because the ecconomies of scale mean that it would be (relatively) horribly expensive. I am stuck with that supply.

 

 

It seems that the Cap'n understands the problem of natural monopolies. Why do the rest of you seem to be struggling.

[bascule]

Did any city you lived in fluoridate the water?

 

Yes, it was a hotbutton political issue in my hometown with lots of disinformation from both sides.

[abskebabs]

The basis of your entire argument is based on the repeated assertion of the existence of so-called natural monopolies. I am not only convinced these have never existed in the sense that monopoly prices can be achieved, but I don't think they can ever exist in any sustainable way.

 

in turn, the only real monopolies that have ever existed are the franchise monopolies given by government privelige that you are defending.

 

You have presented absolutely no evidence to support your argument apart from your remarks that the truth of your assertion is simply self-evident, and I do not see how this is justified either. For a little elucidation on the matter I recommend the following:

 

http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/R92_3.pdf

[Sisyphus]

What's all this about "laying your own pipe?" No, of course you can't, because you don't own the land through which the pipe would have to run. You can dig a well on your own property, though, or collect rainwater, or bring in what you need by other means. The statement "nobody is forcing you to use public water" is 100% correct. Do your taps not have an off position?

 

Now, if you're going to say that none of those things are practical, then I agree. Having extremely cheap, drinkable water literally piped to one's house is so convenient that it's hard to justify not using it. But nobody is forcing you. And you might say it's a de facto monopoly because nobody can sell water at remotely competetive prices, due to the advantage of being able to lay pipe through public land, a right in most places granted to the public as a whole (i.e., the government) and not private individuals. And common sense would agree with you. But bottled water is still a huge business, so who the hell knows.

[John Cuthber]

There are some things that really are natural monopolies- the army is usually accepted as being one.

There are also things that are close to being monopolies without government intervention. Which government do you think licensed OPEC?

 

Why are there anti trust laws if all monopolies are unstable?

My guess is that even if they are unstable in the long term, they can rip off the customers in the short term, and that's not considered acceptable.

[Sisyphus]

One example is roads. You can have public roads, or you can have private monopolies granted by the government. The "barrier to entry" is that you can't have competing owners of the same real estate.

[abskebabs]

Why are there anti trust laws if all monopolies are unstable?

 

Mostly because Cartels lobbied for their creation in the first place, as they were not able to keep monopoly prices in a competitive environment. Just read any of the work of Dominick T. Armentano, Harold Demsetz and Thomas DiLorenzo on the subject.

 

As for OPEC, the process that led to its creaton is a little more complicated, some of which the following paper attempts to address:

http://mises.org/journals/scholar/Bradley.pdf

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

One example is roads. You can have public roads, or you can have private monopolies granted by the government. The "barrier to entry" is that you can't have competing owners of the same real estate.

 

I don't believe that is the case either. Recent work by Walter Block blows the lid on this myth both theoretically and historically:

http://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf

[Sisyphus]

I don't believe that is the case either. Recent work by Walter Block blows the lid on this myth both theoretically and historically:

http://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf

 

Do you not understand the problem with linking to an entire book?

[abskebabs]

Do you not understand the problem with linking to an entire book?

Fair enough, it may take quite long to read through, I just thought it would be worthwhile providing a link to literature on the subject.

 

Is there also a forum rule against doing that? I'll take note of this for the future.

[GDG]

Intersting point.

From this site here (thanks to Google)

http://abchomeopathy.com/homeopathy.htm

 

"Homeopathic remedies (also called homeopathics) are a system of medicine based on three principles:

 

Like cures like

For example, if the symptoms of your cold are similar to poisoning by mercury, then mercury would be your homeopathic remedy.

 

Minimal Dose

The remedy is taken in an extremely dilute form; normally one part of the remedy to around 1,000,000,000,000 parts of water. "

 

I think they've understated the amount of dilution: typical homeopathic dilutions are on the order of 1:10^60 (and can be higher).

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Fair enough, it may take quite long to read through, I just thought it would be worthwhile providing a link to literature on the subject.

 

Is there also a forum rule against doing that? I'll take note of this for the future.

No rules against it. It's just not very helpful in a discussion when it'd take a few weeks for us to even get enough time to read the whole thing, merely so we can tell some random guy on the Internet that we think he's wrong.

 

Could you be more specific with the reasons the author of the book presents?

[John Cuthber]

While you are thinking about that, could you please let me know what the advantage of having more than one army would be?