On the “libertarian” fire department…

It seems the barrage of attacks on libertarianism based on either crude strawmen and/or simply incorrect information has not ebbed. First we had Thom Hartmann proclaim that the ideas of Ludwig Von Mises and “Freidrich Von Hayeck” contributed to the financial meltdown in March 2009. Then we had a recent Observer article attacking Austrian economics with nothing more than ad populum fallacies and a completely bereft understanding of Austrian implications on Tuesday (10/05/10).

Now we have the failure of a government monopoly fire department in Tennessee blamed on libertarianism in an article on Salon.com Why? The fire service operated slightly apart from the usual practice: instead of operating on funds previously taxed from individuals, it only covered people who paid a $75 fee. It has been this way since 1990; before then they didn’t even have a fire department.

Nothing in this model is anything remotely libertarian. The department was government-run. By local law no private or even volunteer fire departments were allowed to form without explicit approval the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, State Fire Marshall’s office. That alone explodes the notion that this was an example of the free market, since a free market necessarily must have free entry into a market. Yet somehow our Salon.com author thinks that a department set up by government fiat and banning private and volunteer firefighting solutions somehow is free market because it required a $75 pre-payment as opposed to the usual automatic coverage for taxpayers.

The fact that the department required its $75 payment does not make this a case of libertarianism. Due to the bureaucracy and monopoly, the firefighters did not and could not put the fire out even with offers of large sums of cash on the spot from the man who owned the house. If there had actually been private fire departments involved here, there is no way they would have turned him down: they likely would had him sign up for insurance then and there at an enormous cost, but at a cost far lower than that of losing the house. No for-profit firm would let a house burn to the ground in a case like this where there a profit could easily be made. I’m sure the left would then cry out how they’re profiting off the man’s misery, even though this voluntary transaction would result in an unbelievable amount of savings for the man compared to the loss of his house.

Progressives who claim that a truly private fire department system would simply let a man’s home burn down for not pre-registering with the company are completely denying the profit motive, as profit would easily be made in this situation. Yet they claim – somehow – that the profit motive caused this to happen, and has caused every ill in civilization. In other words, they are logically incoherent on this. Perpetuating strawman attacks on individual liberty and economic freedom does not help their cause, and unfortunately most people will lap it up without question. This doesn’t change the fact that they are appallingly wrong.