Your arguments are so nonsensical, I’m not sure I can really comprehend how you think any of them are relevant.
If you want, declare victory, I’m way too tired to try and explain all of this to you for a fifth time now. Read the thread that you skipped over. Watch the Olberman clip I linked to. Fuck, maybe think for a few minutes before responding.
The guy had a **choice **to either pay for a service, or not get the service. Paying per call was NOT an option, that’s not how it works. You can compare it to all sorts of other nonsense, but that’s not how THIS situation was set up.
This guy lives OUTSIDE of the FD’s jurisdiction, therefore they have ZERO responsibility to him, just like all of the other FDs in the area including the FDNY. He has no claim to them.
His weird attempt to bribe them while his house was burning is inconsequential. They are not a pay-per-call service, that’s not how it works, and he knew that. You know that too, but refuse to accept it.
Yes, they COULD set up a pay-per-call system, yes they could put liens, yes they could have collection agents. They could even offer cable and flowers. But they don’t, that’s all there is to it.
Mr Cranick knew that, he made that choice, and as a result his house was destroyed.
You on the other hand are late to the party and brought the wrong beer.
Who proposed anything equivalent to a bill reduction? If anything, he would be charged much more.
That calculation would be the same regardless. The chances of my house catching on fire are not affected by someone’s willingness to pay for fire protection. The only variable here is what the fee would be if they allowed payment after the fact. That amount would only go up as more people declined to buy insurance. Put it this way, do you base your decision to buy insurance primarily on how many other people have decided to buy it?
It would be several times over because there would be associated fees depending upon how difficult collection became. Either way, that is not extortion.
I personally know of places like Subway that used to pay a higher wage to people working in stores on the not so good side of town.
Clearly watching a house burn because the owner didn’t buy protection is one of those rules.
They predict criminal activity too. How do you think they determine where to send police on patrol, etc. Are you really denying it’s possible to reasonable predict criminal activity?
Those are banks that have a first position as the owner of a lien on a house. Please give me some examples of people getting a lien for services rendered forcing a foreclosure, or the relevant statutes.
Newsflash: You’ve presented the facts. No one disputes those. We are debating the wisdom of those policies. I think it’s a stupid and immoral way to run a town. You disagree. That’s fine, but let’s not pretend repeating the facts over and over again is a meaningful answer to a critique of the policy.
So the *town *is at fault here? For not providing services in another jurisdiction entirely? Just how far away do you expect the town to provide services in order to be smart and moral? A mile? Ten? A hundred?
Why the fuck is the homeowner not responsible? NEWSFLASH! There is a system in place. He chose not to use it. How the hell that makes it anyone’s fault but his own is a mystery to me.
Your example is not analogous. He is offering to pay for the whole thing.
You are taking what I said out of context. The “contract” was a willingness of the SFFD to protect any rural household that paid $75. Neither I, nor the NYFD offered to do such a thing. Of course there was not a biding agreement between Cranick and the SFFD, but the sticking point was not the absence of a framework for services to be rendered, but rather a lack of payment. Perhaps I stated this awkwardly, but I would imagine you understood what I meant.
Uh? I think this is the dumbest system in the world and am happily mocking it. The whole concept is fucking retarded, and I love them for displaying that for the world to see.
Now, it was you that said it was easy to set up a per-call fee, and easy to collect on it, and easy to put liens.
But you know what’s even easier, setting up a $75 a year subscription fee for unlimited fire protection. Which is what they did.
After that, the FD has no obligation to Cranick. It’s a shame they fucked up that relationship by offering him that one time gesture of good faith. Seems no good deed goes unpunished.
That wasn’t an option, it’s not how it works. He had the choice of $75 all inclusive, or nothing. Pay per call doesn’t exist in this system. Now I think of it more as a bribe from a stupid and desperate man. Let’s add that to the charges.
Of course he was at fault. That’s why he should pay for the associated costs. More than one party can be culpable. In this case, the people who just watched his house burn, and the pols who enacted such a policy are at fault as well.
So now it’s the “pols” and not the town? Can you at least try to keep your story straight?
And what policy do you mean? The one that provides fire fighting services for $75 a year? That’s a *bad *policy? How many houses would burn down without the policy?
It’s going to be really difficult for you to make the case that some folks should get for free what everyone else has to pay for.
The “town” and “the pols” (in the town) are the same thing.
It’s a bad policy because most are not willing to deal situations like Cranick where the firefighters sit idly by as houses burn down. Just as it would be a bad policy to allow hospitals to refuse treatment to people who cannot afford it. There is a reason this has become a national story.
