A recent spectacular example of government failure – namely, a government fire company’s refusing to put out a nonpayer’s fire– has been transformed, through the magic of non sequitur, into a criticism of libertarianism. That last charge is too silly to comment on, but the case does raise some interesting libertarian issues. I venture some tentative answers:
1. Should a fire company be legally required to put out the fires of nonpayers?
In a free market, the answer is obviously no. In an oligopolistic market where the company is the beneficiary of artificial restrictions on competition – or, as in the recent case, is an actual government monopoly – the case for yes grows a lot stronger.
2. Would a fire company have an (unenforceable) moral obligation to put out a nonpayer’s fire in a case like this recent one?
I lean toward saying yes – especially once they’d arrived, and especially given that there were pets in the house. Obviously still more so if there’d been children in the house. We have positive obligations to our neighbours as well as negative ones, even if the positive ones aren’t legitimately enforceable (other than through shaming).
3. Wouldn’t it be economically unfeasible to fight fires of nonpayers, inasmuch as letting the house burn down would serve as a warning to other nonpayers?
Seeing a nonpayer forced to pay full price for having their house saved seems like sufficient incentive.
4. Would this recent event be likely to happen in a competitive market?
I think not. Company A says “sorry, we won’t put out your fire, even though you’re now offering to pay the full amount.” What’s your natural response if you’re Company B? (Note that the existence of private fire companies does not by itself guarantee a competitive market; I suspect most private fire companies historically operated in an oligopolistic context.)
5. What if a nonpayer can’t afford to pay full price? Is there any economic incentive to save her house then?
Sure. Letting nonpayers’ houses burn is the kind of bad publicity a rival would benefit from exploiting.
6. What if a nonpayer can afford to pay full price but is out of town and can’t consent to it, so the fire company saves her house anyway. Can they force her to pay?
I’d say no. But reputation effects apply to customers too.
I lived for several years in an area served by a subscription fire service. Their practice was to put out fires of non-subscribers and bill them the full price of the operation (usually several hundred dollars, though that was years ago).
From some of the coverage I’ve seen, city officials say that was their original practice, but they found that few people voluntarily paid and it was difficult under Tennessee law to collect, so that’s why they moved to simply not putting out the fires of non-subscribers.
“reputation effects apply to customers too”
Can anyone point to any detailed work on the role of reputation vs. privacy concerns for customers in Libertopia? In many discussions I’ve had with minarchists and similar, often I end up resorting to, “yes, someone could do that (insert terrible or shocking action), but what would happen to their reputation after doing so?” So I find a lot of my response comes down to soft power responses rather than, “clearly, they’d be arrested, jailed, and/or fined for doing so.” And that response would require a fairly sophisticated market for reputation and information. But many today are very concerned how much information is available about them already. What’s the balancing mechanism that lets people establish and maintain a good reputation while not being an open book to the world at the same time?
“We have positive obligations to our neighbours as well as negative ones, even if the positive ones aren’t legitimately enforceable (other than through shaming).”
What is the source of such positive obligations, and why aren’t they enforceable?
There are people suffering and in danger all over the world; to which of them do you have a positive obligation to help? All of them? The ones within 500 feet?
Spooner’s view seems more correct to me, that we have no positive obligations to others beyond those we agree to. To fail to help a neighbor might be a vice for a given individual – meaning it might in some way hurt the party who declined to help – and then again it might not be a vice for the given individual.
And as a thin libertarian I would say that vice is not a proper concern of libertarianism. Libertarianism aside, I rarely find the vices of others to be much of a problem.
“Spooner’s view seems more correct to me, that we have no positive obligations to others beyond those we agree to. To fail to help a neighbor might be a vice for a given individual – meaning it might in some way hurt the party who declined to help – and then again it might not be a vice for the given individual.
“And as a thin libertarian I would say that vice is not a proper concern of libertarianism. Libertarianism aside, I rarely find the vices of others to be much of a problem.”
If a neighbor watched your child drown, while fully able to help, but too lazy, or disinterested, etc., to do anything, even to alert anyone else, you might have quite a problem with him/her after that. I’d prefer not to live next to people with no felt obligation to assist. Perhaps it would make no difference to you, but I think upon reflection it probably should.
JTK: Most of the people I’ve discussed this with have a strong moral intuition that the fire department should have helped because “they were there”, “the house was within traveling distance”, etc. I don’t think this would have gotten nearly as much publicity if the firefighters hadn’t shown up at all. What makes it stark for many progressive types is that the firefighters showed up, but only to put out the fire for the paying subscriber.
