Also: http://videosift.com/video/Fire-Dept-Lets-House-Burn-After-Man-Neglects-To-Pay-Fee

• Poor family. They didn't have enough money to pay the firehouse insurance and now they lost their home as a result. It's a real shame.

OR

• You reap what you sow. You can't ignore paying insurance year after year then expect coverage after the fact. The fire department can't set that precedent otherwise no one will pay and they'll have to shut down.

Issue, if you go watch the video radx linked you see the guy 1) Just pain forgot and 2) Offered to pay on the spot.

To create an analogy (but steering clear of a logical fallacy): Lets say you had an Emergency Room tax in the same county. You go into an ER with a shotgun wound only to find out you forgot to pay this 'tax'. You offer to pay this tax on the spot. You also have medical insurance so it's not like you're completely out of the loop for having care done. You are still refused service and die in the waiting room due to your injuries, all because you missed paying a 'tax', not your insurance.

A man next to you when you got hit was hit by buckshot himself, but paid his 'tax'. That man lives to see another day because he received life saving medical attention. It doesn't seem to matter if he had medical insurance or not, he still gets help in the ER because he, unlike you, paid this 'tax'.

So now Gene Cranick sits in a trailer on his now burned property, while his neighbor (whom, per Gene, ALSO offered to pay the firemen) still has his home. Are you trying to tell me this is right? Or even acceptable behavior?

If this 'tax' (I've been putting it in quotes since it is not and insurance policy that is paying out for damages, it's to pay for a public service therefor it is a 'tax') was so god damn important to the county why were they not hounding this guy if he forgot to pay? I know if I forget to pay my local, state, or federal taxes I'm in deep shit.

>> ^luc
ky760:

OR
• You reap what you sow. You can't ignore paying insurance year after year then expect coverage after the fact. The fire department can't set that precedent otherwise no one will pay and they'll have to shut down.

Goofus should've been allowed to be billed later...even 5 grand would be less than losing the house. BTW what kind of insurance company allows its customers to NOT have fire insurance (besides igloos)?

P.S. The fire department in question is government-run, not private for-hire (which would gladly have taken the money).

More here: http://videosift.com/video/Political-Reaction-Pay-to-Spray-Fire-Department

>> ^qua
ntumushroom:
Goofus should've been allowed to be billed later...even 5 grand would be less than losing the house.

I actually agree with this. They should have still offered to put the fire out, and charge him some sort of (larger than $75) fee.

I think the better solution though is to stick with the normal way this is done -- it's baked into your local taxes, and everyone who needs a house fire put out, gets it.

Having this guy keep his house and get handed a $5K bill would be better than what happened, but I dunno why we should create this kind of foolishness in the first place.

How much would it have raised taxes for them to simply extend coverage to everyone, like a normal county? A paltry 13 cents per household in property taxes.

I can't believe there's a municipality in the USA dumb enough to have a fee-for-service fire department. It was just a theoretical thing for the sake of arguing about healthcare, for me. I suppose fire contagion is less of an issue in a rural setting, but it can still happen, therefore you have to put out all the fires or risk that the fires will spread. Therefore fire department service has to cover everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. The same applies to a lot of healthcare.

>> ^qua
ntumushroom:

Goofus should've been allowed to be billed later...even 5 grand would be less than losing the house. BTW what kind of insurance company allows its customers to NOT have fire insurance (besides igloos)?
P.S. The fire department in question is government-run, not private for-hire (which would gladly have taken the money).


But people like you are the reason it's fee-for-service instead of being paid for by mandatory taxes like everybody else's fire departments.

>> ^Net
Runner:
I think the better solution though is to stick with the normal way this is done -- it's baked into your local taxes, and everyone who needs a house fire put out, gets it.



The problem with that solution in this particular case is, if I'm not mistaken, the fire department was located in the city and the homes are located outside the city. These people don't pay city taxes. They were given an option to pay a fee to get service from the city FD.

The real solution here, is these people need their own fire department.

Let's peel back the emotional responses and look at this reasonably.

1. This was a failing of the public government.
2. This has nothing to do with Libertarianism or privatization. That's a classic red herring.
3. Why haven't these people created their own volunteer fire department?
4. Word to the wise: buy a C02 canister for your home.

That said, these people should've been a bit more human about this and put the guy's house out. Also, I'm sure he pays taxes, and probably plenty of them, so why wouldn't the fire department be covered? That's further proof of the failing of government right there.

>> ^blankfist:

Let's peel back the emotional responses and look at this reasonably.

Good advice, I'd recommend you take it, rather than simply deny this has anything to do with your beliefs, and try to pass this off as "government failure".

It's a baby step towards what a private system would look like. The only meaningfully different thing you'd have in a fully private system is that the firemen would've taken the $10,000 ransom payment they were offered to put out the fire.

So, instead of a man sitting out in front of the ruins of his house, he'd be sitting in front of his heavily-damaged home, talking about how the fire department is guilty of extortion for making him pay $10,000 or they'd let his house burn down.

