
Silicon Valley elites spending $60 for less than 3 gallons of unfiltered water - thg
http://www.businessinsider.de/silicon-valley-raw-water-obsession-2018-1?r=US&IR=T
======
j_s
In case you missed the discussion of the source NYT article 3 days ago:

Unfiltered Fervor: The Rush to Get Off the Water Grid |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16040540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16040540)

>dankohn1: _Yes, the founder of Juicero has re-emerged: After his juicing
company, Juicero, collapsed in September, he went on a 10-day cleanse,
drinking nothing but Live Water. “I haven’t tasted tap water in a long time,”
he said.... “You have to be agile and tactile, and be available to
experiment,” he said. “Literally, you have to carry bottles of water through
the dark.”_

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Merad
You have to admit, it’s a brilliant business strategy. First you rip them off
with all natural raw water, then you rip them off with all natural dysentery
treatments, then the few who are really fools can probably be ripped off again
for an all natural raw wood pine box (coffin).

~~~
fragsworth
I know it sounds ridiculous, but let's play devil's advocate for a moment:
We've evolved drinking "dirty" water until very recent history. It might be
that there are some unknown negative effects that come from drinking
filtered/purified water. Or some unknown positive health effects of drinking
unfiltered water.

It's slowly coming out that modern medicine occasionally gets things wrong and
we have to correct our intuitions (sugars, fats, sun exposure), but if you
think from a simple evolutionary perspective, these things often make a lot of
sense.

I'm not drinking unfiltered water, but there's some potential rationale behind
it.

~~~
659087
The most hilarious part about the "unfiltered water" fad, to me, is that it
probably has a bunch of hipsters drinking industrial run-off and many of the
same chemicals they rally against.

That's not to say I disagree with them about industry destroying water
supplies or poisoning us with various poorly-understood chemicals. It's just
the lack of self awareness that I find amusing.

~~~
pmlnr
> industry destroying water supplies or poisoning us with various poorly-
> understood chemicals

iodine? chloride? Which one of those is not well understood? :)

~~~
659087
I thought it would be pretty obvious that I wasn't talking about either of
those. The dead give-away should have been the "poorly-understood" part.

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resonanttoe
So the headline here had me focus on something that annoyed me. Oh and I
should say, I'm neither Silicon Valley based or elite or interested in water
beyond the normal scope of human survival :P

The implication "Silicon Valley elites" and that wonderful play in to
confirmation bias that they're all out of touch, cash flushed weirdos, like
that's just something people kind of want to believe especially in comment
sections with article like these. And ok so I'm not setting out to disprove
this, but this article and the one it links doesn't do the opposite either.

It makes some really spurious claims.

1\. I'm going to ignore the price thing here, because it seems to be heavily
reliant on one store just arbitrarily jacking up the price.

2\. Silicon valley elites = The Juicero guy. And pretty much only the Juicero
guy. He's the only one named and the only one that talks about it to anyone.
There is a landscaper from Emeryville, but I'm going to claim that "elite" is
probably not something they're going for.

3\. "Flying off the shelves" The atribution for this is one store in San Deigo
that opened three years ago. It's heavily dependent on these two paragraphs

"And Liquid Eden, a water store that opened in San Diego three years ago,
offers a variety of options, including fluoride-free, chlorine-free and a
“mineral electrolyte alkaline” drinking water that goes for $2.50 a gallon.

Trisha Kuhlmey, the owner, said the shop sells about 900 gallons of water a
day, and sales have doubled every year as the “water consciousness movement”
grows."

4\. You can find "movements" for anything. Both articles talk about "raw"
water movement like its this huge thing that is sweeping the bay area and will
consume you all.

So I'm not saying this is definitely wrong, but it just looks like that
business insider took one article of little value and several barely linked
claims to come up with the title of

"Silicon Valley elites are spending $60 for less than 3 gallons of dangerous,
unfiltered water — and it's flying off the shelves"

I mean the concept is stupid, but the articles talking about it doesn't feel
like its doing much better.

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Havoc
>"It stays most fresh within one lunar cycle of delivery," Singh said.

haha wow. That sentence says it all.

~~~
Faaak
I have to agree that it's some sort of good (alternative) marketing

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hprotagonist
Because the pure, natural minerals i want in my water include arsenic, and the
pure natural "living" water i want includes Giardia lamblia...

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kneel
Some people will always find something to be fussy about.

Especially so in SV where you have neurotic programmers that can't find any
more problems to solve.

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dpflan
The article is summarized by the its title and the concluding sentence:

"Silicon Valley elites are spending $60 for less than 3 gallons of dangerous,
unfiltered water — and it's flying off the shelves"

...

"You can't stop consenting adults from being stupid," Marler said. "But we
should at least try."

How did this diet trend start?

~~~
rch
The full glass jug is $60; refills are $15. That's expensive, but probably in
line with what people are willing to pay for smaller plastic bottles of water.

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CPLX
"You can't stop consenting adults from being stupid," Marler said. "But we
should at least try."

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maury91
I spent nearly all my life drinking raw water, and my parents before me, also
the entire population of the village I'm born, and no one ever got any disaese
like collera or epatite, we use to drink tap water from the village fountain,
or go to the mountain to take the tap water from there (because it taste
better). I'm. Not saying raw water is safe, but some sources of raw water are
proved safe. And pay for raw water is definitely stupid, we drink it because
is free

~~~
rpedela
Water from a mountain spring or creek tends to be clean enough to drink. I
personally never treat the water if I am in the mountains and far from
civilization (live in Colorado) even though there is still a chance I could
get sick. However I will always treat that same water with iodine if it is
sitting in a lake/pond or close to civilization because the likelihood of
disease goes up significantly.

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21
So, we already have organic soap, probably also toothpaste, raw milk is a
thing, as is bottled mountain air.

What about raw clothes? Growing 3-4 sheeps, getting the fur, and making some
clothes with medieval technology. But because we're not savages, let's leave
the leather products out.

Throw in some natural colorants and "no chemicals" anywhere.

I bet you could sell this stuff for some real money.