As Tyler Cowen pointed out, this really is a fine example of the seen vs the unseen. The refusal of service is what is seen, the fact that it encourages other people to pay the $75 is what is unseen. Or how nobody berates doctors because cancer patients plead on their doorsteps for treatment and get turned away; or how nobody goes on MSNBC to denounce doctors who take golf excursions because someone died without needed surgery while doing so.
Their source is exactly the same as the one for negative* obligations. They aren’t enforceable because (violent) enforcement is for fending off invasions of person and property, not for making people follow their obligations per se.
Other things equal, all of them. For practical purposes, those you encounter closest to going about your own life and business, or those whose worlds you choose to enter for whatever reason. Imperfect duties are just that.
Well, lots of people don’t have a problem with taxing you or pissing on your lawn or whatever. Some people wouldn’t have a problem with sending you to prison. A few people (e.g. serial killers) wouldn’t have a problem with torturing you to death. So what?
*The only difference between “negative” and “positive” obligations is purely semantic. Any claim can be phrased negatively or positively.
I take it from this that you aren’t familiar with Roderick’s well-documented position on libertarian ethics, wherein there are plenty of things we might be morally obligated to do when we are nevertheless not violating rights and therefore not subject to force being used to make us fulfill those obligations. They are simply the right things to do.
And from this I take it that you aren’t familiar with Roderick’s well-documented position on small contributions to evil and the concept of “imperfect duties.”
And wouldn’t you know it? Roderick wrote about that too.
“wherein there are plenty of things we might be morally obligated to do when we are nevertheless not violating rights and therefore not subject to force being used to make us fulfill those obligations. They are simply the right things to do.”
I’ll go through most of those links in time, but in the meantime is there a simple explanation you can offer for the basis of an unchosen positive obligation to others? I can see how one is obliged to oneself to do “the right things”, but I don’t see at all how that entails any obligation to others if failure to do so does not violate their rights.
And if we really do have positive obligations to others I don’t see why force ought not be used to enforce those obligations, even if one has not violated rights. Would it violate rights to compel a man to do what he is morally obliged to do? Or does he have a moral right to violate his moral obligations to others?
The fire department did what it was required to do: safeguard the property of subscribers.
In low-income rural areas, there might be only one viable provider for any service – public or private – and that service might require the revenues for “subscription” services, etc. in order to pay its own bills. There’s no reason to believe one who hasn’t paid the subscription fee will follow through on paying the full cost of putting out the fire.
There might be valid criticism of the haphazard billing process if there are no reminder notices or warning that the fire subscription service has been canceled. But that again underscores the limited resources of governments in low-income rural areas.
Regardless of how rigged and oligopolistic some systems may be, a lot of things still boil down to personal responsibility.
“There’s no reason to believe one who hasn’t paid the subscription fee will follow through on paying the full cost of putting out the fire.”
Would it be possible to use a form of lien on the saved property that would require payment for the service that retained it be taken out of any proceeds of a sale? That wouldn’t provide immediate payment but might provide a middle way.
As Kevin Carson pointed out, the consequences for not paying your taxes in the real world statist model aren’t exactly pleasant.
Am I the only one who finds red background and black text hard to read?
People also talk about how they can’t collect funding from the individuals after the fire. This all seems to be a fault of government court system.
I also find some other things interesting. For one the guys said in an interview with Kieth Olberman, that the fire dept waived the fee for when this happened at his sons house, and they put out the fire. So it seems he expected them to put out the fire for free, a real scum bag move if I’m right. This is why I don’t believe the guy just forgot. Also the guy wasn’t part of the city from the Fire Department who they provide freely, the City COULDN’T fund the fire department to freely put out fires in the county, because those people didn’t pay taxes.
It’s sad the guy had his house burnt down, and that his children have to pay that cost, but its even sadder how dumb and misplaced the commentary is. Yours is spot on as a lot of libertarians are too. But i don’t know if there are obligations to put out the house. It’s clearly not vague, I mean if it cost 1 million dollars to put out that house, then now, but at some point yes, b/c at some point society would be better off to put out the fire, and reduce economic harm, beyond that I don’t know the obligation, maybe the positive right to housing, but he could probably still buy a place to live even without the house. I am curious on what you believe we are obligated to help out others for.
