Weather Banter - View Single Post - Greenie Desal Insanity, Just Like All Other Greenie Schemes,Will Cripple Us

Sylvia Else

On 13/11/2010 12:11 AM, wrote:
In sci.skeptic Sylvia wrote:
[...]
But if they're simply trying to obtain their water for the lowest
possible expenditure, which is the situation we're discussing, then the
value is the lowest price they can get, and desalinators will win over
rainwater tanks because it is not possible for rainwater tank makers to
offer a price that competes with desalination. Any price that would
compete would be below the cost.
[...]

Oh dear, we're back to the land of fancy and contradiction.

I realise you must try to have it both ways or neither way to
avoid the horns of the dilemma.

But either you accept there are the std links between price, demand
and supply in which case price tells you nothing about people's
beliefs and what gives them fuzzy fellings; or you assume people do
what they will, there is no causal link, and you can say even less
about what prices mean.

No, it's you who seem unable to understand that although price is
determined by demand and supply, whether a price exists at all depends
on whether it is possible to meet the constraint that the price has to
lie between cost and value.

I'm maintaining that for the vast majority of consumers, who value water
purely based on the minimum amount they have to pay for it, from
whatever source, a price for water from water tanks does not exist.

You are again putting yourself in the position of the automobile
naysayers c1900 saying "horses are better than cars; people will never
buy cars because they are too expensive compared with horses".

No, I'm simply saying that it is not possible for water tank
manufacturers to offer water tanks at a price that the vast majority of
consumers will be willing to pay. The market forces of supply and demand
cannot operate on a non-existent price.

Your horses versus cars example is hardly relevant, because they are not
equivalent modes of transport. Most users don't care where their water
comes from, as long as it's always there in the tap at an acceptable purity.

Sylvia.