system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How is cape town in South Africa running out of water?

I'm assuming it take more than common sense, because.....common sense tells me that a town that's close to the ocean shouldn't ever be affected by a drought.

Salt water isn't a good way to hydrate I'm sure. How labor intensive is the desalination process?

help....I'm totally missing something.
gpt
Desalinization is energy intensive, so it's quite expensive. You see it a lot in places that have little water but are on the ocean, and there's lost of money -- like the Arabian peninsula.

The problem with Cape Town is that it's experiencing a drought, which is a *temporary* reduction in rainfall. Desalinization is a bad solution because it's very expensive, and then at some point the drought ends, and the people who built the desalinization plant (and still haven't made a profit yet) have to compete with -- get this -- **free water from the sky**.

It is a very bad business plan to sell something that falls out of the sky for free.