In the first century BCE, the first Roman triumvirate was a cobbled together coalition of three men who didn’t much actually care for each other.  We all know the ultimate winner of the conflict that grew out of the relationship, as Julius Ceaser was able to best his foes.  And Pompey Magnus, was a general whose reputation made it into the history books.  But for our purposes, the most relevant of the three was a man who is still ranked amongst the world’s richest men of all-time, Marcus Licinius Crassus.  

How did Crassus attain all that wealth? Well, as you would expect, he was wildly corrupt, using his power and influence to attain wealth.  But there was one particular source for Crassus that was a little, umm, evil.  From Wikipedia:

Most notorious was his acquisition of burning houses: when Crassus received word that a house was on fire, he would arrive and purchase the doomed property along with surrounding buildings for a modest sum, and then employ his army of 500 clients  to put the fire out before much damage had been done. Crassus’ clients employed the Roman method of firefighting-destroying the burning building to curtail the spread of the flames.

Outrageous, right? Well, not exactly.  As you can see from the Countdown clip up top, it’s happening in America:

Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground last week because the homeowner hadn’t paid a $75 fee.  Gene Cranick of Obion County and his family lost all of their possessions in the fire, along with  three dogs and a cat.

“They could have been saved if they had put water on it, but they didn’t do it,” Cranick told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

The fire started when the Cranicks’ grandson was burning trash near the family home. As it grew out of control, the Cranicks called 911, but the fire department from the nearby city of South Fulton would not respond.

“We wasn’t on their list,” he said the operators told him. (MSNBC)

Mr. Cranick even offered to pay whatever was necessary for the firefighters’ help. But no dice, it wasn’t until a neighboring house caught on fire that the department began to fight the fire.

Of course, this is the point of government services.  They are best done by spreading the risk across all of us.  Having fire departments is an expense that for years, we have all been willing to pay through our taxes, yet now we see that these services are coming in the crosshairs for Norquistian “drown the government” calls.  The irony is that the right-wing calls of property as sacrosanct comes into conflict with their anti-government tendencies.

We all lose when government is dysfunctional.  And to some extent, the Tennesee community made its bed by consistently electing politicians who told the community that this is exactly what they should expect, a smaller and worthless government.  At some level, you get what you pay for, and if you tell your politicians that you don’t want to pay for government, that’s exactly what they’ll give you.  A broken government.  But, we’re not that hard up in California, are we? Well, we’re getting there:

Drivers in California who cause crashes may find their pocketbooks dented as well, courtesy of local fire departments.

More than two dozen fire agencies, struggling for ways to boost sagging budgets, have begun tallying service charges at crash sites and sending bills to drivers or their insurance companies.

Is a pumper truck called to the scene? That’ll be $400. Traffic cones and flares needed? Another $20. An incident commander to oversee? That’s $75 an hour.

Roseville, Woodland and at least a half dozen smaller Sacramento area fire districts have imposed such fees in the past year. The city of Sacramento expects to start this fall. And, beginning July 1, Placer County Fire will charge non-local drivers or their insurance companies for crashes that require fire agency response.(SacBee 6/25/2010)

We shouldn’t be surprised at just how far our own government has come to resemble the lack of structure that the Romans faced 2100 years ago.  That’s exactly what much of the state is asking for here too.  Of course, this is just a more dramatic example, but the same situation is cropping up in the context of health services, where we are telling people that we won’t provide them in-home services anymore, or cutting off prescription coverage, or eliminating MediCal coverage.  These things matter, and they are a matter of life or death for some in our state.

There isn’t a fire crew going around trying to buy up “fire sales” that I have yet heard of, but is that really that far away?  

UPDATE by Robert: Let’s not forget that the Orange County Register called for this kind of privatized fire service in their response to my criticism of them back in October 2007:

A broader goal would be more privatization efforts and more private ownership of land. Private firefighting firms would have a financial interest to promote prevention, and more private ownership of land would mean better-maintained property. Private owners are far better at protecting their property than public owners, who follow an entirely different set of objectives.

In that exchange I had with the Register – they devoted an entire editorial to attacking me – I also explained that privatized fire services were already in operation in San Diego during the 2007 fires:

Some victims of the California fires may wish they had their own firemarks. During this week’s wildfires, “there were a few instances where we were spraying and the neighbor’s house went up like a candle,” Crays said.

As Brian points out, this is a replay of the end of the Roman Republic, when a group of wealthy oligarchs in the Senate destroyed the public commons for their own wealth, collapsing the political system and leading to a dictatorship that, eventually, produced feudalism.

Publicly funded fire protection has worked extremely well for a century. There’s no good reason to end it – unless you believe cutting taxes for the wealthy is more important than preventing people’s homes from burning down.