The Rich Get Richer, The Poor Catch Fire
Katherine Mangu-Ward | October 29, 2007, 4:19pm
In California, private firefighters were out fighting blazes and spraying fire retardant around their ultra-insured clients' million-dollar homes:
It's available only to customers of AIG Private Client Group, which serves affluent individuals and their families. The average customer spends $19,000 a year on the insurance, which may also cover yachts, art collections and ransom demands.
At those rates, they'd better send a darned truck out to my house to fight my personal fire. But I don't mind if they catch my neighbor's fire while they're there.
While protecting the AIG client's home there Monday night, [Firefighter Sam] Crays was able to stop a blaze next door as well. "We love putting out fires,'' Crays said.
The article hints that this is a regression to the bad old days of private fire companies, a theme sounded elsewhere as well:
AIG's Wildfire Protection Unit is in some ways a throwback to the early days of firefighting.
Until 1865, when the Metropolitan Fire Bridge Act was passed in the U.K., insurance companies had their own firefighters and were responsible for protecting their customers' homes and other buildings. That was the case in other countries as well, including the U.S. Customers were given medallions to place on their homes, and firefighters would look for their insurance company's "firemark'' before extinguishing a blaze.
Private fire companies, of course, were the only fire fighters available at the time. Now we're talking about service above and beyond basic fire coverage enjoyed by everyone in the Golden State. And if wildfires continue to be a major issue in California, the technologies used by the rich are bound to trickle down and put out the fires of the less well-to-do eventually.
Reihan Salam covers the story, and says he prefers the idea of "leveling up" and finds the notion of a ceiling on fire protection for the wealthy unsavory:
This represents a clash of two egalitarianisms, and it is a conflict that arises in many social democracies. If a wealthy person wants to pursue exotic medical treatments on her own dime, does she have a right to do so? Or should she be legally prevented from doing so on grounds of offense against equality?
reason on fire here.
Mr. Nice Guy | October 30, 2007, 11:48am | #
"Is Mr. Nice Guy really suggesting that we should base our economic system on the emotional responses of children?"
Uhh, no, I'm using a story to make the point that this idea of fairness is quite natural to human beings. In fact, Ron Bailey has detailed psych experiments in which people will actually leave themselves worse off in order to level playing fields.
Tiktax-I'm not trying to ad hominen you but make a point about the economy, capitalism, and libertarians wildly optimistic views of both. I'm sure you are a fine, hard working and smart person. I'm also sure you (or me) will never make the amount of money that Moore made last year alone (many, many millions) and that your kids will have less than his. It's very safe to make these predictions in our economy, and that is kind of my point...BTW-if you need me to name some societies that are doing just fine protecting property rights while redistributing to increase opportunity, then how about Sweden, or Norway, or the U.S. for that matter.
"I think MNG is the 5-year-old in his story, because his argument seems to be "WAAUGGHH!!! Somebdy has better stuff than me!!!""
Epistarch is always a goofball. Your argument is better than "WAAAH, I want MY stuff." Or it's worse, that you DESERVE yours somehow.
Some Jed Clampett shoots at a racoon and strikes oil and becomes filthy rich while some person is born disabled and while working as hard and smart as possible is unable to afford basic goods and services that entail a decent life (sorry fellas but charity ain't gonna save your day here, the public was fully aware of things like charity in the Great Depression and easily decided it was not enough to serve such people). Does either deserve it? It certainly is not fair, and we can address it.
Before you start to cry and wail that life ain't fair and that somehow means we should not have collective (or individual) action to make it more fair, remember that things like contract and tort enforcement, all done by governments in Libertopia, are usually issues of "fairness."
Mr. Nice Guy | October 30, 2007, 7:22pm | #
Wrong, all wrong.
1."It's not because the "right" kind of socialism or communism or any other collectivism was pursued - it's because human beings are not, by nature, selfless or egalitarian or more concerned with others' interests than their own." I'm not aware of any biologists or psychologists who think we are totally selfless OR selfish. In fact, altruism is a fact in many species. Besides having what is "natural" determine what is normative is called the "naturalistic fallacy" in ethics. Look it up.
2. "I don't deserve the things I worked for?" I imagine some of them you deserve, some of them you probably certainly don't. I imagine a great deal of it you did not work for (people inherit all kinds of advantages from their parents, from the society they live in [did you go to private schools on private roads protected by private police?]). And of course many people did not "work" for what they have (they inherited money, or they lucked out and were born on land with oil, etc). Either way, whether you "worked" for it or not does not make distributions morally correct. If you "worked" for all the antibiotics in the world and kids needed it to live but could not afford it, it would indeed be not just morally permissible for me to take it from you, but morally required.
3. "It has nothing to do with you, so you need to get over it." Wow, I meant my story as a caricature of a hyper-libertarian, but it goes to show you can't satirize some movements, they will outdo any lunacy you concoct with actual belief!
4. "Part of growing up (regardless of ones political orientation) is getting over envy." Yes, but not getting over fairness. They ain't the same.
5. "MNG, do you believe in a zero-sum economy?" Not necessarily. Much inequality is the result of creating value where once it was not, and much is made at the expense of other folks (what would you call rent-seeking for example?). Either way though, if the result is somebody having vastly more opportunities in life than many other folks, especially on certain basic things like education, health care, police/fire protection, etc., then that is still unfair. It's immoral for one human to have that much advantage and more influence in the world than another human being on the grounds that 1. he's "more capable" or 2. he got more people voluntarily to "give" it to him, just as it would be wrong if he had these advantages because he is stronger and just took them...Most here would obviously object that in the first two examples human autonomy is respected, and I respect that, but now your just injecting a value criteria and I can match it with equality or human well being. I think the latter can trump the former at times.
2.
