Sounds like a social venture public utility becoming for-profit firefighters standing around while someone's house burns because they don't have funds. So is this some sort of corporate decline?
Alternately, who are these Temporary Service Interruption Citizens, and what makes them different from regular people? It almost sounds like someone fell asleep reading a dystopian corporatocracy cyberpunk novel, and then while still half-awake blurted a question to some kind of voice-assistant device that posted it to HN...