[nunez]

I don’t understand the issue here. Couple buys very expensive item that few others purchase; item is very expensive to insure; for hire firefighters are cheaper than replacing the item (and any dependencies) at a loss; insurers dispatch said firefighters to avoid total loss.

Doing this for everyone wouldn’t scale, which is why towns have firefighting units.

Also, people have a weird aversion to insurance for expensive items. So many people (at least on Reddit) advocate against purchasing AppleCare and additional insurance for $1000+ items but balk at the high cost of replacing a broken screen... that’s much cheaper to fix with insurance.

[timoth3y]

I think the reason many are both emotionally and logically concerned about this is that see it in the broader context of the growing wealth inequality and life inequality in America.

In principle, having the wealthy rely on their own firefighters, water supply, police force, education system, or medical system should not reduce the quality of said service to the rest of the people, but in practice, it always seems to.

Whenever there is a widespread social problem, its best to solve it for everyone. If the 0.01% are drinking from the same water supply and relying on the same firefighters that we are, it is in their best interest to maintain a high quality of service. Once they have a way to solve that problem for themselves, they are less likely to support using their taxes to improve and maintain these services.

[nunez]

In what ways are these private equivalents better than their public counterparts, especially in the US?