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Originally Posted by Drolefille
I think that allowing someone's house to burn down for the lack of a 75 dollar fee is a stupid one. I think allowing people to "opt in" to fire department services is a stupid one. And I think that lives don't come down to cost/benefit analysis answers (which ignores the fact that the guy didn't actually make the "right" analysis nor did his local government.)
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Well, we may have found our disagreement. Let's try this:
If someone offers you $400 if you win a coinflip, but you lose $100, a cost/benefit analysis says you should always take the flip, right?
And losing doesn't mean you made the wrong decision - it just means you hit the short side.
Obviously, risk of ruin (ROR) issues do factor in, but to pretend that this is a $75 issue is ludicrous. It's a $75/year/house issue - and instead of looking at this from a fanciful viewpoint, let's look at it from a strict economic viewpoint, based upon incentives: there's no incentive to pay the fee (which is MUCH more than $75/incident, again as I pointed out before) if you receive benefits at the end. This is NOT an acknowledgment that you
should charge - just that charging forces the behavior you're supporting.
In low-risk scenarios, it makes perfect sense to allow people to "opt in" - in fact, it makes so much sense that governmental organizations like the NFIP do the exact same thing. Societal issues aren't local, they're global.
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Not sure how every police issue is a public issue yet essentially no fire department issue in a rural setting is.
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The very point of law is that your rights end when they infringe upon the rights of another, right? Criminal acts generally have a victim, after all - and rural fires will generally only affect one property. Even in this "extreme" case, it didn't burn down two houses.
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And yes, it's illegal to starve your children. Stupid comparison.
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But the mechanism that forces them to starve isn't illegal. Parental issues are wholly unrelated - as is your ridiculous assertion that "spreading the cost" is an issue since the $75 should do that already.
Similarly, it's illegal to live under a bridge with your kids, but the things that put you there aren't (and shouldn't be) illegal.
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