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.

 A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to graduate from Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy.  While there, I had the opportunity to meet Michael O'Hare, a professor there.  To put it simply, he was a fantastic teacher, somebody who could break down complicated ideas into digestible nuggets.

 And while it is nigh impossible to explain the actions of the budget since about 1975, he did about the best I've seen in quite a while.  And I've seen quite a few people try to do this.  In short, he explains that the Baby Boomer Generation, when they got into power, decided to pull up the ladder for those coming behind them.  They were the recipients of the largesse of a well-planned and financed government, lead by Governor Pat Brown's committment to both education and infrastructure.  But rather than mutilating his argument, I'll let him explain it. (Full version over the flip or at the always interesting Reality Based Community.)

The bad news is that you have been the victims of a terrible swindle, denied an inheritance you deserve by contract and by your merits.  And you aren’t the only ones; victims of this ripoff include the students who were on your left and on your right in high school but didn’t get into Cal, a whole generation stiffed by mine.  This letter is an apology, and more usefully, perhaps a signal to start demanding what’s been taken from you so you can pass it on with interest.

Swindle–what happened? Well, before you were born, Californians now dead or in nursing homes made a remarkable deal with the future.  (Not from California? Keep reading, lots of this applies to you, with variations.) They agreed to invest money they could have spent on bigger houses, vacations, clothes, and cars into the world’s greatest educational system, and into building and operating water systems, roads, parks, and other public facilities, an infrastructure that was the envy of the world. They didn’t get everything right: too much highway and not enough public transportation. But they did a pretty good job. …

This deal held until about thirty years ago, when for a variety of reasons, California voters realized that while they had done very well from the existing contract, they could do even better by walking away from their obligations and spending what they had inherited on themselves.  “My kids are finished with school; why should I pay taxes for someone else’s?  Posterity never did anything for me!”  An army of fake ‘leaders’ sprang up to pull the moral and fiscal wool over their eyes, and again and again, your parents and their parents lashed out at government (as though there were something else that could replace it) with tax limits, term limits, safe districts, throw-away-the-key imprisonment no matter the cost, smoke-and-mirrors budgeting, and a rule never to use the words taxes and services in the same paragraph. (Reality based community)

 The turning point, of course, was Prop 13, but it was more gradual than the simple passage of Prop 13.  There was a movement built on the entire purpose of keeping the wealth held tight within one generation, locking in the static state of who was wealthy and who was not.  Our universities, still a factory for the American dream, were defunded as somebody else's problem.

it is dangerously short term thinking, but the appeal is immediately obvious.  Keep more of your paycheck, Yay! But, if we aren't building for tomorrow's economy, then who exactly will be there to pick up the slack for the next generation.  This is now the primary battle. Greater than taxes vs. services, corporations vs. unions, it is a matter of short-term cash vs. long-term investment.

And right now, the state is heading down the dangerous road of a financial hedonism that indulges the primacy of self-interest. There is no question that the ramifications have been horrific.  The only question left to answer is whether we can recover.

Welcome to Berkeley, probably still the best public university in the world. Meet your classmates, the best group of partners you can find anywhere.  The percentages for grades on exams, papers, etc. in my courses always add up to 110% because that’s what I’ve learned to expect from you, over twenty years in the best job in the world.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that you have been the victims of a terrible swindle, denied an inheritance you deserve by contract and by your merits.  And you aren’t the only ones; victims of this ripoff include the students who were on your left and on your right in high school but didn’t get into Cal, a whole generation stiffed by mine.  This letter is an apology, and more usefully, perhaps a signal to start demanding what’s been taken from you so you can pass it on with interest.

Swindle–what happened? Well, before you were born, Californians now dead or in nursing homes made a remarkable deal with the future.  (Not from California? Keep reading, lots of this applies to you, with variations.) They agreed to invest money they could have spent on bigger houses, vacations, clothes, and cars into the world’s greatest educational system, and into building and operating water systems, roads, parks, and other public facilities, an infrastructure that was the envy of the world. They didn’t get everything right: too much highway and not enough public transportation. But they did a pretty good job.

