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Then there would be unfilled jobs for firemen, which would increase the wages for firemen, which would prompt more people to move into a career as a firefighter, which would increase the supply of firemen until the jobs willing to pay the new prevailing wage were mostly filled, approximately.

That's exactly how pricing signals work. "Firemen" is not a fixed set of people.

> The "collective intelligence" of the market has obvious blind spots.

As does the collective intelligence of the voters and the state. Whichever is more, and more consistently intelligent is apparently not obvious.

It's not perfect. But it is better than all the alternatives we currently have.

Intelligence does not imply perfection.

The number of people willing to be paid to not fight fires is unlimited.