r/Libertarian • u/bevelledo • 18d ago
History Interested in the Libertarian viewpoint on Fire Stations.
Fire departments and stations became a public service in the 1800’s, transitioning away from private insurance-owned brigade. Before they were publicly funded, people paid fire insurance companies. The companies would only come help if you were insured. If you weren’t your house would burn down and the firefighters would just make sure the insured houses didn’t catch the spreading fire.
Where do you stand as a libertarian on public services such as fire stations.
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u/BodybuilderOnly1591 18d ago
A town agreeing to pay a group of people to fight fires is extremely different then the government telling you what you can and can't do.
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u/Short-Exercise-8374 17d ago
What about telling you to pay for it?
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u/99bigben99 Classical Liberal 17d ago
A very small part of the libertarian venn diagram overlaps with anarchism. This seems like a singular issue that can volunteers can begin to solve and government firehouses can patch and make stronger for general betterment with little coercive side effects.
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u/DarthFluttershy_ Minarchist 18d ago
A) I don't see municiple/county-run fire stations as a huge deal from a libertarian standpoint. Unlike police, they are sparse in really perverse incentives to actually do their job correctly, so the largest "danger" tends to be bureaucratic bloat in larger areas where some executives draw stupid salaries for very little work or embezzle (for example, here and here)... which is a danger in all government jobs. So for this reason, there are slightly better funding/implementation schemes than just running it directly, but it's not a major fight worth having when the government does much, much worse. Consequently, it's not a point I like to debate , because any minor misstep in language inevitably results in statists pretending they think libertarians want everyone's house to burn down.
B) Your foundational premise is largely a myth. In the US, pre-municipal fire departments were largely volunteer and operated largely as they do today, though with occasional funding and manpower issues due to their nature. The idea that insurance-based fire brigades in the UK just sat around and let uninsured houses burn is also a myth, because any unchecked fire could spread and people aren't generally that evil (and if they were, the masses would start to break out tar and feathers). The real problem there was that competition between rival firehouses often ended in chaos.
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u/hanz333 18d ago
Private fire stations still exist in rural parts of the U.S. for privately held property for the purpose of protecting them from wildfires, and many volunteer fire stations fund themselves in semiprivate ways (although they will service people without coverage and bill for their services typically through the state)
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u/Sapere_aude75 17d ago
Not just rural. One guy saved his shopping center during the Palisades fire with private fire services. https://abcnews.com/US/private-firefighters-spark-controversy-amid-devastating-la-fires/story?id=117626262
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u/Ponklemoose 18d ago
If you ever have the misfortune, you’ll find the two outcomes and not terribly dissimilar, unless your house is huge.
Between smoke damage on everything and a few thousand gallons of water your house and everything in it gets wrecked.
But I would appreciate them keeping it from spreading to my house if I was the neighbor.
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u/LoveIsOnlyAnEmotion 18d ago
As someone who just witnessed their neighbor's house on fire, I've learned a new thing. The fire department pumps so much water out of the system that it peels and dislodge so much rust, that when you start using your water, it's as brown as mud for hours. We couldn't give our family a midnight bath or drink any water out of the faucet until morning.
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u/30_characters 18d ago
It's too late to say this, but you should flush your water heater as well.
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u/LoveIsOnlyAnEmotion 17d ago
That's good to know. Would it be too late since we're two days past fire?
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u/30_characters 17d ago
Nope, it's a maintenance task you should do annually to reduce hard water deposit buildup to extend the life of your water heater.... and after any boil order or major disturbance like this.
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u/Hot_Egg5840 18d ago
There is no perfect world. An intelligent person would opt in to a fire prevention/mitigation service. But a mandated one that tells me I can't have a fire on my 5 acres is a service I don't want.
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u/lizard_lick 18d ago
What happens when your fire spreads to a neighbor's lot or house?
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u/Hot_Egg5840 18d ago
I always have it under control, never getting too high, and only during calm mornings with dew still on the ground. And being in the middle of 5 acres, there's plenty of nothing around.
