The roof! The roof! The roof is on fire!
By Thoreau
First, as a heartless libertarian it is obviously my fault that a guy’s house burned down in Tennessee because he didn’t pay for fire coverage from the fire department. That seems to be the gist of some commentary. I apologize, and I promise to share some of my Koch-provided lucre with him, if I ever get anything from the Koch Bros.
Second, libertarian that I am, I read a lot of Radley Balko. SWAT teams get wrong addresses all the time. And like any other American, I’ve had my share of paperwork snafus with the public and private sectors. A potentially life-threatening emergency seems like a really bad time to start sorting out coverage maps and billing statements. If my house is on fire, and I’m fully paid-up, the last thing I want is “I’m sorry, but our automated system finds no record of your account. To talk to our accounting department, please call during normal business hours, so an associate can investigate your case and determine whether to send a crew to your fire.”
I mean, I once waited 3 hours in the cold for private road-side assistance to jump-start my car. And a cop car drove by, but they couldn’t give me a jump for some reason related to the electronics in their car, so I’m freezing in the cold and having to piss (and its always worse in the cold) but not wanting to piss outside in an area with cop cars, and, yeah. Where was I? Oh, yeah, I don’t want any long waits when my roof is on fire.
So, if one wants to talk about paying for fire protection through some mechanism other than taxes, I’d rather that it be more like the ER. If I’m not insured, the hospital will send me a bill rather than charging my insurance, but they’ll do this AFTER the major artery is no longer gushing blood. If the guy whose roof-the roof-the roof is on fire wants to free-ride instead of buy fire protection in an insurance-like scheme, let’s talk about that AFTER the fire is out. Libertarians can call him a looter for expecting something that he hadn’t pre-paid for, liberals can chastise him for not buying protection for the good of all, and conservative can, I dunno, something, but that food fight will be more fun once the kitchen is saved and we have non-charred food to fling.
Finally, while I do not know what’s in the fine print of the fire protection contract that the neighbor signed (insert all libertarian disclaimers about the sanctity of the fine print in a contract), if I were the neighbor I’d be pretty pissed if the protection service that I paid for stood there and waited until AFTER the fire crossed the property line. Maybe it’s in the contract, but I’d still be pissed (insert all disclaimers about how irrational it would be to be pissed).
So, I don’t see this as a libertarian issue. A privatized fire protection service could still put out un-insured homes and send a bill for the full cost afterwards (while charging a flat monthly fee to those who buy insurance). A public fire department could and should provide public service (being that a public service is, by definition, a communal thing). Either way, there’s a way to put out the fire.
Anyway, I will link to a few relevant Onion articles to try to lighten this up.
Comment by Grod —
October 5, 2010 @ 10:01 pm
The hospital example is an interesting one for our Johnny Galts.
Imagine our rock-ribbed libertarian is out for a few drinks celebrating the successful foreclosure of a record number of old widows’ homes and a great quarter of selling orphan-tear patent cures. He’s mugged, and despite his extensive self-defense training and concealed-carry, it goes badly (It can happen – the world is a dangerous place and he’s tied a few on), and he’s shot and his wallet is taken. Someone who looks a lot like Dagny feels ideologically incorrect pity and calls an ambulance.
Without proof of insurance, wads of cash or plastic, does our hero expect to be taken to the hospital, or sued for taking up the ambulances time and fuel on a call they couldn’t verify ability to pay for?
I realize the first quibble is that they could serve him and later harvest his organs if he couldn’t pay, but the parallel is pretty clear, if lacking in the neighbor’s home externality that cuts even further towards act first, bill later.
My other thought is that this is a great example of how the net has turned out to be one big spotlight to shine on what used to be issues that never percolated much further than the are in which they happen. “Local interest” as a category is dead.
Comment by Kevin Carson —
October 5, 2010 @ 11:07 pm
There’s a whole range of possibilities based on voluntary association and subscriber payments, ranging from the stereotypical anarcho-cap “firm” to a community-based mutual with lots of neighborly solidarity. I greatly prefer the latter, myself.
But we should keep in mind what the real alternative is. The real alternative that Olberman & Co. advocate in place of letting your house burn down for nonpayment of fees is… to put your house up on the auction block for nonpayment of taxes.
