[mburbank]

Bubba, your outlook is totally niave. Company's collude and price fix, selling grade A water at 50$ a gallon, having mini show price wars, occasionally dropping the price by a few dollars here, a few there. Meanwhile they sell grade z water to the masses at a much lower rate. Try comparing so called competeing gas stations prices sometime.

Moreover, our water companies produce large amounts of toxic chemicals in their sub standard filtration pants which they then dump behind them behind the factory, giving half the kids in the neighborhood luekemia. No government regulations to stop them. Eventually an angry mob of parents gathers and are about to torch the factory when the private security gards open fire. Where are the police? They've been privatized and are currently guarding the factory and firing on the mob. A grassroots boycott has some success punishing the evil polluting water company, but it's not like you can do without water.

meanwhile, air quality gets wporse and worse. Since it moves around you can't really commodify it, so there's no proft to be made cleaning it. Selling oxygen however becomes a booming business and as demand for respiratory therapy grows the price for that goes through the roof too. Sure, there's insurance, but it's now sold at whatever prie the market will bear and you get what you pay for. Affordable health insurance buys you a quick lung scrape in a back alley.