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> Playing devils advocate here but maybe we have too many fire fighters?

It sounds like the type of service that you want to over-provision for. What if a major fire broke out and you needed all of them?

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Have a reserve, like the military?

The only time this really happens is wildland fires, which are historically understaffed and underfunded anyways.

9/11 took every firefighter

This is exactly the problem, I guess. Demand for fire fighters is so incredibly spikey that there is no such thing as “the right amount.” We’re trying to adapt an economic system that’s designed for factories and farms, and fire fighting just doesn’t work like that.

9/11 is an extreme edge case, I would say.

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