Nathan,
“If a neighbor watched your child drown, while fully able to help, but too lazy, or disinterested, etc., to do anything, even to alert anyone else, you might have quite a problem with him/her after that. I’d prefer not to live next to people with no felt obligation to assist. Perhaps it would make no difference to you, but I think upon reflection it probably should.”
So if I want something very much, is that the source of a positive moral obligation for someone else?
I might prefer better neighbors than the one you describe but it’s not hard to find worse. There would be no news here if the community had taken the normal course and simply forced the owner of the home in question to pay before there was any fire. Those would be worse neighbors.
“So if I want something very much, is that the source of a positive moral obligation for someone else?”
No, but it shouldn’t be surprising that if there is a positive moral obligation that at least someone also really wants it.
“I might prefer better neighbors than the one you describe but it’s not hard to find worse. There would be no news here if the community had taken the normal course and simply forced the owner of the home in question to pay before there was any fire. Those would be worse neighbors.”
On a continuum of good to bad neighbors, I agree there are worse examples. My point was not “this is the worst possible kind of neighbor I can imagine,” though.
You said that there were no positive moral obligations, so I was giving an example where I thought it would be strange to say so. Perhaps for you, letting someone die in front of you is not a moral question. We may be using the term very differently. I’m not sure.
Great post…The reality no one mentions instead of speculating about is that Libertarian-oriented services such as fire-prevention consulting have reduced fire incidents 90%; while volunteer or e.g. private fire departments in Arizona, cover everyone and do well on fundraisers or concierge service/insurance or post-incident billing fees respectively.
Based on a little research on GOOGLE and a few calls, what this is, is a government monopoly that created these policies against firefighter resistance. It was in turn trying to cover for a county monopoly that had collected taxes for a fire-department and then not provided one. Plus remember government services, as many forget, aren’t liable to actually provide the service, so the real question is “Compared to what?”
This is not an example of Libertarianism but coerced monopolies messing with the taxpayer.
For information on Libertarian work worldwide instead of the caricatures, see http://www.Libertarian-International.org We’ve gotten some suggestions from outraged Libertarian firefighters and public safety personnel, so stay tuned for an upcoming article at the site.
I would say that in a freed market the fire suppression companies would get the bulk of their funding from insurance companies; the ones who stand to be paying out money if the house burns down. I could see them being funded by insurance coops with supplementary funding from individual, non-insured homeowners. Services other than actual fire suppression could be sources of income as well.
In this particular case, I agree with Roderick on his point #2. Where this fire company put itself in a bit of moral jeopardy is when they actually responded to the call, but did nothing about it. In fact, almost every one of these points is something I had rumbling around in my own head about the affair.
Under all the philosophy, we are still human. “One hand washes the other” is an old folk saying. We can not survive if we do not extend help to each other. People in first world nations have forgotten this. People in third world nations (a few I can confirm personally) know this and live it. It is a beautiful thing to see operate.
We have obligations to our fellow man because without him we will not survive. Sooner or later someone will do something to help you. Pass it along by repaying that to the next person you see that needs help.
Nathan,
“If a neighbor watched your child drown…”
I can agree that I probably wouldn’t want this kind of neighbor. And I would certainly hope that one’s moral intuitions (at the least) would lead them to create such obligations for themselves. The world would certainly be a better place for it.
But I’ve always been at least mildly concerned with the conjecture of thick libertarians (particularly left-leaning ones…whom I admire btw) when it comes to bundling these kinds of values within their political philosophy. Of course both you and Roderick aren’t denoting any kind of enforcable obligations per se…but I see left-libertarians (in conversation) drifting that way because of Peter-Singer-type drowning child arguments. And I’ve seen the arguments leveraged against the concept of property itself – which makes me a little uncomfortable.
What strikes me most about the drowning child argument, however, is exactly what JTK rebutted (and what I bring up whenever this argument is brought up). There are people literally dying of hunger and/or curable diseases in third world countries the world over…right now. The drowning child right in front of us excites our moral intuitions. But, in reality, we are faced with this dilemma constantly – as we could easily spend with more discretion, and personally divert some of our income (or even extra time) to those people to save them. Does this make us bad people…better or worse than the man ignoring a drowning child?
The truth is, I’m not really sure it’s that different (especially given our capability today to help other people around the world directly). Even the most staunch progressive who takes the drowning argument to the extremes of government enforced redistribution of resources still go out and buy their hundred dollar sneakers and their iPads instead of saving the proverbial drowning children on the other side of the world – as you might think their beliefs would require of them. Maybe this makes them bad people, but I’m hesitant to say so.
