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Police, fire etc. are all instances of "insurance". The only difference is that some insurance is voluntary and some is forced upon you and you have to pay. The

Police, fire etc. are all instances of "insurance". The only difference is that some insurance is voluntary and some is forced upon you and you have to pay. The real question is: what is the moral basis for violently making people pay for certain services and pay voluntarily for others. Communists are at least consistent: everyone should be forced to pay for all services and all of them are provided by benevolent all-powerful Bureaucracy. Why should we have x% of communism and not 100% or 0%?

sillysaurus3 12y ago
It seems like the moral basis for forcing payment of police and fire services via taxes is to prevent thugs and fire from being disastrous. It wouldn't work to let a housefire burn just because the owner couldn't afford a fireman, because the fire could spread to the whole neighborhood. Similarly, if police required payment on demand, then thugs would prey off those who can't afford this protection.
- glenra 12y ago
  You don't actually need to force payment for fire. Fire protection is provided by private voluntary for-profit companies in many areas and it's a valuable enough service that when you borrow money for a mortgage the insurance company generally requires you to have fire insurance and the fire insurance policy in turn requires a fire service subscription, so the free market has created a system where most people just by default are subscribers and the subscription payment is taken out of their mortgage payment with no government force involved at any stage. Then if there's a fire and you're somehow NOT a subscriber you can still call and have them to put out the fire anyway so long as you're willing to reimburse the full (retail) cost of doing so (which is quite expensive!) or your neighbors can call to have them come and stand by to make sure the fire doesn't escape your property to protect the rest of the neighborhood. Police protection is a similar thing - best paid for by subscription in advance rather than on a case-by-case basis.

sillysaurus3 12y ago

It seems like the moral basis for forcing payment of police and fire services via taxes is to prevent thugs and fire from being disastrous. It wouldn't work to let a housefire burn just because the owner couldn't afford a fireman, because the fire could spread to the whole neighborhood. Similarly, if police required payment on demand, then thugs would prey off those who can't afford this protection.

glenra 12y ago
You don't actually need to force payment for fire. Fire protection is provided by private voluntary for-profit companies in many areas and it's a valuable enough service that when you borrow money for a mortgage the insurance company generally requires you to have fire insurance and the fire insurance policy in turn requires a fire service subscription, so the free market has created a system where most people just by default are subscribers and the subscription payment is taken out of their mortgage payment with no government force involved at any stage. Then if there's a fire and you're somehow NOT a subscriber you can still call and have them to put out the fire anyway so long as you're willing to reimburse the full (retail) cost of doing so (which is quite expensive!) or your neighbors can call to have them come and stand by to make sure the fire doesn't escape your property to protect the rest of the neighborhood. Police protection is a similar thing - best paid for by subscription in advance rather than on a case-by-case basis.