Gosh, you mean paying taxes isn’t all rainbows and gummi bears?
Comment by BubbaDave —
October 5, 2010 @ 11:36 pm
I’m a bad liberal. That said, I’m comfortable with the idea of failure to pay reasonable fees costing you property, with hardship cases subsidized by the state. I’m not comfortable with failure to pay exorbitant fees costing you life.
So I can easily delineate on my slippery slope why I favor individual mandate on health insurance and favor letting this dude’s house burn down since he opted out of the social contract. My only sympathy is for the pets inside, but I’m not comfortable telling a human that he has to risk his life to save a pet. (I would risk my life to save mine, but that’s because I’m an idiot.)
Comment by dirge —
October 6, 2010 @ 12:46 am
In favor of the guy losing his house I can kinda see, but I see no reason to be in favor of letting it burn. Perfectly good house, danger to others, could’ve been saved, dead-weight loss.
So hand the guy an exorbitant bill since he failed to pay his $75/year premium, bankrupt him, foreclose, sell his nice house to somebody more responsible.
Or in a pure anarcho-capitalist world, I suppose you could probably work something up around encumbered salvage rights.
It’s a far cry from the ideal outcome in my opinion, but it’s better than the needless destruction of valuable property. Really, if you’re in favor of destroying things to prove your point, I’m on the other side no matter what your point is.
Plus, the fix it first, figure out the billing later approach has the benefit of allowing everyone to deal with the paperwork details at a time when shit is not on fire.
Comment by drkrick —
October 6, 2010 @ 1:49 am
Call me naive, but any ideology or economic theory that leads to a situation where people are watching a house burn down a few yards away while sitting in a piece of fire fighting equipment doing nothing seems fundamentally flawed. Isn’t this stuff supposed to be somewhat results driven? There are worse things than being a free rider.
Comment by BubbaDave —
October 6, 2010 @ 6:55 am
And if you can set up the legalities for that in advance, I’m OK with that. I think that negotiations on the spot are likely to lead to a court case that finds an agreement signed under duress is not valid.
If this guy doesn’t pay the fee and his house gets treated the same as the guy next door who did, what percentage of households pay the fee next year? Next to none. Fire departments are expensive to run.
Oliver Wendell Holmes said “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” This dude decided he didn’t want to pay for his little slice of civilization, but he still wanted the benefits. That’s the Teabagger “Taxes are theft and keep government out of my Medicare!” attitude that keeps the richest country in the world hobbled by a Third-World infrastructure. The hell with him.
Comment by ed —
October 6, 2010 @ 8:06 am
“I’m sorry, but our automated system finds no record of your account. To talk to our accounting department, please call during normal business hours, so an associate can investigate your case and determine whether to send a crew to your fire.”
Have you got a 27B-6?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eosrujtjJHA
Comment by fyodor —
October 6, 2010 @ 10:55 am
Libertarianism (in its pure form) advocates for privatizing government services not related to security.
But it has nothing to say about the policies of a municipal fire department operating outside its jurisdiction.
Whatever the merits of thoreau’s argument for keeping fire protection public, and however the case at hand may have inspired him to expound on such, please realize the case at hand actually has nothing to do with libertarianism.
Perhaps a privatized (or volunteer) fire protection service would have acted similarly. And maybe not. That’s purely speculation.
It’s true enough that libertarianism would allow fire fighters the right to decide that for themselves. Though as we can see, public services don’t automatically act altruistically, either.
Comment by mch —
October 6, 2010 @ 11:59 am
A public institution failed to stop a fire because an assessment wasn’t paid.
This was the fault of libertarians?
Actually the only ideology sets that seemed to be involved were constitutional federal democracy, applied through State-chartered local government, and the practicing of regulatory rule of law.
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
October 6, 2010 @ 12:23 pm
First, as a heartless libertarian it is obviously my fault that a guy’s house burned down in Tennessee
Hey, things are tough all over, pal. As a lefty peacenik, I personally lost the Vietnam War — and I was only 11!
