David Henderson, Libertarianism, and Burning Houses

I'm sure by now everyone has heard about the Obion County fire department that would not respond to a fire because the resident did not pay their fire protection fee. I wasn't planning on covering it until I saw this post from David Henderson this morning. He makes a good criticism of this Salon article blaming the situation on libertarianism. Henderson's response is that this wasn't actually a libertarian situation - it was still a government fire department taking fees, after all! Fair enough, I can buy that. But then Henderson completely fails to apply the same logic to himself when he blames the fire on the Salon author and "statists" (whoever the hell they are - I imagine I qualify in his mind). But if the Obion County fire department isn't the responsibility of libertarians, it's certainly not the responsibility of non-libertarians who think that fire protection services should not be fee for service. This isn't the first time Henderson has made a reasonable critique of a situation and then completely failed to apply it to himself - I called Henderson out on it here as well, and he recanted. Will he this time?

It's just sloppy logic. Why is it that so many libertarians see anything done wrong by the government and latch on to it as proof that anything but libertarianism is bankrupt, as if non-libertarians are responsible for everything and anything the government does. That makes no more sense than blaming anything a corporation does or a private citizen does on libertarians. And in fact it makes even less sense than that because it gives the impression that the government is the only source of agency or action for non-libertarians. Why does government misconduct get blamed on non-libertarians and not private corporate misconduct (non-libertarians are in favor of the free enterprise system, after all). It's not even considered because it is often assumed the primary institution of social agency for non-libertarians is the government.

Anyway - very odd and very asymmetric.

I think the fire shows us that there are limits to fee-for-service and contracting in government. The conspicuous absence of private fire services is also notable. You would think in a county where the public fire service was opt-in you would have competing private fire services, right? If the county was charging $75, you'd expect a private firm to charge $72.50, right? The lack of such a service is extremely telling, and while this incident doesn't say anything about libertarianism per se (I agree with Henderson on that), it does suggest how a private market would handle this.

What would we see in a private market for fire services? Spotty coverage, for one thing. You wouldn't see all areas with fire service coverage. Wealthier communities would be more lucrative because they have more to protect and have a greater ability to pay, although the cost of stopping the fire would probably be comparable to the cost of stopping a fire in low-income areas. Since low-income areas are not cross-subsidized by the tax dollars of wealthier residents, they'll have less to spend on other things and may voluntarily forgo fire protection in favor of other goods.

In 1736 when Benjamin Franklin established the Union Fire Company this may have made a great deal of sense (although I'm not even sure this is a for-profit company - I've found no evidence that it was). But in an era where we can provide universal fire coverage and cross subsidization is nominal it's hard to argue that social welfare isn't best served by a public fire department - that a low-income area's effective demand represents the utility derived from fire protection services in any reasonable way. So Henderson is right - this does not directly reflect on libertarianism. But we can see that moving towards a fee-for-service system is extremely problematic in this case, and we can reasonably foresee what a market for this service would be like. Instead of playing the blame game - instead of calling everything that the government does wrong the fault of non-libertarianism and everything the market does wrong the fault of libertarianism, it seems to me it makes more sense to predict how different systems would respond and then consider which we prefer. After all, neither libertarians nor non-libertarians predict that entrepreneurs will always get it right (that's sort of the point of entrepreneurship), and non-libertarians don't predict the government will always get it right. So let's stop pretending this is an article of faith or a necessary assumption for everyone when it's clearly not.

Do you want to live in a society where:
(1.) protection from the ravages of fire are dependent on your ability to pay and the ability of your neighbors to pay (because if your neighbors won't pay there's going to be less coverage in your area), and many people don't get protection from fire, or

(2.) protection from the ravages of fire is free to be provided by public or private fire services, but if you don't pay a fee you don't get the protection, and many people don't get protection from fire, or

(3.) protection from the ravages of fire is such a basic and easy service to provide in the twenty first century that it is publicly provided without a fee, out of tax dollars where inevitably high income families will cross-subsidize the low income families.

If you firmly believe that tax is theft and democracy is tyranny and the litany of other cliches, then I suppose number three sounds ridiculous. My feeling is, if number three counts as "statist", then people have lost all sense of proportion and we've let our institutional tools become our masters.