This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, October 26, 2007.

I'm Caleb Brown. As wildfires reclaim large pieces of California, how should those fires have been prevented? Should they have been prevented?

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Randall O'Toole says funding for the U.S. Forest Service has distorted

many incentives for individuals to protect their own homes from fires.

He says the Forest Service has become merely a fire service.

Fires are in a forest ecosystem that is adapted to burn every 30 to 50 years.

And so it's entirely expected to see these fires go on.

What's different is that the Forest Service has essentially made a promise to Congress.

It is going to keep houses from burning down.

And so Congress has given the Forest Service a virtual blank check to put out

fires. And that's essentially distorted the whole process. We have everybody's incentives are all wrong because of this.

Fundamentally, the problem is too much money.

So because the Forest Service has too much money,

it's spending it in all the wrong places.

And meanwhile, the homeowners in places like the San Diego area

or Orange County or San Bernardino County

are building homes in fire prone areas and not taking the steps necessary to keep

their homes from being very flammable. The Forest Service, having promised that

they'll put out the fires, people figure, well, why do we have to worry about

whether our roofs are made of wood or metal? Why do we have to worry about whether we have

trees growing up against our houses or whatever? A few neighborhoods have taken the steps necessary to do that. Some neighborhoods

have adopted policies called shelter in place, which say they've made their homes so fire resistance, they made the vegetation around it so fire

...