this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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To be fair: if this design was the price for free water everywhere I would pay for it. I want a world where I can get free drinking water everywhere so I don't have to carry it.
Meanwhile my shitty little European town has recently installed a fountain for drinking, filling up your bottle and also with a dog drink station, completely free.
"Free"
Nothing is free
Someone paid for the fountain. Either you, your neighbor, your friend, or your fellow countryman. But someone.
Why nickel and dime everyone that is probably never going to even see the fountain instead of letting the people that want/need pay for it?
Cold filtered water at just a single park you regularly go to is probably worth 3 bucks a month.
If extra money went to park improvements, that would be even better.
I don't see why everyone wants "free" when it's just a hidden cost that you're probably paying anyways. Yes, probably costs more for the people that use the service more, but that's the way it should be.
Personally I'd rather save 20 dollars on my taxes and bring water to the park. Even still tap water is just fine.
Why would I even want to pay 5 dollars more in taxes so someone doesn't have to bring a water bottle?
This is a premium service that shouldn't be the burden of the taxpayer.
Man, lotta vague libertarian energy here, but to answer your question:
In general, the answer to this usually boils down to one of two answers:
choosing instead to directly nickel and dime people at the point of service comes with overhead and is wildly inefficient. You want to add an internet connection to every public water fountain? Or at the very least wire them with electricity to power some kind of vending machine system? Or perhaps have a person standing there to charge people? Someone will have to pay extra for any additional steps in what could otherwise just be, well, a simple faucet.
More often than not, the people that need things the most are not the people who can pay for them. These people still need to survive, because letting the poor suffer and die will still cost you and everyone else money.
And study after study shows that when we all pay a little to help people in general, we can all save a lot in, say, street sanitization, law enforcement, healthcare services, etc. Things that you have to provide especially if people can't afford it.