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> Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised fire and ambulance services I’v

> Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised fire and ambulance services I’ve heard many US Libertarians say that they want the US Fire services completely privatized. We would stop paying taxes for this services and instead private services would spring up that we could chose to pay monthly for. The competition would drive down prices as there would be a free market of many such providers. This is not what Denmark is doing. Denmark has traditional fire departments paid by the government. It’s almost entirely a single company and that company is almost entirely owned by a non-profit organization.

zozbot234 6y ago
> We would stop paying taxes for this services and instead private services would spring up that we could chose to pay monthly for I don't think this would work very well, because I do want my neighbors to pay for fire-fighting services in case their house is set on fire. Moreover, to a proportionally lesser extent, I want their neighbors to pay for the same thing, and so on. There are a whole lot of cross-externalities that can't be dealt with easily via private contracting, so we need the government to step in and provide a sensible "default" that's not simply "no one gets any fire-fighting protection unless they pay for a private service".
- simonh 6y ago
  It does sound horribly risky. I suppose in theory you could mandate basic levels of insurance, a bit like mandatory car insurance, but you'd probably end up with a costly, patchy mess like the US health system.
  - burger_moon 6y ago
    How many people drive around without insurance right now though and even people who don't have driver's license. It just isn't practical to think people will do it, especially when times get tough. If I'm choosing which bill to pay, I'll take the water bill over the insurance bill
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    Mandatory car insurance is usually liability insurance, that is comparatively easy to regulate while leaving other things like pricing to the market. Liability for a car accident also sounds somewhat more manageable than liability for a fire on your house spreading to your neighbors' - I think you're right that requiring insurance for that would be overly messy.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Why? If you have fire service and you neighbors house starts on fire they go ask if your neighbor wants the fire out now at much greater cost. If not they watch it burn until it shows signs of spreading to your house at which point they put it out and sue for much more because they failed to contain their fire.
awesome_dude 6y ago
This is a new concept to me (governments paying for fire departments). Fire departments have always been paid for by insurance companies, a long time ago there were competing departments, owned by competing insurers. Problem was if your house had the wrong insurance plaque attached, the competing fire service would just stand and watch your home burn down. In order to remedy this, the insurance companies formed a collective fire department that we all pay for via a fire service levy that is part of our house insurance.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  > Fire departments have always been paid for by insurance companies, Where? Is this the majority normal situation globally?
_0ffh 6y ago
>Denmark has traditional fire departments paid by the government I think that putting it like this is a bit misleading. So, in about two thirds of Danish municipalities fire fighting as well as rescue services are outsourced to a private company which is commissioned by the municipal governments. But that is certainly not the classical state-run structure that I suppose most people would be thinking of when they read "traditional fire departments". (Yes, this is arguably traditional in Denmark by now, but I think it is actually more of an exception in the bigger picture of traditional fire fighting.) Where I come from, for example, professional fire fighting services actually are honest-to-god state-run entities. Our overall fire-fighting structures are actually extremely good value for the money. But this really is only possible because a significant part of the actual work is done by voluntary fire fighters, as we have managed to preserve that part of our culture, so far at least. And that is really traditional fire fighting (even in Denmark, if you disregard the last 100 years or so).

zozbot234 6y ago

> We would stop paying taxes for this services and instead private services would spring up that we could chose to pay monthly for I don't think this would work very well, because I do want my neighbors to pay for fire-fighting services in case their house is set on fire. Moreover, to a proportionally lesser extent, I want their neighbors to pay for the same thing, and so on. There are a whole lot of cross-externalities that can't be dealt with easily via private contracting, so we need the government to step in and provide a sensible "default" that's not simply "no one gets any fire-fighting protection unless they pay for a private service".

simonh 6y ago
It does sound horribly risky. I suppose in theory you could mandate basic levels of insurance, a bit like mandatory car insurance, but you'd probably end up with a costly, patchy mess like the US health system.
- burger_moon 6y ago
  How many people drive around without insurance right now though and even people who don't have driver's license. It just isn't practical to think people will do it, especially when times get tough. If I'm choosing which bill to pay, I'll take the water bill over the insurance bill
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Mandatory car insurance is usually liability insurance, that is comparatively easy to regulate while leaving other things like pricing to the market. Liability for a car accident also sounds somewhat more manageable than liability for a fire on your house spreading to your neighbors' - I think you're right that requiring insurance for that would be overly messy.
bluGill 6y ago
Why? If you have fire service and you neighbors house starts on fire they go ask if your neighbor wants the fire out now at much greater cost. If not they watch it burn until it shows signs of spreading to your house at which point they put it out and sue for much more because they failed to contain their fire.

awesome_dude 6y ago

This is a new concept to me (governments paying for fire departments). Fire departments have always been paid for by insurance companies, a long time ago there were competing departments, owned by competing insurers. Problem was if your house had the wrong insurance plaque attached, the competing fire service would just stand and watch your home burn down. In order to remedy this, the insurance companies formed a collective fire department that we all pay for via a fire service levy that is part of our house insurance.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
> Fire departments have always been paid for by insurance companies, Where? Is this the majority normal situation globally?

_0ffh 6y ago

>Denmark has traditional fire departments paid by the government I think that putting it like this is a bit misleading. So, in about two thirds of Danish municipalities fire fighting as well as rescue services are outsourced to a private company which is commissioned by the municipal governments. But that is certainly not the classical state-run structure that I suppose most people would be thinking of when they read "traditional fire departments". (Yes, this is arguably traditional in Denmark by now, but I think it is actually more of an exception in the bigger picture of traditional fire fighting.) Where I come from, for example, professional fire fighting services actually are honest-to-god state-run entities. Our overall fire-fighting structures are actually extremely good value for the money. But this really is only possible because a significant part of the actual work is done by voluntary fire fighters, as we have managed to preserve that part of our culture, so far at least. And that is really traditional fire fighting (even in Denmark, if you disregard the last 100 years or so).