First Fire Brigade
Today I'd like to share with you a short story about the first Roman fire brigade. They were ahead of their times: they were the first to design and build things we now take for granted, like running water and quality roads and bridges. Let's for now stick with the romantic picture we have of the Roman Empire, and forget that the roads were built for their armies and to extract the wealth from newly conquered territories on the outskirts of that empire, and that running water was mainly a privilege for Roman citizens only.
Image by [Andrew Magill](Andrew Magill) - source: Flickr
Another thing we inherited from the mighty Romans is the fire brigade. Good thing too, as houses stand right next to each other in cities, so it's best to have a dedicated group of people that rush out at the first signs or mention of a fire somewhere. The man who formed Rome's first fire brigade was Marcus Licinus Crassus, a good man indeed to think of such a useful and life-saving service, even if it was for the privileged alone. Or, that's what you would think at first sight, but I'll never forget one thing my history teacher told me about this man.
Crassus was a general and a politician, so he had the means and connections to form the first fire brigade, 500 men strong. And, as you can read in the linked Wikipedia article, he is often called "the richest man in Rome." What made him rich is a long story; he was born into a wealthy family, but he greatly expanded that and became Rome's main real-estate owner. And as such, Crassus can be seen as an early example of capitalism's ability to make possible innovation and progress through the free exchange of goods and services; don't let anyone fool you into thinking that capitalism is just a few hundred years old.
I'm kidding of course about the above mentioned capitalist myths of progress and innovation. Let me just quote from the Wikipedia article about the "history of firefighting" that describes what happened when Crassus' brigade arrived at the scene:
Upon arriving at the scene, however, the fire fighters did nothing while Crassus offered to buy the burning building from the distressed property owner, at a miserable price. If the owner agreed to sell the property, his men would put out the fire, if the owner refused, then they would simply let the structure burn to the ground. Roman Emperor Nero took the basic idea from Crassus and then built on it to form the Vigiles in AD 60 to combat fires using bucket brigades and pumps, as well as poles, hooks and even ballistae to tear down buildings in advance of the flames.
source: Wikipedia
This should clearly illustrate that the free market and its profit objective are simply not equipped to handle everything. Well, almost nothing in fact, nothing important anyway; education, healthcare, firefighting, police, the army, transportation grid, electrical grid, running water, internet access (should have been made a basic human right years ago), access to impartial and reliable information (without which a democracy can not function), access to food, housing. All these things are basic human rights and should not be subject to the whims of the Crassus wannabees of our time. It's not a question of free choice to want medicine to not die; if you believe every human being deserves to live, medicine and food and medical care and everything else I mentioned can not be subject to some fake free choice, there is no choice.
What's left is very little that COULD be handled by capitalism; the superfluous things like that new gadget you've set your eye on, or the decorative plants you want in your garden. And the thing is, as Utopian you may think this sounds, we're already there; in Crassus' time this would be but a fantasy, but now, in 2019, we've left the age of scarcity far behind and all of us CAN have everything we need to have a decent life. If only we could get rid of the scarcity mindset...
Crassus: how did he become so wealthy?
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