It is a higher power that creates such things as ..vultures

But I insist.

My friend Scales is a thoughtful writer, but in this case, he’s wielding a classic rhetorical sleight of hand—introducing a different frustration about private equity (fire truck manufacturing) to distract from my original argument: government-created scarcity is the true culprit in manufactured housing rent spikes.

Let’s talk about that fire truck video.

Yes, fire departments are paying more. Yes, trucks are expensive. But blaming that on private equity alone is like blaming a grocery store for high egg prices during a bird flu outbreak. It’s convenient—but wildly incomplete.

Two key points:

1. Fire trucks don’t have expiration dates.
A 20- or 30-year-old emergency vehicle, properly maintained, is not inherently unreliable. Municipal fleet managers have known for decades how to keep older trucks running safely and efficiently. Wear parts can be replaced. Rebuild kits exist. Preventive maintenance matters more than a logo on the ownership papers.

Could small, family-owned builders sell cheaper? Possibly. But then again, many chose to be bought out. And private equity didn’t kill those companies—it offered an exit strategy for founders who cashed out. Let’s not romanticize a past that was already consolidating long before KKR walked in the door.

2. There is a villain here—and it’s regulation.
One of the major cost drivers in fire truck (and all heavy vehicle) manufacturing is government emissions mandates—especially those born from California’s regulatory overreach. Under Obama/Biden, heavy equipment was dragged into the same mess that strangled diesel freight. Under Trump, there was an attempt to roll back those burdens and restore standards that reflected real-world feasibility. California’s war against diesel continues—and fire trucks got caught in the crossfire.

As a road commissioner, I’ve seen this firsthand. We purchased chassis in advance because manufacturers were warning us they wouldn’t be able to deliver compliant equipment under the coming regs. If not for regulatory rollbacks, the manufacturer would still be struggling to make the same plow trucks that Lansing has determined we need 200′ distance from.

That’s not a private equity problem.
That’s a bureaucratic failure—and a perfect example of how too much government causes the very shortages and delays we’re told to fear from “corporate greed.”

So again, how then shall we fix it?

• You don’t fix housing by outlawing capital investment—you do it by reopening the land market and untying people’s hands.

• You don’t fix fire truck pricing by pointing fingers at ownership—you fix it by ending the regulatory chokeholds that make production unpredictable and unaffordable.

• You don’t beat complexity by adding more central control—you beat it by restoring individual rights and clearing the field for competition.

Private equity is just a tool. You can use a hammer to build or destroy. But when the zoning board takes away the lumber and the EPA bans the nails, don’t blame the carpenter for the price of the house.

Scales, I still don’t understand your point—unless it’s simply that “big = bad.” If that’s the case, let’s be consistent and apply it to government(s) too.

Because from where I sit, it’s not private capital breaking the system.

It’s capital being forced to operate inside a maze built by government overreach.