So, if one wants to talk about paying for fire protection through some mechanism other than taxes
Help me out here. Is there an actual argument to be made for this other than “taxes are bad”? What is the problem that’s being solved here? I mean, other than the fact that most Americans instinctively loathe “the government” unless it’s dropping bombs on brown people?
Comment by dhex —
October 6, 2010 @ 12:39 pm
other than the fact that most Americans instinctively loathe “the government”
a good chunk of them loathe the wrong people doing the wrong things, while awaiting the right people who will inevitably do the right things (unless thwarted by the wrong people, of course).
i’ve never bought this sort of “genetic individualist” argument, either from libertizzles or anyone else.
Comment by Leonard —
October 6, 2010 @ 1:10 pm
I second mch. If this fire department had been a profit-driven company, they’d have been eager to make a deal. That they were not trying to pick up a quick buck shows their fundamentally bureaucratic nature. Rules are rules!
Please, give me a heartless profit-grubbing corporation!
Comment by Thoreau —
October 6, 2010 @ 1:40 pm
Uncle Kvetch,
Opposition to taxes is certainly the biggest part. In fairness, I will present other arguments, but I am not suggesting that I find them convincing enough to abandon public fire departments. (Although I do second everything that Leonard said about this situation being a very poor model for a private fire department.)
If firefighting is privatized, pricing might also be based on risk: The guy who holds candlelight vigils around a kerosene-scented Christmas tree in a fire-prone canyon of Los Angeles will pay higher fees for fire protection than a more cautious person in rainy Seattle. So pricing signals would serve as a carrot for less risky behavior. Instead, we have fire codes, which are a stick. And libertarians prefer carrots to sticks.
Admittedly, we do have homeowners insurance that prices on fire risk, so that’s a carrot in the status quo. The argument is that you should also base other services (fire-fighting, in addition to loss insurance) on risk.
So, that’s the best argument. Take it for whatever you find it to be worth.
Comment by lowellfield —
October 6, 2010 @ 1:57 pm
“Whiny martyr” might not have been the best tone to open the post with.
Comment by msw —
October 6, 2010 @ 3:05 pm
The “libertarian” approach to firefighting was common in the ancient world. Someone with the ability to put out the fire would learn of a burning building, show up with his crew and dicker with the property owner over how much he’d be willing to sell his (now useless to him) property. After getting the property for a song, the firefighter would have his crew put out the fire. Similar to the libertarian approach to disaster relief (”bottle of water? That’ll be $100″) It’s a big part of how Crassus (third member of the Triumverate, along with Pompey and Caesar) made himself the wealthiest man in ancient Rome.
Of course, this is the standard argument with libertarians – maybe you should learn something about the world, read a book, “climb out of your mom’s basement”, etc. Never seems like an effective one.
Comment by Paul W —
October 6, 2010 @ 3:06 pm
Libertarianism (in its pure form) advocates for privatizing government services not related to security.
Even granted this, fire protection seems like a pretty basic part of “security”.
I think the key problem here is that the city department is even offering the service in this way. It’s irresponsible to sell fire protection on a house-by-house basis, for exactly what happened here: one non-participating guy’s house fire caught someone else’s house on fire.
Mostly likely it was implemented as a way to raise revenue because the city isn’t funding it well enough and to address the fact that optimal radii of fire protection districts rarely match up to municipal boundaries.
Still, it seems like anywhere that houses are built close enough together to catch each other on fire should have a fire protection service funded by taxes that covers everyone. Why would that even be controversial?
Comment by rather —
October 6, 2010 @ 3:10 pm
The man’s house burned down due to his refusal/neglect to pay a $75 fee. His home was located outside the mandated fire protection area, and in an neighboring county.
The most reasonable alternative would have been a set fee for on-demand fire protection. His call to the fire department would have activated such a contract.
The solution of billing the owner after the fire is not unreasonable, but does introduce the argument of refusal to pay for services rendered.
Grod’s suggestion of organ harvesting is interesting but not feasible. Everyone knows Libertarians don’t have hearts.
