Monday 11 October 2010

On Letting Houses Burn

Gene at Harry's Place blogs about the fire department of Obion County. They were ordered to allow Mr Cranick's house to burn down because he had not paid the annual fee for fire cover. Gene asks:
But aren’t there other principles involved here– like basic human decency? Like caring for one’s neighbor?
He also goes on to cite some American person claiming that the decision was right according to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Clearly not happy he says:
Fischer can speak for himself about about his interpretation of Christian tradition, but there’s nothing Judeo about having the means to help a neighbor in distress and not using them. Quite the opposite.
First to answer Gene's question - yes it would be good to be caring and generously put out Mr Cranick's house fire. However, if the fire department made it clear that it would always put out fires even for those who did not pay then very soon no one would pay and then no fires would be put out. So while the people involved I'm sure wanted to help Mr Cranick they did make the right decision.

Moving on to the second point. Given that the reason for not helping in this instance was to prevent abuse in the future it turns out that the decision was in fact in keeping with Jewish tradition. The tradition involved relates to the paying of ransoms. As I understand it the Jewish religion places much importance in paying ransoms to release people from captivity. Nevertheless, this is not to be done when it will simply encourage more kidnappings. Thus the notion of not helping one person so as not to encourage further problems is in keeping with the Jewish tradition.

7 comments:

  1. The state let that house burn to the ground.
    Check out the link.

    http://blog.mises.org/14158/did-the-free-market-burn-down-the-house/

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  2. I see the argument but don't really agree with it. There is no guarantee that a free market fire service would have put the fire out, there is only the assumption.

    In all probability a private company would also not have put the fire out. It would have to act like an insurance company. It couldn't survive by charging only people whose fires it put out. It would have to charge a premium and thereby be making profit on all those people whose houses do not catch fire, because it is unlikely to be able to turn a profit on those whose houses do.

    Therefore, if they had a policy of putting out fires and sending the bill afterwards they would not get their premiums. So they too would not put out the fires. This is, in fact, what happened in London when the fire service was provided by private insurance companies.

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  3. I have my boiler maintained by a private company. I pay an annual fee and if it goes wrong they come out and fix it without further charge. If I've not paid my fee then they will demand a larger charge for the call-out.

    I would expect that a private fire brigade would act similarly, as long as the call-out charge is large enough to encourage people to join the scheme. Houses burn down less frequently than boilers break down so the charge would need to be larger, but the system could still work. There must be some price where the fire brigade consider it worth putting out the fire, something around their annual expenses divided by the number of fires they deal with, perhaps.

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  4. I totally agree with Mr Potarto.

    You pay a yearly premium,if you miss the payment,or simply do not pay it and you house starts to burn down,and you still want or need your house, you will pay the fee.

    I also believe the fire service would still put the fire out to protect other residence near by,thus showing what a good service it can provide others.

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  5. However, if the fire department made it clear that it would always put out fires even for those who did not pay then very soon no one would pay and then no fires would be put out.

    And when enough fires happened then people would realise that they needed a fire service and start to pay again. You don't seem to have much faith in the free market concept of supply and demand

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  6. I've written a fuller response

    http://libertarianbulldog.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-on-that-fire.html

    ReplyDelete
  7. 'And when enough fires happened then people would realise that they needed a fire service and start to pay again. You don't seem to have much faith in the free market concept of supply and demand'

    And you don't seem to have an appreciation of the free rider problem.

    ReplyDelete