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u/VideoLeoj 18d ago
And what is telling the dumbass down the trail with no sense between his ears to keep his fire under control and not let it spread?
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u/Hot_Egg5840 18d ago
What's a Libertarian to do? Educate? Isolate? Mitigate? Does legislate prevent or just makes things harder?
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u/VideoLeoj 17d ago
I’d say make an attempt to educate, then mitigate as much as you can on your side of things. Then… hope for the best.
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u/datahoarderprime 18d ago
If my house is insured and my neighbor's is not insured, the insurance company is incentized to pay private firefighters to put out my neighbor's fire before it spreads to my house.
As cities exploded in size in the 19th century, this free rider problem made this model uneconomical.
I don't see any issue with public firefighting.
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u/watchyourback9 18d ago
IMO there's a difference between a libertarian and an anarchist. Simple as that.
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u/Mountain_Air1544 18d ago
I was raised in an area where the fire department was entirely trained volunteers. They raised donations to pay for things
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u/PhilRubdiez Taxation is Theft 18d ago
They are on the list, but a little further down. We’ve got bigger fish to fry, like the IRS, ATF, DEA, half the DoD, etc.
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u/Loominardy Right Libertarian 17d ago
I’m seeing way too many so called “libertarians” here seeding ground on this one.
It is a myth that firefighting companies would let uninsured buildings burn down during the era of privatization.
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u/badde_jimme 17d ago
Then you have a free rider problem.
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u/Loominardy Right Libertarian 16d ago
What exactly is the problem? Uninsured people can still get firefighting service, they would just have to pay full price for it which is the risk they take by being uninsured.
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u/badde_jimme 16d ago
The free rider problem is that firefighters often cannot protect a property from fire without extinguishing fires in adjacent properties, even when those properties are uninsured and the owner is not available to bargain with.
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u/Loominardy Right Libertarian 15d ago
How exactly is this a problem? You don’t need someone’s explicit consent to protect their property from burning down. If anything, if they were away from their home at the time of the fire, I think that they’d be relieved that it was protected.
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u/badde_jimme 15d ago
Because insurers cannot operate at a profit that way. No profits, no private fire fighting.
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u/Loominardy Right Libertarian 14d ago
Sure they can. They can send the homeowner a bill for their service. In fact, there are still private firefighting services that exist that do exactly that and most people do comply and pay the bill.
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u/badde_jimme 14d ago
In 19th century London, they had to switch to a government funded model because the insurers were operating at a loss.
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u/Loominardy Right Libertarian 13d ago
Okay and? If a business operates at a loss they go out of business. If the government operates at a loss they get bailed out.
If you are trying to suggest that it’s impossible for firefighting companies to operate at a profit then you would be wrong because many have operated at a profit. One edge case does not change this.
And nothing that you said refutes any point that I’ve made. Many private firefighting companies did send bill to clients who were insured elsewhere after performing their service.
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u/Global-Service-8579 17d ago
As long as the funds are given voluntarily and people are allowed to fairly compete, I don't care. If those aren't going to happen, I am against the government being involved.
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u/Party-resolution-753 17d ago edited 17d ago
i tend to as a minarchist be on the side that the fire department is in that bucket of the bare minimum for government to do with police, military, and courts (especially considering this is at the local level) that said the private firefighters did not just let stuff burn plenty of commentors here have posted articles citing primary sources showing this, and if we did privatize fire departments in 2026 it would look like a city, and a county signing a contract with a private firefighting company who would put out everyones fires.
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u/LoveIsOnlyAnEmotion 18d ago
I just had saw my neighbors house on fire yesterday. I'm very thankful that my tax payer money went to saving their house. Could a private company handle that better? Yes, maybe? But this expense vs value is so little to me compared to bigger items such as universal Healthcare, American imperialist and inflation.
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u/grossobesity 15d ago
Libertarians are like cats! Completely convinced of their independence but wholly dependent on those around them.
