

Did the Free Market burn down the house? - bobds
http://blog.mises.org/14158/did-the-free-market-burn-down-the-house/

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ZeroGravitas
I was mostly agreeing until he compared fire services to lawn mowing
companies.

Fires are something you _insure_ against, everyone pays a small fee up front,
some percentage have a fire and the large cost is borne by the many small
payments from all the people who _didn't_ have a fire. It's not cost effective
to pay $75 after you know your house is on fire, that's simply not enough to
cover the service provided, and that's why you take out insurance.

In any other insurance business, if you don't pay, they don't provide the
cover. Is it really worse to have a house burn down than to have a child with
untreated cancer?

In certain cases people feel this is inhumane, so they legislate that everyone
pays e.g. Fire, Police and Health Services in most of the globe.

I found it strange that they felt the need to counter one misrepresentation of
the facts with another.

~~~
dnautics
I think he's saying you could do either. If you forgot to pay the $75, there's
no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to pay $1000 to get the on-demand
service, for example.

