Hacker News Reader

Comment by kortilla | Hacker News Reader

These are private firemen. If they weren’t hired they would be off doing something else for money. It’s like complaining about people hiring private security guards when there is a police shortage.

Read the article, they aren’t fire retarding private lawns. They are doing preventative work that keeps the fire far away. If it hits the lawn, it’s too late.

More firefighters are better, regardless of which areas are being contained with higher priority. If they were taking away fire fighters from the publicly funded groups or volunteers, then there would be something to bitch about.

View on HN

> It’s like complaining about people hiring private security guards when there is a police shortage.

What do you mean with that comparison? This would be quite a legitimate reason for complaining!

Right, but should you really be blaming the people who hire the extra private policemen, or the people who decide not to hire more public ones? It seems as though it's more effective to push for more public policemen. The same applies to firemen: it's more productive to push for more public firemen than to blame the people who hire private ones due to a shortage thereof.

Both are to blame. I'm not much of a statist, but if there's something that clearly must be assured by the government by means of taxation it is the police force and the firemen. If there's not enough police or firefighters, taxes must be raised or diverted from elsewhere.

Morally, I think that the people who push for private security and firefighters are doing a net damage to society.

I see how hiring policemen and firefighters is not a positive, but don't see how it's a negative.

In other words, a state-provided service is not always perfectly on-time, but if I want to hire some private service with super-fast response time for my twenty million dollar beach-front property, why not? How does me hiring a private fireman _harm_ someone else? If anything, might it not reduce the load on public infrastructure?

I said "pushing for private services" not actually hiring one. Of course, if it is only you who does that, then it is completely irrelevant, neither positive nor negative.

Likewise, if you decide to throw all your garbage on a forest, it is neither positive nor negative. If it is only you who does that, it can be argued that its net effect is negligible, neither positive nor negative. Maybe a bit of purely aesthetic disgust for somebody who happens to walk by while you are throwing it. But that is all. If anything, it may reduce a little bit the load on public garbage collection.

This is mostly a zero sum game in the immediate term, and mostly zero sum in the longer term since there is a fairly limited pool of people available to fight fires. If you have the skills to be a fireman but a private individual pays you above market rate to fight their own personal fires then you will remove yourself from the pool of people fighting fires for the public and into a private pool.

Will 20 such private firemen be a problem? No, but 2,000? That would absolutely have an impact on available firefighters for the public.

Is there really a shortage of firefighters? Or is there a shortage of firefighters willing to work for the rates public service offers? How high are those rates anyway? Because given how much public servants are typically paid worldwide, I can easily imagine that the private firefighting company isn't competing with public firefighting jobs, but with all the other jobs a would-be firefighter can get that pay better than fighting fires.

It can be zero sum game short term (<1 months) but medium term (6 months) it's definitely not zero sum game. Pool of applicants that can be firemen includes all able-bodied males (and potentially female) 18-50 which is 10 million pool in California alone. Good pay will attract out of state candidates too. I would expect training to take less than 6 months or so. Considering fires happen every year, California can have as many firemen as it wants (and willing to pay for) by the time next summer fire season starts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com