Fire protection in American communities is now provided in a simple, unimaginative manner. If your house catches on fire, the fire department, funded by local taxes, comes and puts it out. That might seem an obvious solution, but let us look at it more closely.
Not all houses are equally fire-prone, and not all fires cost equally to extinguish. Why should someone with a new brick house pay equally to someone with an old frame house? Why should someone living in a remote house in a wooded area pay no more than someone living next to the firehouse? Obviously, there’s something wrong here.
What’s wrong is the monopoly over fire protection held by the local government’s fire department—or the volunteer fire department in small communities. Fire protection has never been opened up to the competitive process of a free market.
My proposal is simply to privatize fire protection. This would eliminate the burden of maintaining seldom-used costly equipment out of public funds. Rather, the community could contract with private contractors to provide fire protection on an as-needed basis. This would open fire protection to competitive bidding and inevitably lower the cost. A single contract might be negotiated with one firm for the entire community or, better, several companies might be given fire protection responsibility for portions of the community.
For example, those with more expensive homes might be willing to buy a higher premium insurance plan. Those with tiny homes of little value would seek a minimum of fire protection insurance with a low premium. Each resident would be able to find the fire protection that best meets his needs.
Those who couldn’t afford even the minimal protection offered on the free market might have their premiums subsidized by taxation.
Instead of a ridiculous “one size fits all” fire protection system, we would have a true American free enterprise system. Given competition in the free market, surely we would have the most efficient and lowest cost fire protection. |
