What Are Taxes Good For? The Case of User Fees in Fire Fighting.

[phantom power]

Suppose that you pay for the firefighting services but neither your left-hand or right-hand neighbor does nor do the people living in the house behind yours. In theory, all those three houses could be on fire and the firefighters would wait and see if they need to protect your house. By the time the fire crosses your property line it might be crossing from three directions.

At the same time, the quoted argument about the necessity of not fighting the fire if the owners didn't pay the fees is a valid one. If you get the service without paying for it, why pay at all?

Hence the superiority of tax-funded services in cases like this one. Because taxes are obligatory.

This story reminded me of a historical incident I read about. One community in Finland, several centuries ago, created an early fire fighting unit by promising to pay certain farmers a fee, collected from the community, for each fire they put down. This progressive idea ran into some problems the next time harvests failed, because one group of farmers had a second potential source of income. So many farms suddenly lost barns to inexplicable fires.

What these two stories share is the importance of incentives and the lesson that some things really are better funded using non-market alternatives. In the case of fire fighting that means either tax funding of permanent employees or the use of volunteer fire fighters.

http://www.echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2011_12_04_archive.html#5602375131240915394

[Uben]

1. We have a volunteer FD here where I live.....

...it is a gated rural lake community and our VFD is funded souly by voluntary donations. If you do not donate in a given year, you still have protection. They will fight to save your home either way. That is the way it is supposed to be. I can't see how any fireman would sit by and watch somebody's possesions go up in flames without raising a finger. If my worst enemies' house was on fire, I would carry water to save it, because that's what civilized people do. I would not let their kid's home go up in flames over some "principle". Only fucked up people think like that.

That kind of thinking is why we have one out of five children going hungry in America. If we lose respect for our fellow man based on his ability to pay, we are fucked. Everyone would like to have a good paying factory job with benefits, but they are getting more scarce by the day. Kids these days are lucky to get a job flipping burgers because older folks are taking those jobs out of necessity. Try living on $7.25/hr, part time, with no insurance. Granted, it's better than not having a job at all, but all it does is send another citizen into a downhill spiral into poverty. And, that is okay with republicans because they probably won't vote republican anyway. WTF? That is why I will never ever vote for any republican. I do not hate them, I hate their ideology and their ignorance.
.