[raw_anon_1111]

So tell me why should I spend my time helping cities whose population are too cheap to fund necessary infrastructure? The article pointed out that firefighters are being forced to fundraise just to get their physical equipment fixed.

These same “rural departments” are in areas that claim to hate “big government” and are anti tax and aren’t willing to fund essential services and vote for national politicians who are defunding programs that could help them.

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.

[insane_dreamer]

> 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.

[raw_anon_1111]

The vast majority of the value that accrues from open source work isn’t organizations that are using it for free. It’s corporations.

> 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.

And those communities are not only voting for, they are cheering on politicians who are defunding the departments who can help them the most.

[_DeadFred_]

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.

[raw_anon_1111]

And this is the way it should be - not having bake sales like the article mentioned.

[unethical_ban]

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.

[raw_anon_1111]

Well, the overwhelming percentage of open source contributors to Linux are from corporations. I bet you will see the same for most popular open source projects

[unethical_ban]

That didn't answer my assertion.

[raw_anon_1111]

Well would the fact I have never written a single line of code since 1992 that wasn’t directly in service of my getting a degree for the next four years or getting paid for the last 30, tell you how I feel about free labor?

I was a hobbyist assembly language programmer for six year prior to going to college and did some BASIC.

[unethical_ban]

Clarifies things.

You've spent more time criticizing open source development and struggling fire departments than you have spent criticizing predatory capital buying up every competing piece of software in order to raise the price.

Even if the state and federal government funded firefighter management software, this is still a story of predatory PE.

[raw_anon_1111]

Predatory buying up of software is not the reason firefighters are having bake sales to maintain equipment - also stated in the article. Do you think companies wouldn’t be interested in making more money if it weren’t for PE?

And I assume you are okay with what YC does?

[scheme271]

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

[raw_anon_1111]

And then we should be helping them on the state and federal level. I have replied a couple of times here that I have no problem with my tax dollars going to help them.

Unfortunately, they overwhelmingly vote for politicians that believe just the opposite on the state and federal level.

[xienze]

> And then we should be helping them on the state and federal level.

That’ll just lead to people on the opposite side of the spectrum (politically and in terms of being more urban) asking why their tax dollars are going towards a bunch of rednecks living in the middle of nowhere and destroying the earth with their heavily car-dependent lifestyles. _They should move to the city if they want a fire department! Otherwise, pay for it yourself or quit yer bitchin!_

> Unfortunately, they overwhelmingly vote for politicians that believe just the opposite on the state and federal level.

Perhaps the reason is because the people they “should” be voting for, according to you, are tied to a lot of social policies that these rural folks find deeply disagreeable. In a similar vein, if the 2024 Republican president campaigned on true free healthcare and massive taxes for the rich, you wouldn’t chide Democrat voters for not voting for that candidate on account of his social policies, now would you?

[raw_anon_1111]

If the Republican politician campaigned on universal healthcare a larger social safety net etc I would be all for it.

But all that being said, I wouldn’t vote for a Democrat that said they wanted free health care and also bring back segregation and laws against miscegenation. The first affects me and everyone in my family and the second would affect my son and my soon to be daughter in law.

Democrats are not saying they want universal healthcare only for blue areas.

[pavel_lishin]

You're fine with your tax dollars going to help them, but not your time?

[raw_anon_1111]

It’s taking my best to even go that far seeing they continue to deify people who demean people that look like me and say I - someone who has been coding either as a hobby or professional for literally 40 years - only got ahead because of “DEI”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...

They can’t afford $5000 a year for software. I work in consulting, that is less than half of what my company bills me out for a week as a staff consultant.

[iamnothere]

You shouldn’t be stereotyping rural people like this. Rural communities differ wildly in population and political leanings. On average they are older, whiter, and Republican voting, but this is shifting. Many small communities that were dying out are being revitalized as artist colonies and tourist zones, and many active farming communities are gradually becoming more Hispanic. Framing urban vs rural as red vs blue plays into the hands of the divide-and-conquer strategy that elites use to prevent the population from successfully pursuing radical change.

[raw_anon_1111]

How many rural communities in the United States by population didn’t vote overwhelmingly Republican?

Suburbs of Austin is not what people call rural America

[iamnothere]

If you look at a precinct-level map of election results you’ll see speckles of blue everywhere, as well as areas that were narrowly split. Those speckles represent real communities with people living in them. You can’t just write them off.

There’s also small towns or clusters of homes in the middle of nowhere where most of the residents disagree from the communities surrounding them. They don’t necessarily have enough votes to make a dent, but they also exist.

Assuming people’s politics or worth based on where they live leads to unpleasant outcomes.

[raw_anon_1111]

Whose writing them off? I have repeatedly said that I have no issues with taxpayer funded assistance on the federal and tax level. But you can’t help people who are more interested in “owning the libs” and “fighting wokism”.

[appreciatorBus]

If you voluntarily choose to live at such low densities that the cost of fire protection per person is too high to pay, I struggle to understand why that is a public or government problem. Either accept that you’re preferred density is difficult and uneconomical to service and you’ll have to pay a lot in tax or private fees or whatever, or go without.

On the other hand, if you involuntarily live at low densities because of gatekeepers in the city who have prevented housing from being built for the last dozen decades or so, then we should fix that so that anyone who wants to live in a city with excellent and cheap fire protection can do so.

Importantly, neither of these have anything to do with capitalism or private equity.

[raw_anon_1111]

Who needs farmers anyway? Alternatively, they could all move to the big city and farm there.

My issue is not that rural America is poor. My issue is that there vote for politicians whose explicit goal is not to help them. But that’s okay as long as the politicians “fight the woke”.

[appreciatorBus]

I agree with your broader political point re: voting preference. I also don't understand why this is a thing.

Re: farmers - are farms themselves a big farm risk? I can imagine farm workers living in nearby towns requiring fire service, but not the farms themselves or farm owners. I can see the case for public funding of fire service for such towns, but density still matters - if 1000 farm workers each live on their own acre (~42,000 sqft), it's going to cost more to provide fire service than they live on a 1,000 sqft lot, or in a 1,000 sqft apartment in a 4 storey building. Most of North American land use will require them to live much less densely than they might have otherwise, driving up the cost of infra & fire service.

[iamnothere]

Farms usually have large quantities of dry and flammable goods, whether it’s fertilizer, fuel, hay, straw litter, or dried harvested crops. Fields of dry corn or wheat could be flammable as well. Rural forests can also have wildfires which quickly get out of control and require massive intervention, so it’s better to put them out early.

These places use volunteers because fire is rare, but they still need some kind of fire service just in case. They often get their expensive equipment from grants, it’s the labor that’s provided by the community.

[logsr]

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.

[raw_anon_1111]

My attitude is “despicable” by my saying “take my federal and state tax dollars and help communities so they can pay for firefighters and equipment”?

[logsr]

they aren't "your" federal and state tax dollars. if you want to privately provide welfare for PE out of your own pocket, go ahead, but leave the public's tax dollars out of it.

[raw_anon_1111]

You did see the parts of the article where the same fire departments aren’t able to pay for equipment like fire trucks and training firemen?

Would you be okay if the software companies were charging the same amount and not funded by PE? What if they were funded by YC?