The privitization of police & fire

[Zavoi]

@Liberty Dave

2. Let’s say you pay a monthly fee for fire protection service, but your neighbor doesn’t. Their house catches fire, and so does yours due to their fire. You have “insurance” of sorts for this but your neighbor doesn’t. So now your “insurance” rates go up due to the number of people in your neighborhood that don’t have insurance, yadda, yadda.

I would expect that a prudent homeowner moving into a thickly-settled area would make sure beforehand that everyone in the vicinity is contractually obligated to have fire protection/insurance. If later you decide that you don’t want fire protection for your own home, then you can pay your neighbors to allow you to drop it.

@Liberty Dave

I have a feeling, however, that the retort would be that with the California fires, if fire departments were privatized, there would still be those same issues with private companies. I don’t think there would be, just playing devil’s advocate, because I know how those people think (by “those people” I mean those that think government should provide these and other services).

From what I remember, the forests of California are naturally prone to wildfires, but overzealous attempts to put them out lead to a build-up of fuel that increases the severity of later fires. (Although, I think the government has changed to a more hands-off approach.) In any case, without government provision of fire protection, people would have less of an incentive to live near fire-prone forests.

@DD5

If your neighbor catches fire, but doesn’t have an account, a private fire department would still come to his aid and send him a bill (of a non-customer) afterwards. If he’s not home, they would still come by you calling (or somebody else), and leave him a bill afterwards. If he doesn’t pay, then he would become like any other debtor in society who refuses or is unable to pay. His credit would be affected and he may go on some database list that may give him harsh times in the future. Sure, if he still doesn’t pay, you pick up the tab trough higher premiums. You would actually demand that his fire be put out on the mere account of your own safety. There is no way that such “free rider” problems become a major issue in a free market. The “free rider” problem is an inherent problem of government services, and not of free markets.

Just remember that the debt is not legally enforceable unless this neighbor had previously made a contractual agreement to get fire insurance. This is the kind of thing that would have to be dealt with with social pressure—if the neighbor establishes a reputation for compensating those who provide him/her with assistance freely, then this encourages others to do so in the future.

[Conza]

@BobT

Any fire company that exploited people whose house was on fire would immediately lose all of its customers. Competition would ensure that.

It’s like asking, why doesn’t Brinks Home Security tell people who’s houses are being robbed that they will only send the police over if they pay an extra $1000? It’s simply nonsese.

I can verify this pretty much first hand. Working in the Insurance Industry roughly a year ago, with a loss adjusting company. Massive floods etc up north in Queensland Australia.

A fair amount of people were not covered by it. Insurance companies gave the word, accept the claim. Our job is to verify all the belongings etc of what had been destroyed. Physical evidence, photographs etc. problem is, that needs to be stored on the site or left until Loss Adjusters can get in an do so.

Order came down, the waste is a potential health hazard. Accept all claims.

The Insurance companies fear a backlash from the newspapers and market. If ONE of them doesn’t, they’ll get crucified pretty much. So it can be cheaper in fact too pay, get higher premiums over the long term and not lose customers going to other insurance companies that did pay.

Even for smaller items though, not caused by disasters - say a lost of stolen ipod. They know people often cheat or commit fraud. But it often becomes too expensive to try prove it. Far easier to make the small claim, premiums go up - and that person thinks they’ve won, but they’ve essentially paid for the ipod after a while in increased premiums.. lol.