~~~
username223
> bottled mountain air

I had to look that one up, but yes, it is real. This is also artisanal air,
made with love: "It's a long and tedious process, you know. We sit in Banff
for about 10 hours capturing the air and then after that we bring it back and
we have to fill it into these bottles individually."

\-- [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-company-
bottli...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-company-bottling-air-
from-canadian-rockies-and-selling-it-worldwide-1.3206226)

~~~
sevensor
Who could have known that _Spaceballs_ would predict the future so accurately?

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desireco42
If they are drinking pure water from the well or spring, provided it was taken
in pristine environment, it should be better then regular "clean" water. That
is what concept of "mineral water" is, you get water directly from the ground,
usually with some health benefits.

Sometimes you get 'mineral water' packaged from retailer, but if you go to
place where it originates, you can get it from the well. Microelements you get
in that water is something you will not ever get in regular water and it is
good for your body and brains, within reason. Drinking it exclusively will not
be good for your kidneys I guess, but it is not intended for that.

I wish reportes would not hype this as much and explain if there is genuine
issue in how this water is getting collected, there might be genuine issues,
but it is hard to understand where the problem is and this is not the first
article I read.

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srslack
The only water available to me is well water and I do prefer to fill up
several Aquatainers at a local spring, but it's just water to me.

There are seasons where the springs around me appear to "flunk" the drinking
standards compared to treated, but not to a level where there's levels of
ecoli, giardia, etc. Check for standing water around the site, research tests
or get it tested yourself, spring water is fine, but obviously I wouldn't
recommend anyone who's elderly or vulnerable to disease to drink from any
random "spring."

It's quite puzzling to see the rich paying out the ass for something those
without municipal water, and the poor, have ritualized and get for free. I'm
sure there's public access and tested springs only a quick drive from San
Jose, so it is amusing.

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theptip
> Rainbow Grocery was sold out of its Fountain of Truth spring water

Although it's currently the zeitgeist to mock "Silicon Valley elites" at every
opportunity, Rainbow Grocery in SF is cut from the same cloth as Berkeley Bowl
in the East Bay, i.e. serving the wealthy hippies that have lived in Berkeley
(and to a lesser extent the rest of the Bay) for many decades. Some of those
made their money from tech in SV, many did not.

While I'm sure the author had a fit of ecstasy when they found that the Jucero
CEO was a fan of this product, this really has little to do with "Silicon
Valley elites"; this is the same extreme hippie contingent that oppose
vaccination (the hint is in the product name: "Fountain of Truth" is clearly
marketed at spritualists not technologists).

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crorella
"Silicon Valley idiots spending $60 for less than 3 gallons of unfiltered
water" \- fixed

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sergers
Is the 60$ for a single guy trekking to a spring and filling these manually,
and carrying them back? Seems outrageous.

Nestle pays 2$ per million litres of water to extract.

I might aswell get a friend in the interior to goto a stream and start
shipping mason jars of water lol.

I am in BC, we drink tap. We bottle our tap water for on the go. Alot of
people prefer bottled water.

Surprisingly alot of people prefer Costco Kirkland bottled water over other
name brand crap like Fasano, nestle etc.

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samfriedman
I wonder if there's a market for a company that analyzes the mineral makeup of
different cities'/regions' tap water, and sells an on-faucet water
softener/filter that can be configured with different "mineral pods" to match
the water taste of your preferred region.

New Yorker living in Texas? Don't worry, you can still get that great NY
Watershed taste coming right from your tap!

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thisisit
> People — including failed startup Juicero's cofounder Doug Evans — are
> gathering gallons of untreated water from natural springs, venturing out
> onto private property by night to get the water.

I am wondering, are there any rules/regulations for drawing water from a
natural resource and selling it commercially? Because if there aren't any,
wont that that lead to exploitation.

~~~
davidw
Water rights are a pretty settled and old bit of law in the western US.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_law_in_the_United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_law_in_the_United_States)

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josefresco
I agree that this new "product" is complete BS - but I don't and will not
hesitate to drink from naturally occurring springs.

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faramarz
It's Spring Water! believe it or not people around the world with access to
Spring Water have been drinking for years.

Canada has an incredible density of springs. What's stupid is how it's turning
into a fad. haha My dad get a kick out of this.

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pjrule
Natural selection at work? ;)

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megaman22
Wow. I predict a coming rash of beaver fever. I've drunk out of a few mountain
streams from time to time, but I wouldn't make a habit of it.

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tzs
Wait...does this mean people would pay a lot for the unfiltered, untreated
water that comes out of my well?

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jbob2000
I am not a doctor, but wouldn't drinking unfiltered water stress your kidneys?

~~~
tzs
New York City tap water was unfiltered until recently, so I'd guess if it was
a problem for kidneys we'd have heard about it.

Note that I said unfiltered, not untreated. It was treated with ultraviolet,
chlorine, fluoride, orthophosphate (inhibits lead contamination from pipes)
and sodium hydroxide (reduces acidity).

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nunez
Isn’t raw water basically rainwater?

