Comment by jonhohle
2 days ago
If it was a volunteer effort without ulterior motives, it would be beneficial to society, but ultimately who is on call? Who pushes for hard, but beneficial changes that might not have immediate obvious value? Who accepts risk or responsibility.
Ultimately that’s the point of the market. Incentivize people to take risks for rewards. Allow others to improve on proven models for lower costs. Unfortunately, government does not have any risk/reward or other market pressures.
It's pretty common for traditional organised volunteer services to have "on call" aspects.
Think of like volunteer firefighters, The Samaritans, St John Ambulance, the UK lifeguards and lifeboats (RNLI). Such organisations do usually have full time paid staff too, but the bulk of the front line work is part time volunteer.