Water for Sale: How Business and the Market Can Resolve the World's Water Crisis Book

I don't usually write reviews, but this book is such a disgrace that hopefully I may turn at least one person from being convinced by the bias and lack of depth this book presents. I bought it for the good reviews as I wanted to understand the pro-arguments for privatisation. Segerfeldt talks as if private companies have some magic flare that allows them to do things governments cannot do. I have worked in utilities for both government and private, and yes there are inefficiencies in govt companies but when times get tough, then private sector milk government entities like they're a dairy cow. the recent recession proved this, with banks, manufacturing and others all calling for government bailouts. About the only valid point which was referenced is that a free market creates competition. But taking a resource that is essential to human life and making it a competitive market, in my eyes, is disgracefully inhuman.

Personally knowing people who have worked in developing nations on water projects, Segerfeldt overlooks the fact that water supply is already a part of THEIR economies, and when ever the west has come to 'help', even with water wells in villages and the like, they have tampered local economies and left people starving and of no purpose to their community. The 'success' of privatisation is because they chose their own metrics, they chose how that information is gathered, and thus they can tell everyone when they do well. But ultimately, private entities aim to make money, which means they must leave at the end of the year with more resources than they started with. couple this with taking away economic control from developing countries, and you have a recipe for capitalist control over developing nations and the economic justification to deprive people of water. Take that person off the statistical collection and you can take away their life while looking like youre doing a great thing. rant over.