Tennessee Firemen Ignore Burning House Over Unpaid Subscription Fee

[Drolefille]

For the want of 75 dollars someone is now homeless. Which ultimately costs society more? It's not small government it's pigheadedness and stupidity.

Having fees be voluntary instead of mandatory is ridiculous.

[Elephant Walk]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

Having fees be voluntary instead of mandatory is ridiculous.

How?

[DSTRen13]

My husband is a volunteer firefighter; the way he explained it to me (a nearby fire department has a system like this one, only it isn't rural) is that should someone's life be in danger the firefighters will save said person, then let the building finish burning to the ground.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by Elephant Walk

How?

Because the result is a homeless person. (or people) The destruction of property and the risk to neighboring land/property/people is also dumb.

It doesn't make sense not to just assess the "out of area" people the same fee via taxes or some other mandatory fashion. Particularly since the firefighters were completely capable of showing up quickly and doing something about it.

We all pay for policemen even if our house is never broken into. All property owners (in most areas of the country) pay for schools even if they don't have children. All drivers (and others) pay for roads even if they swear they're never taking the interstate anywhere. Having firefighting services be the exception to that rule is dangerous and stupid.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

We all pay for policemen even if our house is never broken into. All property owners (in most areas of the country) pay for schools even if they don't have children. All drivers (and others) pay for roads even if they swear they're never taking the interstate anywhere. Having firefighting services be the exception to that rule is dangerous and stupid.

None of your examples are on point though. None of the folks in those situations have the ability to opt out. In this case, the "victims" opted out of paying a pretty cheap annual fee to have protection. They consciously made that decision.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by Kevin

None of your examples are on point though. None of the folks in those situations have the ability to opt out. In this case, the "victims" opted out of paying a pretty cheap annual fee to have protection. They consciously made that decision.

You missed the point or made it for me? No, you can't opt out of those other services because society has deemed them important. It wouldn't make sense for us to pay an optional "police fee" and have the police refuse to show up/investigate crime/arrest an intruder/do their job if you haven't paid your fee.

The guy's a victim no matter what. No scare quotes needed. He's homeless because his house burned down. And if you read an article where they interviewed him he actually says that he thought they'd put it out anyway and tried to pay them on the scene. Can you imagine watching your home and everything you own being destroyed in front of your eyes? The guy was a stubborn idiot when he wouldn't pay the fee, no doubt. But it's an illogical and counterproductive for society to let him opt out in the first place.

There's no logical reason for it NOT to be required. We pay for a lot of things "just in case" no matter how unlikely the outcome is. It's like people who complain about how their taxes shouldn't go to schools because they don't have kids, or to hospitals because they never get sick, and so on. Allowing it in the case of the fire dept. is dumb.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

For the want of 75 dollars someone is now homeless. Which ultimately costs society more? It's not small government it's pigheadedness and stupidity.

Having fees be voluntary instead of mandatory is ridiculous.

This is ridiculous logic - "for want of sharing 80% of profit, xxxxx is yyyyyyyy."

Where does it end? The American ideal is all about allowing people to make poor decisions - this person is homeless due to their own choice. That choice, in the vast majority of circumstances, would have been "correct" under a strict cost/benefit analysis. They lost the bet. Nobody is refunding me my nest egg when I bet on Kmart, right? It's literally the same thing.

That's fine.

Society makes city taxes important because there is a real risk for a large number of people. You're missing a fundamental difference between the city and the country - one I addressed in my original post, and I think fairly completely.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

This is ridiculous logic - "for want of sharing 80% of profit, xxxxx is yyyyyyyy."

Where does it end? The American ideal is all about allowing people to make poor decisions - this person is homeless due to their own choice. That choice, in the vast majority of circumstances, would have been "correct" under a strict cost/benefit analysis. They lost the bet. Nobody is refunding me my nest egg when I bet on Kmart, right? It's literally the same thing.

That's fine.

Society makes city taxes important because there is a real risk for a large number of people. You're missing a fundamental difference between the city and the country - one I addressed in my original post, and I think fairly completely.

Contrast it with public safety then? Why should someone who lives in the country subsidize county sheriffs when they're probably never going to need their services? Being in the country vs. the city brings different issues to play but doesn't change the fundamentals behind it. There are reasons why hospitals provide care to anyone who shows up and needs it. Those same reasons behind police and emergency care apply to fire departments. They're emergencies. Their definition means that no one thinks it will happen to them and that it's unlikely for it to happen.

This person's homelessness is now a separate societal burden. His country/state/federal goverment will end up spending how much to help him get back on his feet? It's entirely counter productive. Charging everyone a fee, possibly a lesser fee because it's spread out amongst more people, would make sense for all involved. This doesn't even address what would happen had people been in the house or had minor children been involved.

When lives are at stake, we don't generally allow people to 'bet' on everything working out ok. This isn't stocks and Kmart. And it's silly to compare the two. There's no profit-sharing here.

