The story about the fire department letting the house burn down has been used to “prove” that it’s a case of market failure and that free markets can’t provide public goods. Given that it wasn’t actually a “free market” entity, that argument doesn’t hold much promise:
National Review’s Daniel Foster jumps in to say that this is why conservatives need to curb their enthusiasm for the market economy. A colleague in the “anarcho-capitalist” camp stuck his head into Daniel’s office to explain that fire protection is not a human right, so it makes sense that the house was allowed to burn. Paul Krugman (he never goes away) adds that this is a case against the market in general. “Do you want to live in the kind of society in which this happens?”
I don’t get this debate at all. It is not even a real debate. The fire-protection services were government services. The fee in question was a government-mandated fee. The county lines in which the fee was applicable is a government-drawn line that is completely arbitrary. The policy of not putting out the fire was a government policy enforced by the mayor. As he said, in the words of a good bureaucrat, “Anybody that’s not in the city of South Fulton, it’s a service we offer, either they accept it or they don’t.”
So why is the market being criticized here? This was not a real market. Instead, this is precisely what we would expect from government. In a real market, there is no way that a free-enterprise fire service would have refused to provide the homeowner service. They would be in business to provide that service. The fire would have been put out and he would have been charged for the service. It is as simple as that. It is the same as lawn-mowing services or plumbing services or any other type of service. Can we know for sure that the market would provide such services? Well, if insurance companies have anything to say about it, such services would certainly be everywhere.
As it was, the fire burned down as a result of government policy, a refusal of service because the homeowners did not pay what amounted to a tax! The poor homeowner begged for help and offered to pay. He had paid the year before and the year before, so his credit was good. Even so, the bureaucracy refused!
ya, right oh… You stated in your argument that the mayor said it was a service that they offered. Since the USA is a capitalism run society, I would assume that it was a fee based service. No money, no service.
How much more market based do you want it to be?
Besides, capitalist run fire departments have already been tried. The working class figure out a long time ago, that the match stick houses we build in North America, need fire protect. The cheapest and safest way of distributing this needed service, was to collectively make it available to all, paid by taxation.
Moving backwards is just that. Again, this story is a prime example of what American Capitalism has come to. People not even interested in helping their neighbors out , unless then get paid.
Comment by Skippy — October 8, 2010 @ 01:34
If it was actually a market, there’d be more than one service being offered by competing organizations. A single service, owned and run by the government, with no competition (or chance of a competitor arising) is a monopoly. A monopoly isn’t automatically bad, but when the monopoly is the government, you can’t pretend that this is in any way “capitalist” or “free market”. Charging you a fee doesn’t make it a free transaction: how much did you pay to renew your driver’s license? If you didn’t pay the fee, would you still be allowed to drive on public roads?
Fire is always a risk in any urban environment. The working class doesn’t figure into that at all, except that they tend to live closer together in less-solidly constructed houses, so that their collective (see, I can use class struggle language, too!) risks of fire are greater than in areas where the houses are better built and spaced further apart.
You haven’t exactly belled the cat as far as proving that this incident has anything to do with capitalism. Public employees stood around, watching the house burn, refusing payment even when the home owner offered to pay far more than the original fee. How is that the action of a profit-driven organization?
Comment by Nicholas — October 8, 2010 @ 08:42