So the end result of this is… companies race to burn fossil fuels into plastic to take water away from municipal or agricultural sources, remove as much safety filtering as they legally (or illegally) can “because it’s cheaper and more competitive” and buy up as much water rights and other water bottling companies as they can with the centralized capital because economies of scale mean better margins. And then once they have a monopoly, they jack up the price and screw over everyone who doesn’t have free water in their taps (which is everyone because the cities all got priced out and had to sell their water rights so now people have to buy bottled water).

Regulation in this scenario doesn’t work because the water companies are operating in some country across the world which has no money or army to enforce its laws. Or the local politicians are corrupt. There is no competition because people don’t have any real choice: they have to drink water which means they have to buy it from some company (as opposed to getting it for free as a human right). That is the big lie we’re all told about capitalism: that competition is a given in every market, government regulation is “in the way” and that the free market will somehow lead to the best outcome for all. At least for water (and also for web browsers), that is patently and obviously not true.

Edit: link formatting