[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.