For a start, are Kim's team allowed to tap public hydrants? This will reduce pressure available to any public firefighters nearby.
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.
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.
Actually, your assertion is wrong. It's actually slave labor fighting the fires for everyone, but those who can afford actually have the means to do the firefighting themselves.
Let's put things in perspective: would you believe that there would be no problem if "the wealthy" could not afford or use private firefighters? Why?
Source? If you are referring to inmates who volunteer to fight fires, then you are just plain wrong.
The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime.
Make no mistake, those "volunteers" are modern day slaves. They may have the blessing of the Constitution, but they're slaves nonetheless. Colorado actually just officially outlawed it last week.[2] A few other sources:
- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/opinion/national-prison-s...
- https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/prison-strike-modern-da...
- https://eji.org/history-racial-injustice-prison-labor
[1] 18 U.S. Code § 1589
[2] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/6/18056408/c...
You mentioned Colorado, and I implied Colorado and others that have followed suit, in my earlier comment which I assumed that you read before you wrote this reply.
Your #1 source does not mention the text you attributed to it. And it's an opinion piece. It mentions that the inmates who volunteer to work do so for low wages. Well, they could also choose not to work on those programs. What proof do you have that they were coerced (I'm actually not arguing against it, but looking to correct my opinion if necessary).
In any case, states do things that the federal government does not agree with all the time (legal weed, for one). It's a crucial feature of our system of government.
You also don't appear to understand the consequences of Colorado's Constitutional Amendment. By removing those words from the Colorado Constitution the "volunteer" prison labor programs are no longer permitted. These programs are, legally, slavery. They just so happen to be a legal form of slavery under the Federal Constitution because of those important words "except as punishment for a crime." When those words are removed from the Colorado Constitution that exception no longer exists for Colorado prison operators (because a State Constitution cannot contradict or limit an individual's rights under the Federal Constitution but it can provide individuals with additional rights). Because these "volunteer" programs are slavery, and because Colorado's Constitution now prohibits all slavery, no exceptions, these "volunteer" programs cannot operate.
Prisoners can't freely volunteer because their liberty is at stake. They get to choose between their life being in danger in prison or endangering their lives fighting forest fires and perhaps getting out of prison a bit earlier. This is evidenced by the very low wages. Would you go fight these forest fires in California for $1/hour? I highly doubt it. Why do they "volunteer" then? Because they want their freedom. Think about the lengths you would go to in order to regain your freedom and then think about how much autonomy you would have in arriving at your decision. It's Sophie's Choice.