> First time I’ve read that providing clean water on demand to everyone at a sufficient pressure is “minimal effort”.
Let's look at it from this perspective: what percentage of your country's workforce is actively involved in providing clean water?
If it were such a huge effort to provide for relatively basic human needs, then I'd imagine we'd have more people working on that and less people working on advertising, entertainment, rent-seeking, making & marketing disposable novelty products, etc.
The gist of the argument is that while oxygen is available at no effort, clean, potable water without pathogens and contaminants is certainly not and is a modern miracle. It’s only been a little over 100 years since the discovery of chlorine killing bacteria and whatnot in water.
As for what portion of the population is needed to provide clean water, I don’t see how that is a useful or measurable metric. Certainly the discovery process of cleaning the water, the materials science in creating the pipes, learning about lead poisoning and changing that, and so on and so forth is a huge effort in my books.
Also, going forward, access to clean water is looking like it will be a source of conflict. It’s not in the timescale of the next 5 to 10 years, so people take it for granted, but certainly the grandchildren of today will have to deal with procuring this “effortless” resources.
One might even say the same for oxygen in developing countries where poor people have to live next to factories under a permanent cloud of pollution. They literally can’t go for a run because of a lack of clean air!
Let's look at it from this perspective: what percentage of your country's workforce is actively involved in providing clean water?
If it were such a huge effort to provide for relatively basic human needs, then I'd imagine we'd have more people working on that and less people working on advertising, entertainment, rent-seeking, making & marketing disposable novelty products, etc.