The Agitator » Blog Archive » Privitize the Firefighters

Privitize the Firefighters

Thursday, November 14th, 2002

The esteemed John Blundell from IEA makes the case in today’s London Daily Telegraph. The site requires free registration, but the two minutes it takes are repaid with this op-ed alone.

I’d like to see someone make the case for privatizing police forces, too. I’ve tried to run the idea through my head, and while it makes sense on some levels, on others, I just can’t seem to make it work. But it seems to me that many of the problems we face with public policing — the “blue wall,” corruption, inadequate and misdirected training — might be remedied with for-profit forces.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 14th, 2002 at 11:45 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

24 Responses to “Privitize the Firefighters”

#1 | Joe Sims | November 14th, 2002 at 12:30 pm
Personally, I prefer the idea of volunteer fire departments. To paraphrase Vonnegut (a fellow transplanted Hoosier), volunteer firefighters are “the only examples of enthusiastic unselfishness to be seen in this land.” Here’s a fine paper on volunteer firefighters:

http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/97/dsacker/fire/firepaper.html

It would be unfortunate if a building and its inhabitants were to be consumed in an inferno, only because the victims weren’t able to pay for the services of a for-profit fire unit. I realize this is a bit extreme, but I thought that denial of service would never happen in medical facilities due to inability to pay, either.

Privatizing the police, on the other hand, might be an easier sell. Cities and states could start by placing advertizing on police cars, like city buses and NASCAR. Krispy Kreme and 7-11 would probably sponsor a few…

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#2 | Stephen S. | November 14th, 2002 at 12:42 pm
Take a look at the work of economist Bruce Benson (one my econ mentors at Florida State). His books “The Enterprise of Law,” and “To Serve and Protect,” discuss the efficiency of private police forces, the superiority of spontaneously ordered law (far different than judge-made common law), and how we’d be far better off with competing police departments and legal systems.

Also take a look at the new book, “The Voluntary City.” It’s an excellent read. Within are 15 essays, all of which provide excellent arguments for privatizing virtually every government functions, including police. In fact, many of the authors are Cato University regulars, such as the brilliant Stephen Davies.

As for privatizing fire services, it’s been done in Scottsdale, Arizona. And the response time has never been better. I don’t know how they handle cases such as poor homeowners’ homes catching fire. But insurance and risk-pooling would probably have something to do with it.

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