Private Equity Finds a New Source of Profit: Volunteer Fire Departments (opens in new tab)

> the call volume is very low

I lived near a volunteer station in a New Jersey town where it is routine to use a siren (same as used for tornadoes in other parts of the country) to alert the volunteers to check in. It went off frequently every day.

I’ve got an idea:

Every city and county belongs to a state with a broader tax base. Every state is a part of the richest country in the world. I’m sure you see where I’m getting at here.

But rural America calls that “socialism”.

Again why is that? Teachers are funded by local and state taxes and (did?) get federal grants.

The article mentioned that these same firefighters are having to do fundraisers for equipment maintenance

I’m honing in for the software that what they cancelled would have to be completely rewritten to comply with new federal standards.

Would everyone be happier if this was funded by YC hoping the company would be acquired by a larger company and then you see a post about “Our Amazing Journey” when it’s discontinued?

I grew up in South GA and my family still lives there. I got the hell out of dodge the week after graduating from college in 1996.

I said in another reply, I’m all for the state and the federal government helping rural America where their own tax base isn’t strong enough. I’m also for universal health care that would help rural areas far more than me. I wouldn’t complain about my taxes paying for it.

It’s rural America that keeps voting for local, state, and federal politicians that put them in this place.

I do.

We have paid police, because we want law and order. We have paid dump/collection center workers, because you need a place to take trash. We have paid teachers and school staff, because we want a good education for our kids. We have paid road maintenance workers, because it's really helpful to have properly maintaind roads. We have paid librarians, because libraries are one of the core community centers in the area. We have paid animal control workers because rabies is scary. We pay for ambulance service because sometimes you need medical attention asap.

And we have volunteer fire fighters, because stopping fires, in a rural, wildfire prone area is, what? Optional? Just a side gig? Something you do just for fun?

A big part of the confusion people have is that "volunteer" fire departments often include pay. It's not a full-time job, but they at least get paid for their calls. That's not always true, though, and it's weird. It's an artifact of history that our different layers of government have divvied up basic services amongst themselves in a way that leaves fire fighting as a local concern that may or may not involve paid professionals, while the sheriff and local police will be paid professionals, the roads will be maintained, and the school will have teachers, and principals, and custodians, and people running the cafeteria, and so on.

Why do we not have "volunteer police force"? Because we treat it as a full-time position for career police officers. It's weird that this one, very critical service uses "volunteers," while most of the others are full-time, paid positions, and I find it confusing and weird, despite having grown up in rural NC, just outside a town of under a thousand, and now live at the other end of rural NC, outside the limits of a different town of under thousand people.

The other half is stop voting for politicians on the state and federal level who explicitly try to dismantle every program that is meant to help them.

But they are more concerned with fighting “wokism” and “socialism”

> So tell me why should I spend my time helping cities whose population are too cheap to fund necessary infrastructure?

Why should anyone spend their time doing open source projects that might be adopted by organizations who can't afford it.

> Yes I would be all in favor of my federal tax dollars being redirected to rural areas whose taxpayers can’t fund firefighters so they don’t have to fundraise to buy equipment.

Absolutely, me too. But in the meantime, until you/we are able to convince the government to redirect your tax dollars, this is something that is in your/our capabilities to do something about.

My county is the size of Rhode Island and is covered in forest. We have huge wildfires all the time. We also established our own tax funded ambulance district and are willing to tax ourselves when needed even though we are a very Red area. We have volunteer firefighters, just like red state France (78% of their firefighters are volunteer), just like red state all their funding goes to the military Germany.

Tell me why you should spend time on a kernel, or a driver, or a blog generator, or anything else.

Your point "states and federal government should pay for this" is a valid opinion, but it is muddled with your attitude that anyone offering to write open source software to support emergency services is a fool.

This isn't cities, these are fire departments in rural counties that may have a few thousand people living in it at most.

despicable attitude completely detached from reality. volunteer fire fighting services provide critical public services across broad sparsely populated areas of the United States and those volunteer services benefit everyone by preventing wild fires that threaten everyone. this kind of PE activity is parasitic and directly threatens lives and property by diminishing emergency response capacity. bad business to be in. it will get shut down very quickly.

Honestly how? What law could be written that would ban PE firms and lookalike businesses that would hold up to scrutiny.

No one with a brain likes what PE does, but really, what do they do that's illegal as opposed to people finally realizing that capitalism is essentially evil?