Who is getting anything for free? As it exists currently, he got nothing for free. The system I propose would bill him. Again, nobody gets anything for free.
yes, I base my decision to buy insurance primarily on how many other people have decided to buy it because if the risk pool is too small, the insurer won’t be viable.
yes, charging you fees which raise the price to “several times over” is extortion. "hey guess what? i’ll save your house for 39.99, but with all the fees and stuff i have to incur to make your fire fight a non-losing proposition for my department, it will now be 39,999. deal?
and I personally think that unverifiable personal anecdotes are as persuasive as a smelly jockstrap. wages in ghettos aren’t higher than in tony neighborhoods. this is fact.
how is a rule to not do something equivalent to a rule to do something (i.e. chase after a dine-and-dasher. it isn’t.
really, they predict criminal activity? no, what they do is use prior information to make an analysis on future probabilities. unfortunately, fire doesn’t quite adhere to the same analytical methodology.
yes, so these banks have a priority lien and it’s still expensive and time consuming for them to effectuate their lien. what do you think a judgment lien is going to eat up in terms of cost and time?
You left a word or two out up there but let me see if I understand. The current policy, which costs at most $75 per year per household is bad. A better policy would be just to bill folks for services rendered. Like hospitals do. Is that it? You do realize that hospitals lose money treating people who can’t afford to pay, right? What will keep them solvent in your scenario? In the real world, taxpayers pick up the tab.
So rather than pay $75 and perhaps not need the service, the homeowner should pay thousands of dollars when he does need it. Really? This makes sense to you?
Why not just bill people when they have car wrecks, and to hell with insurance? Or pay police on a case by case basis? Don’t you see how silly this is?
hospitals can absolutely refuse treatment to people who cannot afford it. what they can’t do is refuse emergency treatment to any incoming patient. the reasons for this are obvious.
And your system is shit. I’ve got a good idea, though: let’s make all government services post-paid. This way, I don’t have to pay for the policing services I don’t use, the educational services my non-existent children don’t take up, the roads I don’t drive on, and the fire protection I have never needed.
Unfortunately, if it were all post-paid, the cost per use would be so astronomically high that only the wealthy could afford it. This is the part that you’re not getting: it is grossly unfair to allow him to free ride and not pay into the risk pool until he needs it.
Really? Because I think you are full of shit. How many other people does your insurance company cover? What exactly is the likelihood you will die in the next year, or that your insurance company will pay out more than your premiums? Most people have no answer to those questions, and I doubt you do either.
No, it’s not if the fees are reasonable related to the service rendered (as a said many times).
Not because the risk premium isn’t accounted for. It’s because the jobs are different, and because other factors are weighed in.
Using past information does not mean it’s not a prediction. Either way, that was not the original claim. The original claim was that you cannot predict criminal activity. That is demonstrably false. Also, fires can be predicted based on a similar methodology. You may not know where they are, but you can predict roughly how many there will be, and the associated costs.
No, it would be to not turn away people in an emergency. It’s not the $75 part, it’s the not responding to those who don’t pay.
It makes more sense than allowing houses to burn down endangering lives and destroying property. Again, the choice is between not responding to those who haven’t paid, and billing them after the fact. The latter is far more reasonable.
Why is there a difference between a hospital refusing emergency care and a fire department refusing to put a fire out that may kill people? Both are emergencies. It’s only luck that the FD’s refusal to fight a fire hasn’t resulted in a loss of life yet. If Cranick’s son had been inside the house, would you still think the FD should not go in?
The current system you are defending is shit. You value teaching this guy a lesson over the cheaper, moral, and rational way of doing it. Ideally, fire protection would be socialized the way it is in other places. Absent that, a system which allows people to fall through the cracks, even if it’s their own fault, must be in line with society’s moral code. Fewer people think it’s moral to allow this guy’s house to burn down, hence the outrage. I am not arguing for a la carte governance. However, if you are going to do that, be prepared to deal with the people who make bad choices in a reasonable way.
You miss the boat. Everyone impliedly decides to buy insurance primarily on how many other people have decided to buy it because they only buy from viable insurers.
you don’t get how “extortion” is being used here, do you? their financing/debt fees are just as much a part of their service as their actual operating fees.
really? a job at subway in the ghetto is different than a job at subway in beverly hills? LOL. sure thing.
oh, “other factors” how convenient.
really? it’s demonstrably false? tell me when and where the next robbery in Manhattan will occur, swami. better yet, tell the NYPD, because they don’t have the first clue.
really? luck? maybe it’s that they don’t actually refuse to go in when there is a risk of loss of life. hmm. (before you get all PETA on me, Pets are unquestionably chattel and there is just no way to demonstrate otherwise)
it’s not cheaper, vis a vis the stakeholders in the Fire Department. which are the only group of people who have any opinion on this whatsoever. Putting this guy’s fire out costs money, and saves absolutely none over not putting the fire out. Even if he pays in full the cost of his service, it still took service availability away from the people who actually paid. It is just non-sensical that engaging the FD here is a cheaper alternative than doing nothing from the perspective of the FD. and you haven’t demonstrated that it is.