Comment by Paul W —
October 6, 2010 @ 3:11 pm
If firefighting is privatized, pricing might also be based on risk: The guy who holds candlelight vigils around a kerosene-scented Christmas tree in a fire-prone canyon of Los Angeles will pay higher fees for fire protection than a more cautious person in rainy Seattle. So pricing signals would serve as a carrot for less risky behavior
The issue here is that monitoring and assessing behavior-centered pricing is as much of a “stick” as fire codes, while being more invasive and expensive. In the real world, it’d be easier and fairer to just assess the same fee on everyone in an area. Any “pricing signals” would not be intelligently assessed and even if they were, real people don’t respond to that kind of thing anyway.
Pingback by Taxes and Subscriptions: The Same Result | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen —
October 6, 2010 @ 3:51 pm
[...] enough, but this rather misses something important, as Kevin Carson explains n a comment at Unqualified Offerings: But we should keep in mind what the real alternative is. The [...]
Comment by fyodor —
October 6, 2010 @ 4:07 pm
I’m not actually aware of the issue of privatizing fire fighting being high on any libertarian’s list of priorities. For the purists, yes, taxes are bad because they’re coerced, i.e., you have no choice in the matter, unlike when you voluntarily contract with someone. And government services are generally inefficient and wasteful, for reasons thoreau touched on and others. But as far as this being something for libertarians to answer to or grapple with, it’s rather a non-issue, and I don’t know if there was any compelling reason for thoreau to raise it other than it struck his fancy.
For me? There’s pros and cons and it’s not a major issue either way.
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
October 6, 2010 @ 4:45 pm
The issue here is that monitoring and assessing behavior-centered pricing is as much of a “stick” as fire codes, while being more invasive and expensive. In the real world, it’d be easier and fairer to just assess the same fee on everyone in an area. Any “pricing signals” would not be intelligently assessed and even if they were, real people don’t respond to that kind of thing anyway.
That’s pretty much my reaction, too.
And government services are generally inefficient and wasteful, for reasons thoreau touched on and others.
How “wasteful and inefficient” is the NYFD, here in the totalitarian hellhole that I call home? Or should I just take your word for it?
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
October 6, 2010 @ 4:45 pm
s/b “FDNY”
Comment by fyodor —
October 6, 2010 @ 5:03 pm
*sigh*
Comment by Thoreau —
October 6, 2010 @ 5:25 pm
fyodor,
Where did I say that fire service is inefficient in this post? It may very well be, and I would be less than shocked if fire departments are not run as well as they could be, but I have not made that case in this post.
I did point to arguments for risk-based pricing, but as others have observed there’s a cost associated with the enforcement and monitoring for such a pricing scheme. I still suspect that the costs may be outweighed by the benefits for such a scheme, as insurance companies somehow manage to charge different rates based on fire risk. However, I acknowledge that there are costs that go up as the risk-based pricing becomes more fine-grained.
Comment by dhex —
October 6, 2010 @ 7:42 pm
Everyone knows Libertarians don’t have hearts.
as long as i have a cock to rape the poor with, who needs a heart?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
October 6, 2010 @ 7:53 pm
Get down, party people! Get down! LOL.
That’s not actually true. The reason that there was no fire department in the jurisdiction is because the rugged individualists in the country decided that they didn’t need the Big Brother Nanny State taxing them and running one of their Big Government fire departments, and voted down a proposition to create one. Libertarian anti-government ideology has everything to do with this easily-preventable tragedy.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
October 6, 2010 @ 7:55 pm
Also speculation: the existence of a privatized or voluntary fire protection service, springing out of the ground in the absence of a real fire department.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
October 6, 2010 @ 8:03 pm
Keep begging, let me know when one shows up.
Look, people, this is a real-world situation in which the rugged individualists actually told the big-government nanny state to talk to the hand. There were people with no government fire protection at all, ripe for the picking by the infallible invisible hand that’s supposed to render the government unnecessary.
So, how’s that hopey-changey thing wokin out for ya?
No, the most reasonable alternative would have been to solve the problem of fire protection like every non-dumbass community in the civilized world: by taxing people for the public good of having a fire department, whether paying taxes makes their p*ssies hurt or not. The most reasonable alternative is not some Rube-Goldberg opt-in opt-out vaporware.
