Comments on: The battle for public water in Italy: an anticipation of European water policy and a test of political maturity https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-battle-for-public-water-in-italy-an-anticipation-of-european-water-policy-and-a-test-of-political-maturity/2010/05/13 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Mon, 13 Oct 2014 20:06:45 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: Marco Fioretti https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-battle-for-public-water-in-italy-an-anticipation-of-european-water-policy-and-a-test-of-political-maturity/2010/05/13/comment-page-1#comment-428722 Fri, 21 May 2010 11:00:43 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=8615#comment-428722 @Wes:

You wrote:

I think that the real issue is, what operational goals will the system have, what financial resources and who is the person in charge

The point / focus of my post and of the original articles I wrote is a bit different: I am only trying to point out that, no matter how you define goals, find the necessary money and choose who will be in charge, you must have an efficient, complete, real time monitoring system that tells you how things are going: for example if and how much water is wasted were, and other data I mentioned in the original articles. In other words, I’m only saying that it’s useless to define long-term, general goals, funding and managers if you then let them free to do whatever they please without continuous control.

But the true facts are rarely known to citizens, so I think these decisions are very difficult to put to a vote that has any real value.

exactly my (only) point: let’s make the true facts, that is the raw data showing how the system is working, viewable online in real time.

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By: Michel Bauwens https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-battle-for-public-water-in-italy-an-anticipation-of-european-water-policy-and-a-test-of-political-maturity/2010/05/13/comment-page-1#comment-428524 Thu, 20 May 2010 06:45:25 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=8615#comment-428524 In reply to Wes Strickland.

what I read is the following: an essential resource for life should be entrusted to entities only interested in their shareholders profit, and because the public is incompetent, it should not have a say in these matters? so privatisation should be a private matter, done without the involvement of the citizens?

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By: Wes Strickland https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-battle-for-public-water-in-italy-an-anticipation-of-european-water-policy-and-a-test-of-political-maturity/2010/05/13/comment-page-1#comment-428426 Wed, 19 May 2010 06:01:49 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=8615#comment-428426 You are right that the advocates of public water often lean on rhetoric of “our” water and “public control” even though in reality such control is normally remote and water systems are left to managers except in crises or for someone’s momentary political gain. I think that the real issue is, what operational goals will the system have, what financial resources and who is the person in charge. A private company run well is generally better for citizens than a government agency run incompetently, and vice versa. Often the public v. private debate comes up when there is a crisis because of past bad management, and there is a suggestion for change. Either the public employee unions rise up to defend their incompetent boss, or the customers rise up to attack an incompetent private company. One must be very careful as you suggest when analyzing what is really happening in these debates. But the true facts are rarely known to citizens, so I think these decisions are very difficult to put to a vote that has any real value.

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By: Patrick Anderson https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-battle-for-public-water-in-italy-an-anticipation-of-european-water-policy-and-a-test-of-political-maturity/2010/05/13/comment-page-1#comment-428016 Fri, 14 May 2010 13:24:28 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=8615#comment-428016 The water (and all Sources of Production) must be privately owned *by the Consumers* under the constraint that any Profit collected from newcomers is treated as that Payer’s investment.

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