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Comment by parsimo2010 | Hacker News Reader

parsimo2010

1. Bureaucrats choose to stop prescribed burns to ensure availability of staff and equipment to fight forest fires

2. Forest fires increase due to build up of flammable materials

3. Bureaucrats pat themselves on the back for their decision

This is a cry for help, not some myopic bureaucrat thinking they're clever. Most of the USFS budget goes to forest fires (both fighting them and prevention), up from 16% 30 years ago, and they're now saying just fighting the fires is taking up too much of their budget to do much of anything else. The USFS already announced they won't hire any seasonal employees next year, which means basic things like emptying trash cans probably won't happen.

Unless you think they should just let the fires burn, which would be catastrophic.

Also it needs to be contextualized further: fighting wildfires is done to save lives. When they have to make a distinction between funding for prescribed burns, which are a mitigation but not prevention measure, and having the people and resources on hand to defend settlements then they're going to choose the latter.

Prescribed burns are treated as a panacea whenever there's wildfires, but they are only a mitigation strategy - you're still always going to have wildfires, the degree of severity and in what areas is what matters (they're also not cheap: it is after all, just starting a forest fire you try to keep under control).

Firefighting is only done to save property. People are completely beside the point. The problem is people don't know when they live in a town (defensible) and the countryside (you're on your own). In general the forest service is spending way too much time and resources in places that they should always let burn. You can actually build and live in a forest fire zone. Its much more convenient to ignore that though.

>Unless you think they should just let the fires burn, which would be catastrophic.

Why? I think it's probably the best thing to do. If the USG doesn't want to allocate enough money to properly manage forests, then why not just let it burn? If that results in some towns burned down, that's fine: voters in those towns can complain to their elected representatives and maybe vote for someone else.

Update: the voters in these towns have voted now, and they voted overwhelmingly for the party that wants to cut federal spending, so I think "let it burn" is absolutely the right thing to do now, and is likely what's going to happen.

You act like this is some intentional issue. It's funny because this describes every IT dept I've ever worked for. Understaffed, so we can't be proactive. Since we can't be proactive, things break and we have to spend money on consultants to come fix it. Or we have some big project so we consult it out. Since we've spent money on the consultants, we can't afford to hire more staff...

3. Corrupt politicians point to underfunded government failures as evidence that we should privatize everything

4. Collect their paycheck as everything goes to shit

>privatize everything

Maybe we should do like China and have multiple big state-owned enterprises in the same sectors competing against each other. The competitive forces stay without the intervening short-sighted interests of the ownership class.

I wonder why this Chinese model is not included in discussions about government vs. privatization. Almost half of the Chinese economy is made up of SOEs competing against other SOEs. In some sectors that means the Chinese have multiple competing state-owned options to pick from while we in the "capitalist west" only have one state provided option.

>Maybe we should do like China and have multiple big state-owned enterprises in the same sectors competing against each other. The competitive forces stay without the intervening short-sighted interests of the ownership class.

Where's the incentive for the various SOEs to actually compete? At least in capitalism there's money on the line. When all the executives/board members are political appointees of the same party, things can get really chummy between "competitors".

Things are pretty chummy in the supermarket space right now. Here is the price of ketchup: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU02440127, and there is no reason why the price should have gone up by 50 % between Summer 2021 and Summer 2023, the tomato harvest did not fail in that time. This is informal collusion between the large supermarket chains, enabled by a long tradition of lack of antitrust enforcement.

If running a Chinese SOE well means a promotion in the party apparatus, then that would give some real competition, but US capitalism is delivering only for the billionaire class.

>This is informal collusion between the large supermarket chains, enabled by a long tradition of lack of antitrust enforcement.

But you linked to figures for the PPI, which as the name suggests, is the price charged by producers, not distributors or retailers. It might be evidence of collusion between whoever is making ketchup, but not between the supermarkets stocking them. It's hard to take the rest of your comment seriously given sloppy mistakes like this.

>If running a Chinese SOE well means a promotion in the party apparatus, then that would give some real competition

How's that working out with all the senior party members mysteriously disappearing?

>but US capitalism is delivering only for the billionaire class.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

In other words, working as intended.

Complete nonsense. Tomato yields are a very small part of the price of ketchup.

And ketchup prices in the U.K. also increased. Are U.K. supermarkets colluding with American supermarkets?

Energy costs along with increased demand has a huge impact on prices. There are vast microeconomic factors but also macroeconomic factors as well. For instance, a declining economy (or more accurately, increased inflation ,) means that more people buy cheaper food. And most fast food features — ketchup. Higher demand + increased fuel costs + same sized harvests = higher ketchup prices.

I am highly simplifying the ketchup market but the Democrat talking point of “supermarket collusion” is absolute nonsense and not based on any evidence.

Supermarkets buy their products from distributors — do you know the price of ketchup from a distributor? If the distributor price remained exactly the same, and supermarkets operate on similar financial models, then the price at the shop will be very similar. That isn’t collusion, that’s how commodities get priced at the retail level.

As far as the “billionaire class” — who gets rich from Chinese SOEs? (Hint, it isn’t the workers who are paid effectively slave wages with no recourse to move to another employer because those SOEs are, by the very definition of SOE, in collusion. The wealth inequality gap in China is massive. You have the Audi class, and the bicycle class — and not much in the middle. The other interesting factor about Chinese economics is their currency manipulation. But that’s a topic for another day.

Those arguing for Chinese-style anything in the realm of economics ought to spend a few years living there prior to forming an opinion.

For those interested in ketchup, here’s a Guardian article describing the issue of grocery inflation: https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/15/heinz-tomat...

The Chinese model has been a series of huge debt gambles that have been failing in slow motion for a couple years. The companies are generously supported by the government but otherwise deeply unprofitable and vulnerable to anti dumping laws.

I wouldn’t say it looks like a great model personally

Arguing for Chinese-style state owned enterprises on Hacker News, a site created specifically around entrepreneurship and startups? This place has certainly changed in the 12+ years I’ve been here.

But to your point — the corruption of SOEs is unmatched. They make the South Korean Chaebols look like a libertarian farmers market.

this may be true generally but not the case with California, CalFire and binding legal agreements for responsibility, that were enacted under Gov Newsom. The State budget is cyclic, but there is a lot of cash in those cycles. CalFire is funded very well at this time.

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