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Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

The history of private firefighting is a particularly dirty one.

In the past, fire companies would show up and demand payment before putting out fires. If a payment couldn't be made, the company might negotiate the purchase of the burning property at a steep discount.

Later, insurance companies hired brigades to only put out fires on insured properties. Fire companies might have fought or sabotaged one another in order to win the right to put out a fire and get paid for it.

While it isn't perfect, and it's often underfunded, I definitely prefer the system we have now.

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Not everywhere, though. In Denmark, private operators have been handling emergency services since 1926; currently one company (Falck) is handling 65 percent of municipal fire brigades and 85 percent of ambulance services. No particular nastiness has been reported afaik.

Right, but that's not paid for by the end customer (at the point of use), is it? There could be single payer with private doctors they'll just get paid with public money, which is entirely different to Joe paying his doctor.

The US has lots services that are provided by regulated monopolies. My garbage company, power company are all regulated monopolies. A key thing is you're required to have garbage and power service but the rates are negotiated by a public utilities commission or the city or county.

However Healthcare in the US isn't a regulated monopoly like that.

And there was an entire thread about how those regulated monopolies are not working well. In particular PG&E in California.

I think it was this one

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18690916

My point was just we do have regulated monopolies in the US. But healthcare in the US isn't a fully regulated monopoly.

I'll argue whatever PG&E problems are they don't rise at all to the level of healthcare. And their problems are due to poor regulation and the US's current terrible management culture.

Denmark is quite different than US. In terms of size, culture and corruption issues [1].

This works in Denmark because of Denmark, but it's still a system that has obvious weakness.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

I think this is because the culture is quite different in DK compared to the US. There is an expectation of how it will work which is very different by everyone involved.

No, it's because ambulance service in Denmark is a public contract. Private citizen don't pay out of pocket.

Essentially, the state (or region) contracts a company to deliver ambulance services. The contracts usually last a few years and are limited to a region.

Furthermore, the company that wins the contract (usually lowest bidder) is held accountable is too many responses are too slow, etc.. usually with hefty fines.

I guess you can call it privatization, but it's more of a regulated monopoly. Ultimately, these things outsources uncertainty from the state to the private sector. I'm not convinced it's always a good idea, since companies can just factor the cost of fines into the contract... Granted if there is competition, it can drive the prices down a LOT.

British Columbia, Canada, does this as well. Ambulatory services are provided by contractors. So are most paramedical services.

And public contract it is in many other places, like where I live (Finland). Local government pays ambulances, I pay a sum to the local government out of my pocket after I have used ambulance.

Usually credited to Marcus Licinius Crassus, who had a fire brigade for just that purpose. Contemporary of Julius Caesar.

The richest man of his time. And maybe well earned ,by literally saving people's houses from burning down.

I have a vintage fire plaque next to my front door. They were commonly issued long ago to show that insurance has been purchased. No plaque, no service.

> Later, insurance companies hired brigades to only put out fires on insured properties.

In some parts of the world, insured properties were marked with metal plaques (generically termed "Fire Insurance Marks" [1]) bearing the insurer's symbol/logo. This enabled the insurer's firefighting service to verify that they should protect the building. I've occasionally seen them on old buildings here in the UK. One I remember was a stylised representation of the sun, denoting The Sun Fire Office - which was founded in the 1700s and still exists as RSA Group plc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_insurance_mark

There are analogies (with smaller consequences) in private tow truck operation.

Indeed, this is the origin of the term "fire sale".

This appears to be incorrect, and the usual interpretation of "sale of goods damaged in a fire" is the original.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fire-sale

I'm pretty sure not. The term "fire sale" refers to selling merchandise that survived a fire and therefore would have associated damage.

However the policy of negotiating for property at bargain basement prices while there was a fire next door was very notably one of the ways that Marcus Licinius Crassus (a political ally of Julius Caesar) enriched his fortune.

These scams were happening at least as far back as Roman times.

