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Comment by sbank | Hacker News Reader

Fire service could be privatized and government provided welfare does not have to exist to begin with.

Result, slums, city destroying fires, people dying in the street. You do realize also, that chronically sick malnourished sweatshop serfs do awful work?

It's a dystopian hell only a libertarian could love.

It's not a libertarian ideal. It's more of an Anarcho-syndicalist ideal.

I'm always shocked when such terrible ideas are put forth for consideration in a public forum.

Privatize essential life safety services? Because that has worked oh so well for healthcare.

healthcare is the state it is in because of government interference in the insurance markets at Federal and State levels. When you cannot cross state lines to offer competing insurance how can anyone expect a good system. Before anyone points to government run healthcare in the US being good please explain away the VA

The standard line always is, "we will do it better than X" - well fix current government run healthcare first

Arguably, U.S. government interference in healthcare markets has been heavily influenced by insurance lobbyists for the purpose of increasing insurance profits. Although there is often a trade-off between availability and quality, other countries have managed to provide decent healthcare without exorbitant cost.

If you don't just to want beat up a strawman, the US interference in health care is not a good argument against government interference in health care in general.

The NHS in the UK has its problems, but they are not nearly as bad.

(I don't know which country's system is the best to look at as a good example of private health care. Perhaps the best parts of India? (India ostensibly has government healthcare, but it's so bad that everyone who can afford it gets private health care. I don't know how bad the interference is.)))

You realize that firefighting is a job that requires a great deal of training and education, and it's a job that's very easy to do badly?

Not only that, but fires spread, they need to be caught early, and they're preventable. It's not just a matter of performing a service for one home at a time if they catch on fire, it's a matter of performing a public service to reduce the risk of fire, enforce building codes, minimize damage caused by fires, and save lives. This is something that requires a community effort, and needs to cover the entire community uniformly.

Most jobs provide some important service. The person that bags groceries at the supermarket is part of the system that feeds all of us. Firefighting is a job; one that is widely respected. However, the workers on farms and ranches and fishing boats work under riskier conditions and are paid less. Firefighting isn't a particularly dangerous job (although several times riskier than programming). With respect to training, I'm not a firefighter and I'm sure it varies by department, but I believe firefighting requires a highschool degree, EMS training and a few weeks of training on firefighting methods.

Before being concerned about firefighters, it seems to me that we should be more concerned with improving the conditions for loggers and garbage collectors which have much greater work related risks.

I wasn't expressing concern about the position, I was explaining why it would be a bad decision to privatize it. None of the things I listed mention anything about it being "dangerous" or "risky" One of the biggest arguments against privatization, I think, is that they're responsible for enforcing building fire codes, and that's a very non-dangerous task. I have no idea what your response is supposed to mean.

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