Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • October 24, 2023 12:11 PM

@ Winter, ALL,

“So what is the Libertarian approach? Bottled water?”

I sincerely hope not.

The reason is plastic particulates from the bottles that end up in the human gullet. From where they can and do end up as a permanents and growing form of non organic build-up.

Some plastics are now known to have adverse effects like being associated with cancer and auto-immune diseases.

But also what happens to these bottles?

The CDC and EPA amoungst other US Agencies have issued guide lines on the amount of water needed per person as a minimum per day and it’s 4 US quarts or ~4 litres.

So between two and eight plastic bottles per person per day.

So say a little over 10,000 bottles per family each year. Which is a lot of plastic wastage going into the environment.

“All commercial tap water projects have been a total failure.”

People living in California can give you some insight on the why. They have had legislation controling how much water a home gets on a daily basis[1].

I’ve been told that it has caused some to fall into “water poverty” where they do not get sufficient water to maintain a clean environment.

It is known that you can if you are carefull use under 2liter of water to shower with (navy shower)., but others with less thoughtful usage can easily use more than 130liters which if you had to carry it is more than 1/8th of a ton, that few people could carry any distance.

But that is just one water use activity… The average was 125USGal which is ~473liter or not far short of half a ton. So a little under 1.7tons a day for an average family dwelling by Californian figures[2].

Now the “commercial price” of bottled water varries, but I’m told 1USD/ltr is not uncommon…

Based on that the 1665ltr/day for a Californian house hold would cost just over six hundred thousand dollars per year…

[1] At times it has been limited to just 80 USGal a day,

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-30/can-you-get-by-on-just-80-gallons-of-water-a-day

But the figures behind that suggest usage is not just above 120 USGal/person/day but is increasing significantly. Whilst availability of water has been rather more than decreasing in the past two decades, more so than in the preceading 1200years…

[1] The average size of a US household is dropping and is a little below 3.5 people per home. According to,

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-family-size-by-state

California has the second highest at 3.52.

Clive Robinson • October 24, 2023 5:50 PM

@ Nombre NoImportante, ALL,

“As someone who got his feet wet in this industry at the beginning of my career”

You are not clear which industry ICTsec, Water or both, and what you say to my eye is applicable to both.

Not that it realy matters as both have changed significantly in the past 40 years as I can attest.

You give a brief description of ills of the water industry or more precisely ICTsec within it.

Rather than have me give my normal spiel on how the expectations of unknowledgable or don’t care employers managers and those doing the work can not coincide… Perhaps the words of a prievious frequenter of this blog from a month or three back, who has a bit of fame in his own right. @Dirk Praet has written,

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/consultant-swiss-army-knife-dirk-praet

It’s worth a read because it explains a problem that has made a gulf of misunderstanding that does neither side any favours.

@ Dirk Praet,

If you are still “lurking” you might want to pop up and say Hi, I suspect a few others of “the usual suspects” are still lurking as well.

Clive Robinson • October 25, 2023 10:03 AM

@ Stuart, Winter, ALL,

Re : Free Market Water Supply Systems.

“A water system run by the private sector is generally more efficient and cost effective than government run systems.”

Not in my experience and I’ve worked in the water industry on the technical side of maintainance and re-engineering. So I have seen it as an insider and as a “no choice consumer”.

Why do I say “no choice consumer”, well water supply and sewage removal like all utilities is effectively a monopoly in any given area. Even when you try seperating the water from the actual supply infrastructure. You still end up with a monopoly for the infrastructure charges and at best a cartel for the supply of water.

The reality is you can not pick and chose who’s supplied water you get to drink. The laws of physics and transportation costs decide that. So you get the water from the supplier that has the highest preasure at the pipe that enters your property and as that preasure does not come for free and gets more expensive with distance that usually means the closest supplier no matter how bad the water is (see news stories with regards Flint Michigan to see one of those that have been caught “lead handed” under Governor Rick Snyder (R) who amongst many others were charged with quite serious crimes including twelve counts of killing people).

The “efficiency” you claim is without doubt illusory and is usually based on “short term cost savings” that actually have significant long term expenses. In some cases it’s easy to see why, such as defering essential maintainence and laying-off those who actually have the rare skill sets to manage infrastructure safely.

In the case of Flint they had long long avoided replacing lead pipe with faulty joints. Failure to add sufficient chemicals to the supply caused significant leaching of lead and build up of organic contaminates including significant pathogens.

The fact they are replacing the lead pipes with copper does not realy solve the issue. Because as with lead, copper can leach into water with the wrong chemical content and thus just as with lead cause various metabolic syndromes and toxicological disadvantages all the way up to and including death that is often protracted and significantly debilitating.

The reason Flint happened was the “business practices employed” thus it makes little difference if the water supply is run by a municipality or a private entity with or without share holders.

If you want to see other aspects of how water companies fail look at England, where in the 1980’s “Free Market thinking” was used to “sell-off” the existing water supply organisations. It has with little doubt turned over the past four or so decades into an unmitigated disaster and will take probably upto 10 human grnerations to just get back to a stable safe state, if it ever does, which is very unlikely as long as the dangerous “business practices” continue to be used, which politically and economically appears extreamly likely.

Clive Robinson • November 1, 2023 6:41 PM

@ blah,

Re : Grab the money and run.

“But capitalism prioritizes immediate profits ahead of immediate costs.”

Actually no “capitalism” in the broad sense does not, it’s about encoraging growth and taking a reward for that which you put towards future growth.

The various “neo-” types who have mantras such as “Don’t leave money on the table/floor” are not actually “capitalists” in that sense, though they do pretend and pay others to “paont them in such a flag”. What they actually are is “self entitled” and “greedy” and hell bent on accumumulation no matter what the cost / harms are to others… With ironically due actually to their very short term views they hurt themselves as well.

For instance an actual capatilist realises that they do not stand alone, they are dependent on others. Thus they implicitly know that,

“Rising waters lift all well found vessels”

Thus they will pay towards “social good” as they benifit from it more than it costs them.

At the crudest view, your workers are your customers, if you make them unemployed who buys your goods?

Less obviously if the population is unhealthy because health care is significantly over priced due to profit gouging, then they become not just sick but a nexus for disease. The pathogens see no difference between wealthy and poor, just the next host to use. So the pathogens will spread to the wealthy and kill them as well. Keep the population sufficiently healthy and virulant disease has less of a “toe hold” to spread rapidly.

Likewise roads, they are expensive to build especially if made to a sufficient standard, which is why private roads are generally in bad repair or of shoddy design that is a forever cost in annual maintainence. If you are a manufacturer with “goods to ship” and “workers to get on site” then it’s in your own self interest to have the roads not just well built but well maintained, to minimise adverse effects outside your gates.

I could go on, with a very long list, and actual capitalists are aware of these “benificial costs”, the “neo-” types think they are smart by avoiding them… But turn and look around much of the USA, and ask, “Where is the manufacturing?”, “Where is “the customer base?” and similar questions.

Those behind the losses are not building “growth” but “recession”, therefore they are not capitalists in the traditional meaning, just at best grubby profiters greedily grabing and running, and leaving devistation on their wake. They think they are smart, but Finacial Crises FC1,2,3,4 leading into C19 etc should tell you the truth of the matter…