Posted at LP.org:
As of this writing, 79 people have perished in California’s Camp Fire. The town of Paradise has been largely incinerated, leaving many in the town of nearly 27,000 people homeless, and 699 people are still reported missing. Fighting other devastating fires earlier in the year left Cal-Fire’s $443 million annual budget nearly depleted before the Camp Fire started burning on or near federal land in earlier November on the border of Plumas National Forest. Meanwhile, at the other end of the state, the Woolsey Fire has incinerated 97,600 acres. The $50 million home of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian in Calabasas was saved by a private fire-fighting crew probably in the employ of their fire insurance company.
“Rather than envy their relatively good fortune, we should be grateful for the extra fire-fighting resources made possible by insurance companies hoping to minimize fire damage losses,” said Libertarian National Committee Chair Nicholas Sarwark. “Not only did private firefighters save the West/Kardashian home, they also likely saved an entire neighborhood from going up in flames. At the very least, the work done by these extra firefighters provided a measure of relief to public firefighters who were already stretched to the limit.”
According to CBS News, an insurance policy that includes firefighting services costs an extra $2,500 to $8,000 per year, a precaution that can benefit an entire community.
“In a fire-prone city like Calabasas, that’s money well spent, not only for the insured, but also for their neighbors,” Sarwark said.
California’s wildfires can be blamed on many things: dry weather, perhaps abetted by climate change; fire suppression, which leads to an abundance of underbrush and a high concentration of trees competing for moisture; regulatory hurdles that prevent the harvesting of timber; shutting down biomass generators that used to burn brush; residential development in heavily forested areas; downed power lines; lightning; careless campers; arson; fireworks; etc.
Outgoing California Gov. Jerry Brown said in a press conference that the state will probably need to spend “hundreds of billions” of dollars to combat the “new abnormal” of climate change. There’s little reason to think, though, that costly government climate initiatives will make much of a difference.
“Whether global climate change is a problem that can be solved by California is a dubious proposition—one year’s worth of emission growth in China is greater than California’s total emissions,” wrote former California legislator Chuck DeVore, who now serves as vice president of national initiatives for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “But the action needed to reduce the state’s growing forest fire threat would be the same regardless of one’s belief in any problems posed by climate change: start managing our forests again.”
The majority of California’s forests, 57 percent, are subject to federal control. It’s no coincidence that there are far fewer cases of destructive wildfire on the 39 percent of forests in California that are privately owned.
“There’s a lesson there,” Sarwark said. “California’s national forests are owned in common by the entire population of the United States. Such highly divided ownership means that no one takes responsibility for making sure forests are managed to maximize all the diverse values of woodlands, such as recreation, timber harvesting, and carbon sequestration. Federal bureaucrats on the other side of the continent aren’t capable of managing these forests in a way that avoids the tragedy of the commons.”
There are several potential approaches to fighting forest wildfires. California operates Cal-Fire at the state level, and cities and counties throughout the state operate their own smaller fire departments. These government-run operations do provide well-trained firefighters who are ready and on call around the clock, but it’s costly to employ these highly paid unionized employees. They spend the majority of their time waiting for a fire to break out, then collect significant overtime pay when disaster actually strikes.
Rural Metro Fire in Scottsdale, Ariz., has pioneered an alternative model. It contracts out fire services on a subscription basis in rural areas or on a contract basis to cities. Rural Metro has been able to reduce the costs of fire protection by keeping its full-time staff of firefighters low. Instead, it uses well trained, on-call “fire wranglers” when fires break out. Rural Metro has provided successful and highly rated fire protection for the past 70 years, and for a lower cost than comparable fire departments run by city governments.
Many smaller cities also face dire financial difficulties because of the high costs of pensions for public officials, including unionized firefighters. Jeff Hewitt, the Libertarian mayor of Calimesa, Calif., found a solution for his city.
“Calimesa had a contract with Riverside County, which had a contract with Cal-Fire to provide fire protection to Calimesa,” Hewitt said. “The city was stuck with two extra layers of administrative costs and defined-benefit pension costs, which threatened municipal bankruptcy. We canceled the contract and set up our own fire department with better equipment, and saved on costs with a non-union shop and a 401(k) pension plan.”
Hewitt ran for a seat on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors this year, and the absentee and provisional ballots from the Nov. 6 election are still being counted. Although earlier reports suggested that his opponent would win, Hewitt is now 266 votes ahead — with thousands of votes left to be counted. He hopes to have the opportunity to solve the county’s pension crisis in a similar manner to his successful work in Calimesa.
Wildfires and other tragedies can best be alleviated or prevented altogether by people cooperating to solve problems rather than pointing fingers of blame. Libertarians understand that people solve problems best when they eliminate government bureaucracy and instead work together freely.
RC: ” . . . . exclaiming the completely unfettered right to keep and bear arms, including toting bazookas down Main Street. To me, that’s tone deafness. To the NAPist, that’s “principled.” . . . . | (p.s., I forgot the HTML code to do those quotes in italics)
It’s also absurd to the 9th degree
RC: ” . . . . “Let them eat cake” (even if it’s a myth) comparisons! . . . . ”
While we’ll never know if she ever said that, my understanding is that “cake” in that context was just a mixture of flour and water – crappy food for peasants – not cake as we know it.
