Private fire/garbage protection

[Guest guest]

Heidi Schuppenhauer wrote:

> Sorry, it wasn't meant as a cheap shot. Someone brought

> up the fact that the fire departments were, at one point,

> for profit organizations. And that they would fight

> over " whose fire " a given fire was, while the building

> burned down. Similar situations have arisen with garbage

> collectors. In both cases, the gov't stepped in and took

> control. Part of my property taxes pay for the fire dep't,

> which is right down the street, and they will come if

> my house catches fire or my kid gets stuck in a tree or

> an earthquake makes a building fall down, whether or

> not said person is up to date on their house payments

> or taxes.

I must admit that I have no answer for this. However, there is much that

is wrong with this picture, and I am skeptical of it to say the least. I

have heard similar stories about private fire protection myself, but

popular perceptions of history are quite frequently skewed in ways that

are favorable to government intervention. The main reason that I'm

suspicious is that this behavior is just doesn't make sense. One would

expect the fire companies to contract with one another to cooperate in

situations like this, given the cost of doing otherwise. I strongly

suspect that either the frequency of such occurrences is greatly

exaggerated or that we are not hearing the whole story.

As for garbage collection, in my young(er) days I lived in a rural area

with no government collection, so my parents and our neighbors arranged

for a private company to come out and pick it up, and I don't recall

that we had any problems. Honestly, I don't see how a situation such as

you describe above could be much of a problem with waste collection,

given the lack of urgency. Also, there are still many areas,

particularly rural areas with for-profit and volunteer fire protection.

I'm not sure why you're bringing up having a child stuck in a tree--this

strikes me as a perfect candidate for the type of service that should be

purchased on demand. A fire is one thing, but I don't think that your

child would have any trouble holding on for the extra two minutes it

would take you to look up the nearest tree rescue service in the yellow

pages.