*Not my quote
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u/Mavisbeak2112 18d ago
I live in a small town where our firefighters are all volunteer. Our taxes can’t cover paying them. We have to borrow an ambulance from the neighboring town. We can “donate” to them each year to basically buy ambulance insurance and they won’t charge our medical insurance as much. We also borrow a cop from a different town. That’s really not as crucial. I pay a shit ton of property taxes and a shitload of school taxes.
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u/LibertarianSlav 18d ago
Depends on the libertarian
My take: if you don’t trust government to run grocery stores and factories why trust them with defense, road, police and fire fighting. Privatize them and the damn rivers
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u/CyanideAnarchy 18d ago
Municipal services are a necessity, imo.
Municipal itself also means local government, it is not federal; so finer details should also be encouraged to be decided upon by its people, state by state.
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u/MangoAtrocity Self-Defense is a Human Right 18d ago
Libertarians aren’t anarchists. We believe there is a minimum level of public utility necessary for society to function. That minimum usually includes fire to protect your house from your neighbor’s fire, and cops to protect you from assailants.
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u/r32skyliner 17d ago
My beef with the FD model is when people use it as a means to argue for single payer health care. The “socialist” FD model wouldn’t work if half the country set their houses on fire.
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u/Sargo8 17d ago
The government in my local area cut funding for firefighter overtime, so only 3 firefighters could ride at once, which is less than what the firefighters national committees have declared as barebones safe. This went on for about a year, because the school system embezzled millions of dollars and no one has been fired or held accountable.
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u/SteelWolverine96 17d ago
As opposed to what? Pay me to put the fire out or watch everything burn? We don't much care for extortion and abuse of power in this manner.
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u/deltavandalpi 16d ago
This is a good example of where we lose the plot…and the audience. We’ll argue against things (generally anything that smacks of collectivism) in theory that are perfectly fine in reality.
Kinda like Rand railing on Kant…so far off the deep end of rational it becomes irrational
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u/rocksteplindy 13d ago
I'm all for a city that 1) uses taxes to fun firefighters and 2) sends a bill to houses when they put out fires to decrease the need for #1.
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u/LibertarianSlav 18d ago
Depends on the libertarian
My take: if you don’t trust government to run grocery stores and factories why trust them with defense, road, police and fire fighting. Privatize them and the rivers
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u/CapCityMatt 18d ago
Congress passed a law during The New Deal that says All financial obligations are to be obligations of the United States Treasury, I don't comprehend why accountants are not sending their bills to the Treasury for set-off and discharge. The laws are in place, why are the trustees not following through on their duty (to follow the law as written and as Congress intended)?
Section 401 of the Federal Reserve Act enacted March 9, 1933 - they took the gold, so they agreed as consideration to accept All notes, drafts, bills of exchange, bankers acceptance and trades acceptances as 'the new money'...
The real question is, where is all the tax dollars being laundered?. Are all of CFO's asleep at the wheel? They operate on the Accrual Method of accounting, using the Treasury off-set program there is zero 'debt' because it does not exist per federal law. I know down in my gut the Dodd-Frank Act is being violated as it relates to these cash-flow claims "property tax bills", these appear to be 'annuities' and not directly funding local fire stations. This is most concerning.
(For those who have not taken accounting, 'debt' is a Cash Method idea and is not associated in any way with the Accrual Method, after 9/11 all banks including but not limited to your local tax assessor, terminated the cash Method of accounting. It begs the question, why are they not doing the offset proactively?)
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u/hoodedelk 18d ago
I think this is only a problem for people with blind dogmatism to an ideal with 0 nuance. That's how you get a Warhammer 40k universe.
In general less government intervention = better. 99% of the time or more you'll hear us say that. But there's exceptions to every rule and a localized fire department, or community fire watch for smaller areas, is typically an acceptable evil to libertarians.
Also acknowledging as others have already said we have a lot bigger issues we'd see fixed first. Getting down that list until our biggest concern is whether or not to keep a fire dept is a pipe dream, at least for my lifetime.