Supposedly Crassus, the richest Roman of his day, made rather a lot of money like this.

Crassus's 6000 crucifixions in just one of his wars helped people take his threats seriously.

With our level of inequality, this is coming back. In the last Southern California wildfire, there were reports again of private firefighting groups operating in the Malibu area.

These private firefighters are generally contracted to government agencies. This is the same thing the US government or CALFIRE will do during any Type 1 incident.

The same as a concert promoter hiring off-duty cops.

Ah, I understand that happens, but that's not what I was referring to. I was referring to private homeowners and insurance companies hiring firefighters.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-private-firefig...

Companies like Rural/Metro, traditionally ambulance/EMS companies, have expanded into private fire, in those places (one notable city is Grants Pass, OR).

Rural/Metro is now American Medial Response (they were acquired and all the operations rebranded).

Oh yeah, forgot about that!

This is a wildly different situation than what the GP was talking about. If you have the means, why wouldn't you hire a private crew? The public crews are there to get the best outcome at a macro level, not to protect your house in particular.

It's not clear to me it is different. You still have a divergence of motivational coordination between public fire teams and private ones. For one a private fire team can force public ones to stay committed to areas by not heeding evacuation orders...

Why is this dirty? If you don't pay for fire protection, not even through taxes, why does anyone owe you incredibly hard & extremely dangerous labor saving your house? Firefighting is not a safe profession.

(I certainly prefer publicly funded fire service)

It's not the payment that was specifically dirty, it's that privatized firefighting was a dirty job historically in America. Like competing companies brawling in the street on the way to a fire, dirty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Street_Riot

Here is a comedian's take on it in podcast form: https://thedollop.net/wp/episode-138-dollop/

" the company might negotiate the purchase of the burning property at a steep discount."

This creates the perverse incentive to demand an outrageous price so they can get an property for cheap. Next step would be setting fires to buy even more property.

Without their offer, the market value of the property is zero. Who is going to buy a house that has no fire insurance and is currently on fire? Is a steeply discounted price really outrageous? They might perish in the fire, they might fail to save it. Firefighting back then was no sure thing.

Now, if two crews showed up and bid against each other, things start to get interesting.

If two crews have to show up for a fire... That means higher prices because most of the time there is no fire, so they just sit around waiting -- more people higher cost.

It also means it might be that nobody shows up, because it's a holiday, so nobody was on duty.

> It also means it might be that nobody shows up, because it's a holiday, so nobody was on duty.

Well surely public services are more incentivized to display this behavior

Public services are often incentivized to create more work to protect their jobs. Famous examples include whatever department was enforcing prohihbition in the 20s to find other things to prohibit when alcohol prohibition was repealed. In Japan it's common to see unneeded road work because if the entire budget it not spent it will be reduced.

Simply because it's the best that can be expected, doesn't make it not an awful experience for everyone involved.

>Why is this dirty?

Sabotage and physical fights broke out between fire companies while fires burned. That's a pretty gritty situation.

Allowing fire sales gives way to perverse incentives, like the profitability of arson and predatory pricing of fire fighting fees such that certain portion of victims will always have to sell their property at a discount.

In theory, all of this also applies to a public "firefighting department", no? They too could do a really, really poor job. If this is the culture in a society, where people want to screw each other over, you are likely to get this poor outcome regardless.

But suppose that you have an honorable firefighting department run by an honorable man. Why could he not have set up a private firefighting company instead, doing pro bono work when required? Given the honorable behavior of his company, why would consumers not want to prefer him for insurance than shady competition, which may be cheaper but is also more likely to screw you over when you most need them?

Government-run agencies can be good or bad; private companies can be good or bad. There is no silver bullet and much depends on the prevailing culture. But government can use the threat of force to compel you to pay for their services. If a private company attempts the same, we would call it an organized crime group.

Also fire companies notoriously would collect insurance payments then go bankrupt.

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