Comment by GinSlinger —
October 6, 2010 @ 8:17 pm
So many [citation needed], so little time.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
October 6, 2010 @ 8:30 pm
You know what needs a citation?
The private fire protection companies that can replace real fire departments. Give me a cite on one of those.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 6, 2010 @ 9:04 pm
For the record, I have no strong stance on private fire protection, or on public fire protection with user fees. All I am saying is that whoever owns the trucks, and however the fees are paid, if there’s a fire truck at the scene of a fire I’d like them to spray some water on it. You can collect taxes or insurance fees beforehand, or fees for service afterwards, or whatever, but while the truck is there and the fire is burning, let’s not worry about the fee.
I agree with joe that the vast majority of municipal fire departments funded by taxes manage to put out fires without checking on fees. I agree with Leonard that a private fire company would probably have taken the guy up on his offer to pay rather than saying “NO TICKET!” and tossing him out of the zeppelin. But we didn’t have a normal municipal fire department in this case, nor did we have a greedy company. We had a city that chose the worst possible way to run a public fire department.
So, basically, the fire department in this case sucks whether you prefer the public or private approach.
Comment by GinSlinger —
October 6, 2010 @ 9:09 pm
What good would that do, joe? You refuse to read citations provided to you.
Comment by Glaivester —
October 7, 2010 @ 12:15 am
Of course, publicly funded police have no obligation to come to the aid of individual citizens.
If we’re going to discuss the Gene and Paulette Cranick house burning down case, how about discussing the Alfonso Mendez case, where a tax-funded police officer refused to help a girl dying of asthma, or the demand of the policeman’s union to get a 3-year employment guarantee, with the result that 80 were laid off and the chief announced that they won’t respond to burglary calls, which in effect amounts to saying that you give them a 3-year guarantee of they won’t respond to crimes?
Or does talking about that make joe’s p*ssy hurt?
Comment by Herb —
October 7, 2010 @ 1:32 am
You guys are cracking me up.
“rather than saying “NO TICKET!” and tossing him out of the zeppelin”
The best Indiana Jones reference I’ve heard all day.
Comment by ajay —
October 7, 2010 @ 4:14 am
It’s a good point though. Why didn’t some entrepreneur pop up and say “Don’t pay $75 for Union City’s fire service! I’ll provide fire coverage and I’ll only charge you $60!”
Sounds like a
(removes sunglasses)
market failure, if you ask me.
Comment by Leonard —
October 7, 2010 @ 9:07 am
Joe, your “infallible invisible hand” is a strawman, and you know it, else you’d not write “infallible”. So why argue like a dick? Can’t you assume good faith on the part of your interlocutors? The guy thought he was covered, but he wasn’t. Stupid? Maybe. I don’t know why he thought that. Do you? Now that he, and probably thousands like him, have gotten a clear look at the realities, I guarantee you we’ll see some hopey change in Union county. Either they’ll all subscribe, or they’ll make some political arrangement.
As for why a private fire company won’t start in Union county, that’s easy enough. First, economy of scale. Firefighting is a moderately capital intensive business. Second, any hypothetical new company would be competing against the government’s fire departments, both real (in Union City), and potential (if the county organizes). Given that the government runs companies via taxation, they are thus impossible to underbid. Thus, there is no possibility to beat them on the free market.
Comment by dhex —
October 7, 2010 @ 9:25 am
Sounds like a
(removes sunglasses)
market failure, if you ask me.
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
(i’m just picking the low hanging fruit americans won’t pick)
Comment by ajay —
October 8, 2010 @ 5:11 am
Given that the government runs companies via taxation, they are thus impossible to underbid.
That doesn’t even make sense.
Comment by Leonard —
October 8, 2010 @ 8:54 am
A normal company cannot underbid zero. It is not impossible to underbid zero in all circumstances: if you have money and don’t desire profit, you can pay others to let you serve them. But it’s impossible to do it and make a profit. Which we are assuming if we talk about the for-profit private sector doing something.
Comment by chaz —
October 9, 2010 @ 2:58 am
Well written blog post… I like reading your website for the reason that you always give us well written articles about computers and new technology. I enjoyed it once again. I believe I shall subscribe to the blog feed. I will bookmark this website.Until Next Time PS: I am excited about sportscars next year….
