How the tow truck industry is now, firefighting used to be before it was turned into a public service. I have a billion orders of magnitude more faith in firefighters than in tow truck companies. Why should we not do the same process to tow trucks?
> Firefighting used to be a private for-profit industry. In the 1800’s, the early days of urbanization, in cities like New York and Baltimore, there were private “clubs” or “gangs” who were in charge of putting out fires. The infamous Boss Tweed started his illustrious political career at a volunteer fire company. The way it functioned was the first club at the scene got money from the insurance company. So, they had an incentive to get there fast. They also had an incentive to sabotage competition. They also often ended up getting in fights over territory and many times buildings would burn down before the issue was resolved. They were glorified looters. It was corrupt, bloated and expensive
One of the richest men in rome built a large part of his fortune through firefighting. He would send a slave brigade to any building on fire and offer to buy the property from the owner, refusing to put the fire out unless they sold it to him for cheap.
If memory serves, firefighting technology at the time often consisted of tearing down the building to prevent the conflagration spreading. Saving the building was generally not considered an option, and the way Roman society accounted for value was that such that the building was valuable but the land wasn't.
I'm not sure if Rome of the time actually had the ability to field what we would think of as useful firefighters.
> Firefighting used to be a private for-profit industry. In the 1800’s, the early days of urbanization, in cities like New York and Baltimore, there were private “clubs” or “gangs” who were in charge of putting out fires. The infamous Boss Tweed started his illustrious political career at a volunteer fire company. The way it functioned was the first club at the scene got money from the insurance company. So, they had an incentive to get there fast. They also had an incentive to sabotage competition. They also often ended up getting in fights over territory and many times buildings would burn down before the issue was resolved. They were glorified looters. It was corrupt, bloated and expensive
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/firefighting-in-the-1800s_b_2...