Young people who enjoyed these ‘loans’ grew up smarter, healthier, and richer than they otherwise would have, and understood that they were supposed to “pay it forward” to future generations, for example by keeping the educational system staffed with lots of dedicated, well-trained teachers, in good buildings and in small classes, with college counselors and up-to-date books.  California schools had physical education, art for everyone, music and theater, buildings that looked as though people cared about them, modern languages and ancient languages, advanced science courses with labs where the equipment worked, and more. They were the envy of the world, and they paid off better than Microsoft stock. Same with our parks, coastal zone protection, and social services.

This deal held until about thirty years ago, when for a variety of reasons, California voters realized that while they had done very well from the existing contract, they could do even better by walking away from their obligations and spending what they had inherited on themselves.  “My kids are finished with school; why should I pay taxes for someone else’s?  Posterity never did anything for me!”  An army of fake ‘leaders’ sprang up to pull the moral and fiscal wool over their eyes, and again and again, your parents and their parents lashed out at government (as though there were something else that could replace it) with tax limits, term limits, safe districts, throw-away-the-key imprisonment no matter the cost, smoke-and-mirrors budgeting, and a rule never to use the words taxes and services in the same paragraph.

Now, your infrastructure is falling to pieces under your feet, and as citizens you are responsible for crudities like closing parks, and inhumanities like closing battered women’s shelters. It’s outrageous, inexcusable, that you can’t get into the courses you need, but much worse that Oakland police have stopped taking 911 calls for burglaries and runaway children. If you read what your elected officials say about the state today, you’ll see things like “California can’t afford” this or that basic government function, and that “we need to make hard choices” to shut down one or another public service, or starve it even more (like your university). Can’t afford? The budget deficit that’s paralyzing Sacramento is about $500 per person; add another $500 to get back to a public sector we don’t have to be ashamed of, and our average income is almost forty times that.  Of course we can afford a government that actually works: the fact is that your parents have simply chosen not to have it.

I’m writing this to you because you are the victims of this enormous cheat (though your children will be even worse off if you don’t take charge of this ship and steer it). Your education was trashed as California fell to the bottom of US states in school spending, and the art classes, AP courses, physical education, working toilets, and teaching generally went by the board. Every year I come upon more and more of you who have obviously never had the chance to learn to write plain, clear, English.  Every year, fewer and fewer of you read newspapers, speak a foreign language, understand the basics of how government and business actually work, or have the energy to push back intellectually against me or against each other. Or know enough about history, literature, and science to do it effectively!  You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less, trained worse and worse, loaded up with more and more mindless administrative duties, and given less and less real support from administrators and staff.

Many of your parents took a hike as well, somehow getting the idea that the schools had taken over their duties to keep you learning, or so beat-up working two jobs each and commuting two hours a day to put food on the table that they couldn’t be there for you. A quarter of your classmates didn’t finish high school, discouraged and defeated; but they didn’t leave the planet, even if you don’t run into them in the gated community you will be tempted to hide out in.  They have to eat just like you, and they aren’t equipped to do their share of the work, so you will have to support them.

You need to have a very tough talk with your parents, who are still voting; you can’t save your children by yourselves.  Equally important, you need to start talking to each other.  It’s not fair, and you have every reason (except a good one) to keep what you can for yourselves with another couple of decades of mean-spirited tax-cutting and public sector decline. You’re my heroes just for surviving what we put you through and making it into my classroom, but I’m asking for more: you can be better than my generation. Take back your state for your kids and start the contract again.  There are lots of places you can start, for example, building a transportation system that won’t enslave you for two decades as their chauffeur, instead of raising fares and cutting routes in a deadly helix of mediocrity.  Lots. Get to work.  See you in class!

UPDATE: Like your political science in musical form? Here’s the way people thought about this stuff back in the day, and maybe should again. Bet there’s a good rap along these lines waiting to be born…