Comment by Kolohe —
October 9, 2010 @ 1:06 pm
Leonard-
Your line of reasoning may work in some specific cases, but can’t be applied as a universal rule; otherwise there would be no such thing as private schools or Securitas
Comment by Chi the Dog Care Authority —
October 10, 2010 @ 8:06 pm
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Comment by Glen Raphael —
October 10, 2010 @ 10:16 pm
You know what needs a citation?
The private fire protection companies that can replace real fire departments. Give me a cite on one of those.
Sure, here you go: Rural/Metro. That’s the biggest for-profit provider of fire department services in the US. It’s based in Arizona. Want another? Falck. That one’s based in Denmark, providing services throughout Europe.
It strikes me as really silly to argue about what private for-profit and/or volunteer fire departments might be like according to somebody’s theory – possibly extrapolating from ancient history – when you could just look at what they’re actually like in any of the hundreds of communities served by them today.
Anyone who cares about this stuff should probably read The Enterprise of Law. Or failing that, here’s a 20-year-old Freeman Article on the subject…
You know why you’ve never heard of companies like Rural/Metro? Because they’re boringly good at their job. Including handling the edge cases as well as getting the base case right.
Comment by Edmund the Bull Terrier Authority —
October 11, 2010 @ 8:46 am
Thanks for giving us some reliable information on dog insurance. I have found a great variety of reliable recommendations about dog insurance and some not-so-good ideas. Do you have any more reliable information or places on the Web that I can find more detailed information? This would be much appreciated! Either way, keep up the good work!
Comment by Glen Raphael —
October 11, 2010 @ 9:16 am
Incidentally, Rural/Metro’s policy is to answer any call to put out a fire – customer or not – but non-customers are billed for actual costs. The non-customer rate is around $1000/hour per truck plus $100/hour per firefighter. Somehow they make it work.
Hey, here’s a relevant case from 2007:
Comment by fyodor —
October 11, 2010 @ 10:48 am
Well, you didn’t say that per se, but then I didn’t say you did. I said it, and I used what you said as a supporting argument. That’s different from saying you drew the exact same conclusion. But I think it leads to what I said. Because the separation of pricing from being “risk-based” is likely to lead to inefficiency.
I don’t know why that presses buttons. I’m not accusing fire chiefs of spending public money on hookers or something. I don’t wanna try to explain Economics or Libertarianism 101 as I’ve learned them, but there’s plenty of reasons to think that government distributed services, whose pricings are set via the political process, are less efficient than market determined ones, based on theory and practice. Generally, i.e., usually. If you don’t think so, I’m not going to try to try to convince you otherwise right now. Suffice to say this is a general observation (as I made clear originally), and I don’t claim to have any particular knowledge of any particular department’s workings.
Comment by Leonard —
October 11, 2010 @ 11:09 pm
Kolohe, good point. Obviously one can compete with the government even at zero price if its service level drops too low, as in security or schooling. Or at least, there is a niche market there. (Certainly no mass market in either case, and I am tempted to say there won’t be an example, but maybe you can think of one.)
Fortunately, firefighting has no social science fundaments to be corrupted for political gain, and has therefore escaped most of the damage that bureaucracy and democratic politics has inflicting on other state services. One can only imagine the politically correct firefighting of the future being so awful that rich people get Rural/Metro in addition to it.
Comment by Glen Raphael —
October 14, 2010 @ 12:32 pm
To be fair, the other reason you don’t often heard about private fire departments is that public ones are also boringly good at their jobs.
Yes, private fire departments tend to provide better service at a lower cost. Yes, the private departments are more technologically innovative. There’s even an incentives problem they help address in that the political system tends to reward emergency personnel for dealing with emergencies more than preventing them in the first place. (If there are no fires at all this year, do we celebrate the fire chief for having done a great job and give his team a raise, or do we wonder if he’s overstaffed and suggest cuts?)
Still and all, the public fire departments in big cities aren’t obviously doing a bad job in the same way that, say, the public schools are. So the main reason we don’t often hear about competitive firefighting alternatives is: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.