Adumbration

Over many years I have listened to a lot of Science Friday, these days mostly through their podcast; they are back to splitting up the program into segments for their different topics, which is helpful in managing ones time to listen to the episodes.

A recent program features the topic of decaying infrastructure in water distribution around cities in the nation.  A couple points from that discussion

• there are some very old water distribution systems still in use around the United States
• Wood pipe sections that that are still in use leak as much as 10% of the water on its way to being consumed
• decaying water handling infrastructure is building up to the point demanding huge investments to correct

Of course this is an example of capital consumption - the need to maintain or improve those factors of production is ignored by the people responsible for them, leading to a false "savings" in the cost of providing water to consumers.  Water is one of those services claimed by municipal and other local government administrations, so the people responsible for this state of affairs are the administrators and politicos who run those systems. 

Politics is a strange part of our social interactions.  The general public is happy to complain when faced with any price increase, so the re-election and appointment interests drive problems like this to be ignored and ignored some more.  Knowledgable people on the inside of these trades can see what's going on and sound an alarm - as evidence by the guests of this program - but they are stuck in the same political system. 

Contrast this with the price system that we use in almost every other part of our lives, including food, clothing, shelter, recreation.  While some of these things also face political interventions from price supports to restrictions on supply, the overriding influence is ultimately the consumer demand expressed by what people actually choose to purchase.  We don't worry about the infrastructure required to keep the supply of athletic shoes sufficient to satisfy our needs, because the maintenance of captial goods required to supply those shoes is built into the structure of their production.  Furthermore, if Nike or Adidas misjudges the need to capital replenishment they face the penalty of reduced business.