You don't protect people from every bad decision, but plenty of other areas, city and country, suburban, or otherwise have made fire department service a required inclusion in their county/city/state tax or fee structure. It's not as if this is a crazy concept only promoted by socialists, fascists, hippies or whatever the scare word of the day is.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

Contrast it with public safety then? Why should someone who lives in the country subsidize county sheriffs when they're probably never going to need their services? Being in the country vs. the city brings different issues to play but doesn't change the fundamentals behind it. There are reasons why hospitals provide care to anyone who shows up and needs it. Those same reasons behind police and emergency care apply to fire departments. They're emergencies. Their definition means that no one thinks it will happen to them and that it's unlikely for it to happen.

There's a fundamental difference, however, in two key areas:

1 - Police presence (and hospitals/EMTs, to a separate/different extent) can't easily separate out one citizen's issues from another's. Restated: basically every police issue is a public issue; many rural fire issues are not a public issue.

2 - There are significant changes in the "fundamentals" when you fundamentally alter the concentration of people. Delhi deals with different issues than Denison, IA right?

[quote]This person's homelessness is now a separate societal burden. His country/state/federal goverment will end up spending how much to help him get back on his feet? It's entirely counter productive.[quote]

It might be. You don't know that, though. This person may have booked the $$ saved and can afford to rebuild. You're essentially arguing that a correct assessment of a cost/benefit analysis is the wrong decision - you realize that, right?

Charging everyone a fee, possibly a lesser fee because it's spread out amongst more people, would make sense for all involved. This doesn't even address what would happen had people been in the house or had minor children been involved.

None of these points are persuasive - minors? Really?

When lives are at stake, we don't generally allow people to 'bet' on everything working out ok. This isn't stocks and Kmart. And it's silly to compare the two. There's no profit-sharing here.

No, it's not - this is the same as spending the kids' food money on Powerball. There's no law against that, right?

You don't protect people from every bad decision, but plenty of other areas, city and country, suburban, or otherwise have made fire department service a required inclusion in their county/city/state tax or fee structure. It's not as if this is a crazy concept only promoted by socialists, fascists, hippies or whatever the scare word of the day is.

It's not a crazy concept, and in a massive number of situations, I agree it's the correct thing to do. That doesn't mean it's correct across the board, right?

Unless you think popularity of an idea equates to utility?

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

There's a fundamental difference, however, in two key areas:

1 - Police presence (and hospitals/EMTs, to a separate/different extent) can't easily separate out one citizen's issues from another's. Restated: basically every police issue is a public issue; many rural fire issues are not a public issue.

2 - There are significant changes in the "fundamentals" when you fundamentally alter the concentration of people. Delhi deals with different issues than Denison, IA right?



It might be. You don't know that, though. This person may have booked the $$ saved and can afford to rebuild. You're essentially arguing that a correct assessment of a cost/benefit analysis is the wrong decision - you realize that, right?



None of these points are persuasive - minors? Really?



No, it's not - this is the same as spending the kids' food money on Powerball. There's no law against that, right?



It's not a crazy concept, and in a massive number of situations, I agree it's the correct thing to do. That doesn't mean it's correct across the board, right?

Unless you think popularity of an idea equates to utility?

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.)

Not sure how every police issue is a public issue yet essentially no fire department issue in a rural setting is.


And yes, it's illegal to starve your children. Stupid comparison.

[Elephant Walk]

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.

So is not paying the 75 dollar fee in the first place.

Life is about taking responsibility for your own actions.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by Elephant Walk

So is not paying the 75 dollar fee in the first place.

Life is about taking responsibility for your own actions.

Never said the guy wasn't stupid. But we don't generally provide public services only to those who pay an opt-in fee. We call people stupid who don't plan for retirement but we don't let them starve. In the society I want to live in, we might call this man stupid for not buying homeowners insurance, but the firefighters would try to save the house because that's what they do.

No one's going to convince me that having an optional fee is a good idea for either the locale or the individual (whether it was this guy or someone whose house didn't burn down) so I'm afraid we're at an impasse. I fail to see how "well it gives him the choice and cost/benefit analysis means he tried and whoops he was wrong so he was dumb" makes any of it make sense.

[Ghostwriter]

Originally Posted by Elephant Walk

So is not paying the 75 dollar fee in the first place.

Life is about taking responsibility for your own actions.

Ditto this.

Also, if the firefighters had gone ahead and put out the house fire how many people would pay the $75 for the next year? The ability to assist anyone at anytime would be compromised.

[KSig RC]

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.)

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.

Not sure how every police issue is a public issue yet essentially no fire department issue in a rural setting is.

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.

And yes, it's illegal to starve your children. Stupid comparison.

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.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

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).

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.

The incentive to pay the fee is not to lose your house or your life to a fire. A rural house is not inherently more flame retardant than an urban one. There are no fire plains like there are flood plains and a coin flip is not in any way comparable unless coming up tails means losing everything you own.

Your coin flip scenario is really more like "spend 75 a year and no matter whether its heads or tails someone will at least make the effort to help you" vs. "lose everything that you own including possibly your life if you flip tails 6 times in a row, but that's really unlikely so you're probably safe, right?" There is no reasonable cost/benefit analysis present.

Economists may try but life does not work like a spreadsheet.