Or try another thought experiment. Let’s take the drowning child analogy in a different direction. Let’s say this is a large lake. But instead of a single drowning child in this lake (for which a capable person can save with very little effort), it is instead a dried up lake…filled with 1,000,000 starving infants. You have no link to the civilized world. By the time you could reach anyone on the outside, they will all have perished.
What are the margins of your moral obligation here? Is there a fixed number or percentage you must “save” before you can claim to have fulfilled such an obligation? Is there any point where you could be at rest or leisure before such an obligation was filled – at what point would that constitute neglect in regards to your obligation. Or, if your feeling is that you should simply do as much as you can as long as you can to save the most people, why doesn’t that translate into the way you behave in real life right now? In the time it took to write this post, I’m sure I could have done something productive enough to feed a starving infant on the other side of the world today? Why is the man ignoring the drowning child any worse than me?
By the way, this is an open question to anyone (not just Nathan). I agree with thick-libertarians and left-libertarians (in general) quite a bit. Roderick is by far one of my favorite libertarian commentators. And I don’t dismiss the general moral intuitions espoused here per se – I hold many of them myself. But I’m left a little confused by people (in general) ignoring the similarities between two situations which seem – to me – to only be different in terms of proximity.
“But I’ve always been at least mildly concerned with the conjecture of thick libertarians (particularly left-leaning ones…whom I admire btw) when it comes to bundling these kinds of values within their political philosophy. Of course both you and Roderick aren’t denoting any kind of enforcable obligations per se…but I see left-libertarians (in conversation) drifting that way because of Peter-Singer-type drowning child arguments. And I’ve seen the arguments leveraged against the concept of property itself – which makes me a little uncomfortable.”
I agree with you, and almost all you said is something I might say myself, depending how the conversation turned. I have very similar concerns about some versions of left-libertarianism, and though I’m open to be convinced, I think that there is a certain danger to making moral pronouncements, even if they’re only enforced via shaming and other soft power. A misguided moral sentiment can be very dangerous even if direct violence is not used to enforce it.
“What strikes me most about the drowning child argument, however, is exactly what JTK rebutted (and what I bring up whenever this argument is brought up). There are people literally dying of hunger and/or curable diseases in third world countries the world over…right now. The drowning child right in front of us excites our moral intuitions. But, in reality, we are faced with this dilemma constantly – as we could easily spend with more discretion, and personally divert some of our income (or even extra time) to those people to save them. Does this make us bad people…better or worse than the man ignoring a drowning child?”
That’s a valid point, but I don’t think it requires an extreme response in either direction (either we save the drowning child and then go directly to work in a missionary hospital overseas, or we ignore the child and continue with our lives as usual). In living a fulfilling life, one that includes not just our own sense of well-being but recognizing our connection to others as an intrinsic part of that well-being, we have to make decisions about how to employ various means to that end. Those decisions are almost never perfect because we lack the knowledge to make the best decision possible, but at times we do have very direct and incontrovertible knowledge of what the best thing to do is. In the case of a drowning child, excusing those circumstances where we’re putting ourselves in some critical danger (like say, we don’t know how to swim, or we’re physically handicapped, etc.), there’s a very direct connection between means and ends and what will make the most difference.
In the case of starving children seen on television, the connection is less clear, even though the children’s situation is just as dire. Unfortunately, it’s not as clear cut that making a donation will have the same effect. In some cases it will, and you may have to decide what makes the most sense.. giving to help with world hunger, or donating to cure cancer, or volunteering at a soup kitchen. I can’t give any detailed answer to how to make that decision. But it’s mainly one of weighing the trade-offs between many opportunities to help. In the case of the drowning child, there’s no genuine trade-off consideration to make, and in fact, I’d be worried about anyone who really needed to take time to make such a calculation when faced with a crisis in front of their eyes.
“What are the margins of your moral obligation here? Is there a fixed number or percentage you must “save” before you can claim to have fulfilled such an obligation? Is there any point where you could be at rest or leisure before such an obligation was filled – at what point would that constitute neglect in regards to your obligation. Or, if your feeling is that you should simply do as much as you can as long as you can to save the most people, why doesn’t that translate into the way you behave in real life right now? In the time it took to write this post, I’m sure I could have done something productive enough to feed a starving infant on the other side of the world today? Why is the man ignoring the drowning child any worse than me?”
