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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

The reason appears about 1/4 of the way into the article, and it should be familiar by now:

> Sensing an opportunity, a private equity group called American Industrial Partners (AIP) began to roll up the industry.

As usual, things are the way they are because of unchecked capitalism and private equity being allowed to do whatever they hell they want.

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What stops imports?

One point is that the US fire services seem to like really massive trucks, but fire trucks overseas are generally smaller.

Roads in the US have more space and homes in the US are more flammable

M A N makes enormous fire trucks, and they are quite popular throughout continental Europe.

Surely, the government and legal liability play no part in this, only bad businesses.

Regulation most likely.

Darn capitalism and its regulation

It’s likely regulation is a too-high barrier of entry for foreign products, and it’s also likely regulation was steered by lobbying from the currently dominant vendor.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Capitalism that has defects introduced via regulation is sort of like Communism that has defects introduced by authoritarians: the actual version that gets implemented.

Totally unregulated capitalism only works in a world full of perfectly ethical and moral people. Sounds like an Ayn Rand novel to me!

Probably the government, also-capitalist buyers would buy cheaper if they could.

Sensing an opportunity, a private equity group called American Industrial Partners (AIP) began to roll up the industry.

> As usual, things are the way they are because of unregulated capitalism and private equity being allowed to do whatever they hell they want.

This is exactly what happened - and why. Capitalism is a healthy system where it is a healthy system. Beyond that, capitalism is either: Beneficial thru flexible, effective governance. Or not beneficial. That's every possibility.

Exploitive manipulation of the firetruck market lies outside of the healthy-by-default area of capitalism.

I don’t get why municipal investment isn’t more of a thing - why can’t cities and counties be their own PE, buy a small fire truck company and turn it into a non-profit? If they captured the surplus that’s going to the PE company surely costs would be cheaper?

I guess that’s socialism though, so not gonna happen.

Why can’t there be more than one provider of this good?

Small market

So society would actually NOT be more efficient if another company developed a slightly cheaper fire truck because there isn’t enough gluttony to make it worth it?

You asked why there's only one company, not what would be good.

The comment we are replying to:

> As usual, things are the way they are because of unchecked capitalism and private equity being allowed to do whatever they hell they want.

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