AD,
As I’ve been at this for longer, I notice that NAPists tend to go mum rather than engage when NAPism and its implications are revealed to be absurd. It disappoints me, for I put truth way ahead of debating points.
DJ,
I am simply open to the possibility that some weapons that are some weapons so dangerous that private individuals should not possess them.
100% agreement, RC.
But I get the sentiment of the unrepentant NAPist. I was there, as you might have been too. I was attracted to the most difficult issue with the most principled stance like a moth to the flame.
But to respond to a catastrophe like the wildfires in California with a lecture using the experience of the super rich has to be as tone deaf a statement as a political party could possibly put together.
I’m not saying party members who like this NAP-inspired release are wrong, they are just in the wrong arena.
How does the truth of any of this release help any of the people impacted by the wildfires in the here and now?
How does the story of Jeff Hewitt mentioned in the release (who found a solution for high costs of public employee pensions) help the recently made homeless in California?
Permission to strike it as non-responsive. You might as well tell the victims that Scientology is the solution.
And the response I get here, apparently, is that the LP should tell the people recently made homeless by the fires that homeless people typically avoid government help, followed by lecturing them about how government makes helping the homeless more difficult anyway.
See, we’re not concerned with demonstrating we are the best party for the job. We’re concerned with scoring points against the government.
Indeed, I found the article linked to in the release (describe government regulatory decisions that might be making the wildfire situation in California worse), quite informative and well-argued.
But the guy who wrote the article is a FORMER legislator and now the VP of some kind of public policy organization.
The information provided in this release is probably fine if it were the production of a think tank, a 501(c)(3), a blog, am op-ed, etc.
But the calculation for a political party, given its proximity to public office and policymaking, and thus to the people themselves, has to be entirely different and much more flexible.
RC: including toting bazookas down Main Street
Me: LOL- I thought you were just against private nukes.
Imagine if the NAPists regain complete control of the LP. Say they re-institute the 2002 Platform, which I recall they’d love to do.
Then, the next time there’s a mass shooting, they quote the platform’s, “We further oppose all attempts to ban weapons or ammunition on the grounds that they are risky or unsafe.”
And the national office puts out a statement doubling down, exclaiming the completely unfettered right to keep and bear arms, including toting bazookas down Main Street. To me, that’s tone deafness. To the NAPist, that’s “principled.”
The scary thing is: This is not hyperbolic, I don’t believe. It’s fair!
Is it asking too much for the LPUS to tread lightly and carefully when the issue of the day involves massive death counts? Countering the Camp Fire with “Kanye and Kim had private firefighters, who also helped their (presumably super-rich) neighbors” would be met with massive ridicule by the national press, if they were paying attention. Imagine the “Let them eat cake” (even if it’s a myth) comparisons!
Better to remain silent, or maybe something like: “Our hearts and support go out to the victims of the CA wild fires. It’s an unparalleled tragedy. Longer term, we look forward to offering sustainable solutions to the unacceptable conditions that led to this awful event.”
Yeah, but he has plenty of experience debt collecting people for past debts who probably were on the precipice of homelessness…
And that’s why “market forces” really wouldn’t apply here as a solution…
war, mass murder, mass imprisonment, mass deportations…that’s the kind of stuff governments are really good at it.
I know when someone tells me they’ve been diagnosed with cancer, I generally proceed to tell them the various ways government screw ups played a part in why they got the disease, and then I tell them CVS Pharmacy gives free flu shots, so obviously, had the free market been allowed to operate, it probably could have saved him.
#Compassion.
Yes, I don’t relate well to homeless NAPists, true.
I guess I have to acknowledge AD’s and RC’s expertise in tone deafness.
Libertydave is correct. I’ve been homeless too and that’s exactly right.
A 50million dollar home? Holy shit!
Yep, it’s obvious Anthony Dlugos has never been homeless. Only people who haven’t been homeless think that the government helps people who are homeless.
As someone who has been homeless I can tell you the last place someone who is homeless will go for help is the government. That is if they are even given a choice.
If you want to help the homeless then do something to help the homeless. The government won’t do it. As a matter of fact most governments have made it illegal to help the homeless without paying for the governments permission. They’re solution is to treat the homeless like criminals or vagrants that need to be encouraged to go somewhere else.
Yep.
Message delivered loud and clear, in the unlikely event that such a release would go viral:
In the worst of circumstances, you will get no help from a Libertarian government. Crystal clear.
Imagine hearing the virtues of the free market whilst spending Thanksgiving Day in a Wal-Mart parking lot, with no home and nowhere to go.
Competing with DJT’s “raking” tone-deafness
“The $50 million home of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian in Calabasas was saved by a private fire-fighting crew probably in the employ of their fire insurance company.”
Catastrophically tone-deaf, along with much of the rest of the release.
MUH PRINCIPLES!!
Tony,
Why would the LP pretend that there’s something market forces aren’t better at? It’s always better to tell the truth, even if only because lies are harder to keep track of.
Is there anything that the LP will NOT say market forces are better at?