I think that’s a very difficult question to give a complete answer to in a short space like this, but I think that part of the answer is realizing that living your life as you do, such as going to school or going to work, and even leisure time where you are doing purely self-centered activities, is not disconnected from the rest of humanity. If you live your life in such a way that you have no sense of self, that you are entirely other-centered, you are not fulfilling a moral obligation to yourself, either. If you wish for others to enjoy life, it seems hypocritical (though in a strangely unselfish way) to condemn yourself for any enjoyment that you experience. It seems to me a matter of finding the right balance.
And just to justify the time taken to write this blog post… 🙂
Think of what you’re doing here in terms of your life and your goals as a way of communicating values, clarifying your own understanding (and hopefully those who read this), and being better able to then apply that understanding when talking to others about why they should be concerned about values and the consequences for society of rejecting violence as a first resort, and so on. If your contribution to making a more free society is enhanced by conversations like this, it could potentially save quite a lot of lives and make the lives of those already here better than they would be otherwise.
Nathan,
Thanks for the well-worded response. I rarely have the opportunity to say this in an online venue, but I agree with virtually everything you’ve said here. I think might largely be in the same boat. We seem to share many of the same concerns.
On the one hand, from my personal moral perspective, I do see the good (and even self-fulfillment) in helping those around me. And, surely, I’m not saying we shouldn’t urge people to help those around them, if nothing else for their own sense of worth. I suppose where things start breaking down for me – in a socio-political sense – is when we start slinging moral condemnation and judgment upon others for failing to meet positive moral obligations we might place on ourselves.
I think that’s why the drowning child example is so powerful. It allows us to easily judge a man by neglecting to do something that damn near all of us would do. I tend to agree that there must be a balance personally…you can’t be expected to live every second of your life for others. But this example is perfect in that we know nothing about this man at all.
I don’t know this man’s life. I certainly don’t know his own sense of morality or virtue. And I don’t even know his history. Maybe this is an old man who literally gave all of his labor in his life freely to help the poor – 17 hours a day for 50 years. Or maybe he just spent 3 days without sleep curing patients of terminal illnesses on his own dime. Has he done his part?
It would be more than most of us would expect, I would think. Yet this particular instance (story) of a drowning child still tends to lead us to the same moral conclusion. It really doesn’t leave room for any kind of “balance” as a variable (intuitively) in his life. He still ends up looking like a horrible person.
So, I think the example of the million starving children (or even just poverty stricken people now in the actual world…whether near or far) really helps relay to even the most radical people that there is some other limiting factor or value here. But for those people who already see that personal liberty and self-ownership is a constraining value, where then does the moral condemnation start? That’s where my personal frustration and hesitation comes into play.
Even if you’re a strict moral utilitarian, it just brings up too many weird issues that conflate concepts of power, equality, and even the quantification of moral actions in some ways. Take three instances of the drowning child scenario for instance; ones in which we have more knowledge about the people involved. In one scenario a man becomes fabulously rich through the “free market” and donates 50 billion dollars to cure cancer (which later proves successful). He ignores the child. Another man lives in poverty himself but spends what marginally productive labor he can provide to help other poor people find food and shelter. Another man lives a particularly middle-class lifestyle, in an average home with average luxuries afforded to him. He’s not particularly charitable, but is known to drop a few dollars in a salvation army collection box every once in a while. He saves the drowning child. Which is the most moral man here? Which is the least? Who deserves our condemnation first?
This is exactly why I feel a very real “weirdness” about moralizing with regards to positive moral obligations. It’s not so much that I don’t agree with certain particular moral sentiments. But rather that arguments about the moral and immoral actions of people (beyond the direct causal harming of others) tends to get very cloudy for me when you take it beyond the crayon and paper examples we’re afforded in thought experiments like ones about ambiguous men and drowning children.
“On the one hand, from my personal moral perspective, I do see the good (and even self-fulfillment) in helping those around me. And, surely, I’m not saying we shouldn’t urge people to help those around them, if nothing else for their own sense of worth. I suppose where things start breaking down for me – in a socio-political sense – is when we start slinging moral condemnation and judgment upon others for failing to meet positive moral obligations we might place on ourselveses”
I still fail to see how anything offered in this thread has suggested anything like a basis for the positve moral obligations to others that Long has posited. To say we place them on ourselves seems to say we need not do so.
Spooner’s conception of vice can be seen to entail positve obligations, but to oneself rather than to others.
