Right at the top of the list of things you can't privatise is putting out fires. If I buy fire insurance and my neighbour doesn't, I don't think the firefighters I've paid for are doing a good job if they let his house burn right up to the point that mine catches fire too.
Which is really just a roundabout way of saying something that's pretty well-understood already - that Glenn Beck is a lunatic. Here he is, gleefully defending the privatisation of firefighting services in the town of Obion, Tennessee, that led to one family's home burning down while firefighters watched on because the family hadn't paid their $75 premium. Skipping for the moment the ethical debate about a policy that killed four family pets, you can see at a glance how, logistically, you could just about get away with this policy in rural middle America. Buildings are so spaced out the insured probably could watch their uninsured neighbours burn without significant personal risk. But, pretty much by definition, most of us don't live in such sparsely populated spots. Tell us how this is going to work in an owner-occupied Manhattan tenement, Glenn, and then you might be on to something.
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