This Burning House is Tax Deductible

In 1689 Habsburg general Enea Silvio Piccolomini burnt down the city of Skopje as an anti cholera measure.  Piccolomini himself died shortly afterwards of (you guessed it) cholera.  As a public health measure the burning of Skopje must be counted as a bit of a failure.

Obviously in the late seventeenth century preventative medicine was in its infancy.  Nowadays when cholera ravages an area we respond by airing television advertisements for Oxfam.  This is about as useful as Piccolomini's approach but results in fewer burnt houses (unless the people from Oxfam get really pissed off).

Sometimes I wonder what might happen if charities and other NGOs armed themselves and started getting a little more assertive about their role.  Once an area of need was identified it would be all systems go.  The Salvation Army would be the first in of course to crush any resistance and secure the perimeter.  After that organisations like Oxfam could take over the administration and conscript the locals into press gangs to work on clean water pipelines, roads and sewer systems.  Foodbank and Action Against Hunger could launch raids on surrounding areas to seize food supplies, the Salvation Army could stand by with heavy weapon support in case of need and of course the Red Cross and Medecins sans Frontieres could take care of medical support and organ harvesting.  The RSPCA could provide trained attack dogs (and possibly lions) as an extra security measure.

And this is just the beginning.  Charities usually have tax exempt status.  It shouldn't be beyond the abilities of a capable lawyer to argue that any territories they control should be similarly exempt.  Multinational companies and the world's banking elite will flock to set up business in these "charitable enclaves".  This will provide an income stream a lot more certain than the rather fickle charitable donations most survive on now and will allow some serious forward planning.  Since "areas of need" cover about a third of the globe it won't be long before our newly empowered charities are a superpower in the making.

Naturally there is always the danger that things will go too far; that this new assertiveness will go to the charities heads.  We have enough difficulties dealing with rogue states.  Imagine what it's going to be like trying to deal with rogue charities.  It won't be long before they have clandestine WMD programmes and are sponsoring radical charities in other regions.  At this point the world (or what's left of it) will need to take action.  Various nations will huff and puff and of course the United Nations will say something that will probably be ignored or corrupted and wasn't of much use to begin with.  Ultimately of course, no matter how we try and avoid it, we will probably have to get the United States to invade the charities during the course of which most of the area will be burnt to the ground.  Possibly we can claim it as an anti cholera measure.