Brad’s Reviews > The Price of Thirst: Global Water Inequality and the Coming Chaos > Status Update

Procedurally it may be easier to accumulate financialized wealth, but that's a bubble (which she does discuss elsewhere) rather than an investment in tangible assets, which is most of what concerns the author in this context where fresh water will only become increasingly scarce without drastic public action. She also discusses so-called "paper water" in the context of California: water which utilities claim is there "on paper" but which is actually difficult or currently not really there to access. Obviously when you can't, the supposed "wealth"/asset evaporates.

In any case, the long-term tendency is for the rate of profit to fall, and we see evidence of this historically/today worldwide. Of course that tends to come with an initial glut--as profitability declines, companies race to stave it off through measures, some of which Marx discussed: discharging of labour, extension of labour time, state subsidization of cost overheads, extension of credit, etc., but in the context of an overall decline. If it's "easier" it's because there's an increasing desperation for new lifelines to delay the trend.