[jtolmar]

Taxing the hell out of capital is a good idea, but our current political reality makes it hard to maintain any public service that's not extremely visible.

These are emergency preparedness problems so funding them means setting aside a pile of money and resources until the emergency actually happens. That pile of money makes an attractive target for capital, who can afford to fund campaigns to privatize those services and then get the emergency stockpile as a reward. That sort of maneuver has to go through a vote, but most voters get their understanding of the world through capital-owned media, so that's not much of an obstacle.

Edit: More and more, I think we need worker-owned news.