Ugh. "a question at the heart of issue: should water be commodified and sold by private industry, or is it a basic human right?" That anyone could think that's a legitimate question is flabbergasting.

Of all the dehumanizing, bad-paying jobs I've worked over the years just to scrape together rent monies, the absolute worst was "cupositing" circuit boards in the early '90s. So many vats of chemicals were involved in the process, besides electroless copper. And waste treatment (at least at that time, in that particular plant) consisted of basically dumping pollutants into the ecosystem, only in "measured" and "controlled" amounts.

Despite improvements over time, such as ion exchange to extract metals from waste water, I doubt much has changed, as I don't really see how it could. I suspect that, ultimately, manufacturing anything as "unnatural" as electronics yields at least some "unnatural" chemical / metal byproducts and waste that is not good for the environment. Period. That's why I'm also somewhat skeptical of the techno / crypto "revolution."

Today my rent-gig requires the use of computers and other technology, as I'm sure most rent-gigs do. Thus, I figure if I'm going to use products I'm fundamentally opposed to, in order to help produce more products I'm fundamentally opposed to, in order to pay rents and taxes and fees I'm fundamentally opposed to, I might as well try to stay abreast of technological developments. And I'm hopeful about technological progress, but cautiously so.

I suspect the financial revolution that is really required is somewhat counter-technological. I think people need to form strong, local, self-sustaining permacultural communities and, for currency, move in the direction of something closer to wampum. And to make it truly inflation-resistant, control all the goods and services on the local market. The community agrees that, say, one community wampum equals so many community potatoes, so many community carrots, etc. and it's a fixed value in perpetuity. Exclude foreign trade and especially corporate trade from that economy as much as possible, even if it means doing without things. That way nobody can come along and say, "I need to raise the price of x because the price of y just went up."

Community members will almost certainly have to still play the fiat currency game to some extent, due to extortionist practices around taxes and other fees. But the freest anyone can get, I suspect, will include eventually getting free of much bad technology. Of course, the technocrats appear to be building a panopticon presently, so who knows at this point if real freedom is attainable?

I do think the crypto realm could provide useful modeling for what such small economies might look like. The thing is to have a cryptocurrency that is not primarily measured in terms of USD or other fiat currencies. Say no. "Our Radcoin (TM) is the medium of exchange in a limited economy dealing with specific goods and services having set values for a specific community. One Radcoin is always worth the following..." and make a list of goods and services that are entirely controlled and exchanged within the online community. Then, if anyone wants to wallow in fiat muck, it's clear they're moving outside the "real economy" back to fantasy land where one Radcoin is worth anywhere from seventeen cents to seventeen million dollars on any given day according to any given whim.