Solidarity in flames

Libertarian Matt Welch doesn't get it. He really doesn't get it.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times opinion section [1], where he is an editor, he excoriates me [2], Chris Hayes [3], and Naomi Klein [4], among others, for making the same point: that insurer AIG's "concierge-level" fire protection for its clients represents something dangerous and foul.

Welch describes the service thus: "For a lousy $995, you can buy a portable gizmo that sprays the very same fire-retardant goo that's used by the U.S. Forest Service and other front-line firefighters. It's called Phos-Chek, it's made right here in Ontario, and if you encircle your property with the stuff any rampaging brush fire will be stopped dead in its tracks."

In so doing, he reveals how far down conservative ideology has fallen in grasping the most basic facts of collective security. In case Welch hasn't noticed, fires spread. Laying down fire-proof rings around islands of individual private properties does not stop fires from spreading; they'll just go around the island. Now, if every house was provided with Phos-Check, the fires would not be able to spread. Everyone (and not just those with an extra $995 lying around, which is not "paltry" to someone living paycheck to paycheck) benefits. There would be no wildfire.

Firefighting is a public good. Privatize it—provide a higher level of fire protection for those who can afford it, and a lower level for those who cannot—and you do exactly what me, Hayes, and Klein complain about: you insulate certain individuals from the consequences of crises that wrack everyone else—and don't make the crisis, as a whole, any better. In fact, you may make it worse—for if you know your house is protected, why should be willing to pay reasonable taxes to protect everyone else's? Or, say, to provide (horrors! socialism!) Phos-Check for everyone in areas vulnerable to wildfires, and save Southern California from having to temporarily house one million people?

Why do I have to explain this?