What is the positve moral obligation of an American to an arbitrary starving child in Asia? I find it pretty simple to
define the negative obligation.
I think you and Nathan are conflating sympathy with moral judgement. I have sympathy but it does not dictate my moral judgement. I would not judge an act to be evil simply because it strongly offended my sympathies.
We let children die every day. As you note, we pass time on the Internet that could be used to save them. The fact that a man might not move to save a child in the next state or town or block or house or even finally in the same room would not morally offend me, even if my child were at stake. My sympathies become more intense with physical and personal proximity, but these are my biases and do not define morality.
JTK –
I think you might have misunderstood my posts. I’m not trying to conflate personal sympathies with morality; in fact that’s what I’m arguing against. I also struggle to see the argument for a positive moral obligation to others. My example(s) – of the starving children – were expressed as evidence that even the people who posit that such obligations exist don’t seem consistent in their views (although I agree with your view that our “sympathies” become more intense with physical and personal proximity). This is why I (like you) do not espouse moral condemnation upon those who do not save the child – we all fail to save them, constantly and knowingly.
I managed to leave something out; in my three examples, the middle-class man (second example) opts to save the drowning child.
Recently I read mention of a paper arguing that (contra Peter singer) the proximity of those in need *is* morally relevant, but unfortunately I can’t remember enough details to find it with Google.
If anyone knows of good arguments for this thesis I’d appreciate being directed to them.
Just one simple point I had when I heard this story. If the fire department was a free market actor, wouldn’t they have every incentive to try and make money from the situation?
They might have him sign a contract for a large payment. The payment might even be considered extortionate, but it would be less than the price of rebuilding the home. Maybe $5,000.
I simply see no incentive for a free market firm whatsoever to just sit there and watch it burn.
I wanted to give a meatier response than is appropriate to comments, so here’s a full post by way of (friendly) retort.
“Spooner’s view seems more correct to me, that we have no positive obligations to others beyond those we agree to. To fail to help a neighbor might be a vice for a given individual – meaning it might in some way hurt the party who declined to help – and then again it might not be a vice for the given individual.”
Well, Mr. Kennedy, it would seem that Spooner’s actual view is closer to Long’s that the way you wish to interpret him
From Spooner’s Natural Law
“Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenceless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will, perform them. But of his legal duty – that is, of his duty to live honestly towards his fellow men – his fellow men not only may judge, but, for their own protection, must judge. And, if need be, they may rightfully compel him to perform it. They may do this, acting singly, or in concert. They may do it on the instant, as the necessity arises, or deliberately and systematically, if they prefer to do so, and the exigency will admit of it.”
These moral obligation come from the same source as those obligation which are moral and legal (human nature), but we only ought for enforce those moral obligations that are also legal because they are the only ones necessarily and undoubtedly disruptive of peace between man and man.
Ya got me with the Spooner quote, I think I didn’t remember this statement because Spooner simply asserts it
without foundation. I still don’t see the basis.
The basis is our nature as social animals.
Which obliges us to put out which fires?
“These moral obligation come from the same source as those obligation which are moral and legal (human nature), but we only ought for enforce those moral obligations that are also legal because they are the only ones necessarily and undoubtedly disruptive of peace between man and man.”
I think most people, and perhaps some in this thread (though not I), would say that it is disruptive of the peace to stand idly by while a child needlessly suffers and dies. Most people would endorse punishment for such an act and we have some laws to that effect for that reason. If he is morally obliged to others to save such a child, are most people disturbers of the peace for forcefully requiring him to meet that moral moral obligation?
I might be mistaken, but I believe in this case it was the neighbor who started the fire by burning old corn husks, and thus should be the one responsible for putting it out the fire and any payment for doing so. A controlled burn is supposed to be just that, with every possible effort be made to keep it controlled.
I recently found a great article examining the myths made about the volunteer fire brigades that took place before the government became involved. I linked to it in my video on the topic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZql10U1amE
The county did a report on the fire situatuion two years ago. Prioer to that, the city fire services had simply been billing non-subscribers $500 for a call to their homes. But only about half paid and the report found that the city’s couldn’t collect on the rest. That is, apparently, when the cities stopped answering calls from non-subscribers entirely. Would these people be any more apt to pay a private firm? If not, would a private firm enact a policy of not answering calls to non-subscribers.
Second, the man whose house burned caused the fire by burning leaves and rubbish. There was a burn ban in effect there because of the dry weather, so that was apparently illegal, though I guess in a libertarian world there would be no burn bans.