If fire departments were privatized...

...in America, as some tea-partiers advocate, you could lose your home to a fire just like Gene Cranick in Obion County, Tennessee:

Cranick lives outside of the city limits and he admits that he forgot to pay a $75 annual service fee that would have provided him with fire protection. Firefighters wouldn't lift a finger, much less the hoses that might have saved the house.

Tough luck, you say? Perhaps. But what if Cranick's fire spread to the house next door? What if, like the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, it spread throughout the whole neighborhood, and beyond? Then the tragedy would intrude on those hardy libertarian souls who paid the $75 fee.

What if the fire was confined only to Cranick's property? How would you like to live next door to a burned-out building? That couldn't be good for the value of your property.

This all reminds me of Rick Santelli's famous rant from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that started this whole tea party business. Santelli's complaint was that bailing out those who couldn't afford their mortgages was wrong. And he was right. While Santelli (above) had been prudent, his profligate neighbors hadn't been and deserved to be punished for their irresponsible behavior. But would Rick really want to live on a street with several foreclosed, abandoned houses? What if they were taken over by gangs, became crack houses, or were just plain old rat-infested. That couldn't be good for his investment.

And that's the problem with libertarianism. None of us lives in a vacuum. We are all a part of society and will inevitably share in everyone else's fortune, good or bad. So it's in all of our interest to protect the common good.