@NetRunner: Baby steps? possibly. But a working voluntary model? Absolutely not. Here's my response which extends to each and every one of you who think this guy's house burning down is a blight on voluntary taxes; quoted here:
>> ^blankfist:

When a victim's family sues their police department for not protecting them, and when the supreme court rules (as it does in EVERY SINGLE CASE) the government has no obligation to protect the people, not a single one of you pious government cultists say shit. You may grumble when the police do something horrible like murder someone or beat up protesters but you chock it up to breaking a few eggs in favor of your big government utopian omelet.
However, let one half-cocked instance of voluntarism creep into the system and it's shouted from the mountaintops when one person falls through the cracks in an isolated case. Bravo! Crusaders of Social Justice!

What does liberalism have to do with aploligizing for abuses by local police departments? Absolutely nothing. If anything, people like Rush Limbaugh are the ones on the side of the cops when the cops fuck up, like at the G8 protests.

I hear this only happened because these German guys didn't pay their Libertarian user fees: http://videosift.com/video/Friendly-traffic-cop-says-your-ass-will-be-violated

>> ^bla
nkfist:

I hear this only happened because these German guys didn't pay their Libertarian user fees: http://videosift.com/video/Friendly-traffic-cop-says-your-ass-wi
ll-be-violated


I heard it happened because the individual cop was a xenophobic redneck like Glenn Beck / Bill O'Reilly / Fox News / Dobbs / Sanchez.

You keep making references to Republicans. I think you're confused.

I'm making that point because these failures of government you're talking about are specifically caused by conservatives, not by non-libertarians in general. If it was a liberal county they would just raise property tax a tiny bit to have a county-wide fire department and then there'd be no problem.

Libertarians aren't conservatives. I think you're still confused. Just because Libertarians want less government and conservatives purport the same doesn't mean we're conservative by association.

One thing libertarians have in common with (fiscal) conservatives is cutting taxes and paying for services with user fees instead. This is an example of that. even though it's not fully privatized, it's a step in the economic conservative/libertarian direction.

Also, the first paragraph of the quote in your first post in this thread is total bullshit that does not accurately describe me or most of the other liberals on this site.

Thanks for speaking for everyone on this site. That's a good little collectivist.

The reason there's a "double standard" is because the specific harm in this case could very easily have been avoided by sensible government policy -- much more easily than say, getting rid of 100% of the bad cops without some kind of telepathic superpowers or magically preventing 100% of the crimes that lead to victims sueing the police for not protecting them. We have more reason to complain when some easily avoidable harm occurs than when the inevitable occasionally occurs.

"much more easily than say, getting rid of 100% of the bad cops without some kind of telepathic superpowers or magically preventing 100% of the crimes that lead to victims sueing the police"

Exactly my point about breaking a few eggs to make your big government omelet. Statists may dislike the atrocities of government, but they see it as a necessary casualty. Every day we see cops doing downright untoward and malicious things to people, even murdering them, yet the system keeps right on going. Never does a statist say, "Shit, maybe this whole police state thing isn't panning out as expected."

It's always, "there are some good cops out there too." It's senseless Stockholm Syndrome battered wife apologies.

I love Watchmen because of this very notion. Tangent alert. Nite Owl II is your typical effete modern liberal and a sensitive intellectual. He believes violence is necessary to correct the social injustices, but believe it should be just. That doesn't stop him from continuing to work with people like the Comedian and Rorschach who use violence with a great deal less restraint. In fact, he enjoys Rorschach as a partner and accepts his overzealous violence. He may not condone it himself, but he sees it as a necessary evil. Breaking a few eggs to make an omelet.

@blankfist you keep bringing up violence as if you are somehow arguing against its use.

As long as you think violence is okay to protect property, you're advocating that violence according to your moral principles is legitimate, while other people's principles don't matter.

That's not a moral high ground, that's just conceit.

Against its use from a representational government when I disagree with its use, yes. Against its use when I have to pay for it and disagree with how its administered, yes.

It's immoral to steal from me to fight wars I disagree with, just as its immoral to steal from me to fund violence domestically I disagree with.

Protecting private property is not an act of aggression. It's an act of protection.

You're >> ^bla
nkfist:

"much more easily than say, getting rid of 100% of the bad cops without some kind of telepathic superpowers or magically preventing 100% of the crimes that lead to victims sueing the police"
Exactly my point about breaking a few eggs to make your big government omelet. Statists may dislike the atrocities of government, but they see it as a necessary casualty. Every day we see cops doing downright untoward and malicious things to people, even murdering them, yet the system keeps right on going. Never does a statist say, "Shit, maybe this whole police state thing isn't panning out as expected."
It's always, "there are some good cops out there too." It's senseless Stockholm Syndrome battered wife apologies.
I love Watchmen because of this very notion. Tangent alert. Nite Owl II is your typical effete modern liberal and a sensitive intellectual. He believes violence is necessary to correct the social injustices, but believe it should be just. That doesn't stop him from continuing to work with people like the Comedian and Rorschach who use violence with a great deal less restraint. In fact, he enjoys Rorschach as a partner and accepts his overzealous violence. He may not condone it himself, but he sees it as a necessary evil. Breaking a few eggs to make an omelet.


You're not even making sense. No one said it's OK to have a few bad cops. They should be fired wherever they're found. But you can't catch all of them. You can't get rid of 100% of the bad cops without getting rid of 100% of cops in general, and if you did, there'd be a hell of a lot more violence. If men were angels, there would be no need for government, but they aren't. Anarchy = prehistoric tribal warfare, mob justice, etc.

You're not making any sense, you're being speculative and on top of that It makes it no fun to read your responses when you comment like a probie and break the comment box.