Idiot Liberals Twist Story of Firefighters Letting House Burn Down Over Unpaid $75 Dollar Fee

Chris | InformationLiberation
Oct. 05, 2010

Idiot liberals are going crazy over a story in which a local state-run fire department refused to help a man whose house was burning down because he had not paid the state a $75 dollar fee for their "services."

In their crazy dreamworld, they've twisted this into being some perfect example of the evils of a libertarian society where you pay for all the services you need for protection.

This story shows nothing of the sort.

The fire department who refused to put this fire out was a government run fire department. This is a socialist organization, the people who are within its tax jurisdiction are forced at gunpoint to pay for this organization, whether they want their "services" or not.

In this particular instance, the man whose house burned down was outside of their tax jurisdiction, he had another government forcing him to pay taxes to it, that government did not run a fire department. In order to accommodate residents in this neighboring town, the first government said they would cover them if they paid a $75 dollar fee. This man did not pay the fee, but his neighbor did. They came out to help his neighbor but refused to help him in any way.

How this socialist enterprise in anyway reflects how a libertarian society would operate is beyond me. This was a group of costumed tax feeders who obviously felt entitled to this man's cash for them to even so much as lift a finger for him.

I assure you any random stranger with a firetruck or fire fighting abilities would have been more than happy to help this man had they stumbled upon his house burning down. Yet for these resentful, spiteful, hateful, selfish government workers, the mere fact this man didn't pay his fee absolutely forbids them from giving him any sort of help, this despite fire fighting being their job and helping people their supposed passion. This is the type of societal breakdown which comes from having a two-tiered society which statism creates.

The ruling junta of tax-feeders, who lives entirely off wealth stolen from their neighbors, becomes incredibly arrogant, controlling, and develops a delusional sense of self-righteousness in which they feel that everyone is their slaves and they're only to be treated as it suits them.

They become resentful of the people they suck off because they view them not as mutual benefactors in the division of labor, but merely as human resources to be fed off to fulfill their own selfish desires.

This type of behavior is nowhere to be found among the "lower caste" who are outside of the apparatus of the state.

In the free society, people help one another for their common enrichment. People trade goods to make themselves and their neighbors richer and to improve their quality of life. People are dependent on their fellow man for sustenance and they depend on the division of labor to make their lives pleasurable. That's why in business the motto is "the customer is always right."

In government, the opposite is the case. The motto when it comes to government services is "the customer is always wrong," as this case perfectly illustrates.

While certainly this man was not their customer, the government workers were directly in the vicinity and they absolutely refused to even so much as lift a finger to help him. All they had to do was point their hoses at his house. They chose instead to sit on the sidelines and watch it burn. Full of spite and resentment, they felt because he didn't pay them their fee, he is not even entitled to so much as human decency. That's the type of society we're living in thanks to statism.

In a society where people are not told "the government is here to help," people actually look out for their fellow man because they realize it's in their own best interest to help others, and the responsibility lies with them. Not so in a statist society, where your fellow man is only there to pay you taxes so you can live large off of their money.

Far from being some textbook example of libertarianism and it's lack of care for people, this story is a textbook example of statism and its inherent disdain for the citizens it's supposedly created to protect.
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Chris is an anarcho-capitalist and voluntarist who runs the website InformationLiberation.com. He yearns for a day when people take responsibility for themselves instead of merely assuming the government will take care of everyone. You can read more of his commentary here.