“but this is so RUDE!!!” oh wait.. … the irony… 
Also, look at the poll
Was this a public or private fire department?
I believe it was a public fire department from another municipality. The city this happened in didn’t have their own fire department for whatever reason and the mayor of the neighboring city offered to extend their public service for a fee from each citizen. I doubt that a private fire department would have refused when the man offered to pay anything if they’d put out his fire; the public fire service was under orders not to help anyone who hadn’t pre-paid.
In this latest case, the GOVERNMENT fire department refused to put out the guys fire, even though the guy agreed to pay full cost. In fact, the decision to not put the guy’s fire out wasn’t made on the spot - it was a government regulation.
No private (as in… gets money directly from people, not government) fire department would have done this. If they did, they would have suffered in reputation and likely lost business.
I say we make this group our own. Turn their satirical group into a real one. I have already started.
I just made a thread about this link (a day or two ago), and this debate, there were some good points:
https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/private-fire-fighters/15394
"LOL…
It’s unfortunate that the public firefighters did not just put the man’s fire out, or allow him to pay the fee once they arrived. But just because the state slapped a price on a service does not suddenly make it a non-government regulated, private service subject to market competition."
Also, if there were more then one fire station company, I’m sure there would be a station who would be willing to take a call when it was occuring for a higher fee. I mean these firefighters refused to help even though they were going to pay them anyway. It’s totally illogical, and not of the free market, they rejected the money for NO REASON. Sounds like the state to me.
Indeed. The stated reason in the article was that, if non-subscribers were allowed to pay for firefighting services, no one would subscribe and people would only pay for firefighting services when their houses were on fire.
My initial reaction to that was just a big “So what?” Then I thought about it further. Without a steady stream of income, it would be much more difficult for the firefighting organization to accumulate new capital and maintain existing capital (firetrucks, protective gear, hoses, etc.). On the other hand, I don’t see how allowing non-subscribers to pay for firefighting services would necessarily mean that no one would choose to subscribe – especially if the subscription fees were “determined” by market activity. Non-subscribers would not be getting something for nothing. In fact, the subscribers would get more bang for their buck.
So it seems like there would (or at least could) still be plenty of incentive for people to subscribe. I think my initial response of “So what?” was appropriate. 
If you say ran a fire department for money, and a potiential customer had a house on fire then this would seem like a great time to charge a whole lot more than you would normally charge to put out the fire. If I owned the fire company, I would fire any manager who leaves a customer begging to pay a price way higher than what we charge normally.
The critical term here is “Fire Department”. If part of the reason for existence is to put out fires then only a government manager would be vindictive and stupid enough to prevent the fire department from collecting a much higher than average fee for putting out a fire. Think of how crazy this is.
This is equivalent to my boss telling me I can not sell a new revision of our software to a customer who did not pay their yearly maintenance fee when they are willing to pay 5 or 10 or even more times that maintenance fee to keep their systems running. If that boss said no then I would think he/she was silly. In fact I would expect the boss to allow the sale of the upgrade if they paid the current and any past due maintenance fees much less paying a much larger amount.
^Exactly because paying $200 would be well worth saving even a lower income $100,000 home. Even an apartment.
I understand what everyone’s saying about “fire insurance”, but I don’t think insurance companies would pop up like they have in the medical field. I think the insurance would be run directly through the fire department because - correct me if I’m wrong because this isn’t supposed to sound offensive - they aren’t too many specialized ways to put out fires. In the medical field there are millions of different prices and so many different procedures, but the only factors that could influence the cost of putting out fires is the size of the house, how easy it is to get to the house/apartment, and not many others. But I definitely support privatization of it.
EDIT: By the way, where does everyone find “journals” like this on the website? I always search for stuff in the regular search bar on the homepage but only journals from the store come up. Is the best way to get information regarding fire department privatization and stuff like that to search in the media section or what?
Bob Roddis, at Bob Murphy’s blog, explains how a private towing service at Lake St. Clair deals with the problem of non-payers who find themselves needing a tow. They offer an insurance policy at $54/year. “If you have paid the $54, the tow is FREE from ANYWHERE. If you haven’t paid, It’s $1200.”
I don’t see why private firefighting companies wouldn’t adopt a similar program, should it be necessary.
Brian: Try searching in the Literature section. You can also browse by Journal.
Thank you. I hadn’t seen the “filter by” section before.
That’s exactly what I was saying!
Glad to see there’s a real-life example of it!
So let’s bring this scenario back to fire fighting. If a non-subscriber can’t pay the $1200 charge, let’s say, to have the fire put out, the fire company turns around and leaves. Right next door, though, is a subscriber. I would imagine that if the $1200 charge is refused by the non-subscriber, the company will decide to put it out anyway because it would cost more money to them once it reaches the subscribers home. In this case, it would appear that the non-subscriber will have their house fire put out for free. They could simply claim they refused service because they didn’t have the money and that the fire company put it out anyway because they were afraid it would cost more to wait for it to reach a subscribers home.
You don’t need to put out the entire fire to stop the fire from going to the other person’s house. You’d just wait until it burns to the ground or people decide to voluntarily pay for the person’s house to be put out. I don’t even think the fire would reach the other person’s house too bad unless they live in brownstones or something.
How’s this for a model? If someone doesn’t have insurance AND doesn’t have money to pay out for the cost of the fire fighting, they sell their house at a much reduced price to the fire protection agency. They were irresponsible enough to be in that situation, and yet, it’s not a total loss to the owner. I mean, you are selling a burning house.
What if there were people trapped in the burning house of a non-subscriber? Should the firefighters leave them to die because they didn’t pay?