Profits of Doom and Gloom

“When you pay someone to solve a problem, you perpetuate the problem”

©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
11/3/07
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp
 

The problem is surprising. Fire-fighting outfits end up with an individual who – usually for job security – goes about surreptitiously lighting fires. We had a case locally where a firefighter’s MOTHER went out committing small acts of arson as a way of ensuring her son kept a steady income.

It isn’t extremely common, but it does happen, and it sometimes makes the papers. When people read about it, they tend to cluck indignantly and dismiss the perpetrator as a nut or a greedhead or both.

It would be a lot more common if fire departments either didn’t offer civil service protection, or, in the case of small towns, weren’t run on an unpaid volunteer basis. If you’re a firefighter and you have a family and bills and Christmas coming up, you’re much less likely to WANT a big fire if you get paid the same either way. In fact, it’s in your best interest to help prevent fires. As for volunteers, well, these are people who put their lives on the line out of sheer altruism. I can’t say enough good things about them.

Outfits like the Forest Service, in addition to their own fire crews, have outside help they can call on and pay to help fight fires. Quite often, the same undocumented aliens who plant seedlings in forests that have burned or been logged over are called for fire duty when the inevitable siege of summer and fall fires strike the west. Prison gangs are utilized in what amounts to slave labor.

And of course, a lot of people who work the fire lines get good pay. The work is hard, and there’s an element of risk, but it pays better than just about any other job in the rural west. It’s not hard to understand how some guy who is looking at his rent notice and wondering what the hell to do is going to hope a good big fire breaks out so he can collect a month’s rent in several days fighting it.

If you are going to have arson for employment, this is where it is most likely to occur– among those who profit only when there is a fire.

Naomi Klein had a column this week in The Nation that I found disturbing. Titled “Rapture Rescue 911: Disaster Response for the Chosen” it talked about the rise of private for-profit disaster relief outfits such as Firebreak Spray Systems. This outfit, owned by the huge insurance conglomerate AIG, will, for a mere $19,000, spray your house with a special fire retardent. So far so good.

But then Firebreak, according to Klein, took it a step further. They actually sent out firefighting units during the outbreak of Santa Ana winds a few weeks back to fight the fires – but only the fires protecting the properties of their clients. Nobody else. Klein detailed how they would take stands around the home of a well-heeled client and protect it while the neighboring houses all merrily burned.

The idea of privatized disaster response agencies is spreading. Klein writes, “Sovereign Deed works on a ‘country-club type membership fee,’ according to the company's vice president, retired Brig. Gen. Richard Mills. In exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000 followed by annual dues of $15,000, members receive ‘comprehensive catastrophe response services’ should their city be hit by a manmade disaster that can ‘cause severe threats to public health and/or well-being’ (read: a terrorist attack), a disease outbreak or a natural disaster. Basic membership includes access to medicine, water and food, while those who pay for ‘premium tiered services’ will be eligible for VIP rescue missions.

The problem here is that you have an outfit that depends on people being afraid of terrorism, and will do everything it can to promote that fear, just the way the outfits that sell home alarm systems promote the fear of forced entry. Even if the motives of Sovereign Deed are pure (and given the track record of other privatized outfits such as Blackwater and Pinkerton, that’s far from assured), it remains in their best interests if the fear of terrorism is accentuated. If their employees are on a part-time or bonus system, that pretty much guarantees that you will get a new form of “firefighter’s arson” in which the homes of wealthy non-subscribers might find pipe bombs in mailboxes or have mysterious fires.

There’s also the problem of fairness. I can just picture – later this week, perhaps, when the Santa Anas return to Southern Californa – some irate homeowner or homeowners shooting the privatized firemen and stealing the rig in order to save the neighborhood. Or, just as likely, hearing complaints that legitimate firefighters were unable to take a stand to save a neighborhood because these idiots were blocking the road. Like Blackwater and Pinkerton, accountability is going to be a problem. These guys simply don’t answer to the public interest.

Various large American cities – most notably Chicago – experimented with private firefighting companies in the early twentieth century. The results were at best disappointing, at worst catastrophic. Most such companies were, then as now, run by insurance companies, many of which were little more than protection rackets. Not only did they have different equipment – one team’s hoses wouldn’t fit another team’s pumpers, and cities contended with a variety of different hydrant designs – but rivalries, up to and including fistfights breaking out at fires between rival groups and efforts to interfere with a rival’s ability to respond were common. Racketeering, including arson as intimidation, was a frequent problem. It was a mess.

Some cities have private outfits operating now. But those outfits are on a tight leash. They must adhere to the same standards as those of the public agency – same types of equipment and fittings – and may not show preference in where they choose to fight fires. Their employer is the city, not individuals, and naturally, they cost more and provide less. But many people still cling to the inane notion that a non-profit service provided with a 30% markup is going to be somehow better than one provided at cost and without market incentives to maximize profits, and so these cities waste money on tasks the private sector simply isn’t designed to do.

And no matter how well intentioned the people running these outfits might be, remember that their economic well-being and self-interests depend on there being lots of fires that they could have fought if only you had hired them.

We used to throw mobsters in prison for thinking like that.