Rational? Moral? Check your speaks-for-everyone chip at the door.
really. tons of fucking people in this country think it’s moral to let tons of people fall through the cracks in numerous different ways. health insurance is a glaring one of those… these are exactly the same people (fuck it, I’ll even guess that this dickface was out protesting Obamacare) who do not have a problem with letting XX million americans go uninsured.
and here’s a tip: they themselves set the fucking system up.
and why should I be prepared to deal with a bad choice in only the way that the person making the bad choice deems reasonable?
You likely have no idea how viable your insurance company is. Either way, you don’t base your decision to buy insurance primarily on how many uninsured people there are out there. The supposition was that others, seeing that Cranick received “emergency” fire extinguishment without a policy, would decide their “insurance policy” wasn’t worth it. Your claim, that the same logic prevails wrt medical insurance, is not borne out by the facts. Do you know anybody who decides not to get medical insurance because Joe Shmo down the street doesn’t have any?
Please tell me how our scenario fits the definition of extortion.
No, the reason why jobs (in aggregate) may pay more outside the ghetto is because they are different jobs. You don’t see many doctors and investment bankers in the ghetto. A Subway in the ghetto, may pay more than a job in a nearby suburb if there is a perceived risk in working in that area. The point was that an increased perceived risk generally begets higher wages.
And yet they somehow decide to allocate resources in one area versus another before the crimes occur. Nobody has suggest you can tell where and when an individual crime will occur despite your insistence that someone did.
How would they know? Say Cranick was out of town, and the house sitter is asleep inside. If his neighbor’s call to report the fire, how would they know nobody was inside? They wouldn’t; that’s the problem.
But few would argue that people don’t deserve emergency care. A fire is an emergency.
Because you have a sense of decency? Honestly, the punishment you advocate this guy should receive is far out of line with the crime. His crime was not paying a $75 protection fee. Of course he is wrong, but should his punishment be to watch as his house and pets burn? This is like those countries that cut people’s hands off for stealing. I bet that would reduce crime and ensure compliance too, but I think it would be too punitive.
Something I wondered is whether the fact this was a mobile home had anything to do with the decision not to fight it. I don’t mean for this to sound classist, but it’s a fact that fires spread faster in a mobile home than a regular building and the risk to firemen is greater. (Cite.) By the time a fire crew arrived it was probably way beyond any hope of salvaging much.
Also, while mobile homes run the gamut from “worth less than a 10 year old Honda” to double wides with garden tubs and sound systems, there’s essentially no repairing or rebuilding a mobile home once it’s been damaged by fire- only replacing it, and unless it was absolutely top of the line you can be assured the cost of extinguishing it would exceed the cost of the mobile home itself.
I have no idea whether this was a factor or not, and I’m as mixed as most people in the situation. I truly understand both positions. The greatest tragedy was the pets burning and that’s something that was very probably unavoidable- they were probably trapped on the other side of the flames or unconscious from smoke inhalation, and as much as I love my dogs I don’t expect a stranger to risk his life to save them.
Another question though: I wonder how the city would deal with a fire in an abandoned building or on “no man’s land”- say for example a wildfire or building that was long ago abandoned and lost to taxes and really doesn’t belong to any individual. Does the county/city pay the $75 or is it fought as a potential safety hazard to others who paid the $75?
Sorry Rumor_Watkins, I got called into work, let’s take another crack at this:
That’s a problem no matter what. If you did the same thing, your neighbour would call, the FD would come, but they wouldn’t know the house was full of orphans, and wouldn’t know to go in looking.
Your insistence that people will die is unfounded. The FD responds to life saving situations, the $75 fee is based more on saving property. They asked if everyone was out. If his son had been inside they’d have saved the son, then let the house burn.
It would still be Cranick’s fault and only his fault, because he is the only one that can make the choice of whether or not to pay teh $75 to save his house.
What if the pap-per-call was $4000. The neighbour calls, thinks maybe there is someone inside, the FD spend all night fighting the blaze. Monday morning Mr Cranick refuses to pay because he didn’t authorize them to save his house. He had SPECIFICALLY chosen not to pay the $75 fee because he didn’t want his house saved. Think of it like a DNR for stupid people.
No it’s not.
To continue with the hospital analogy: an ER is required to perform life saving measures, essentially free of charge, but that’s it. They aren’t going to perform lasix. They aren’t going to give you a pap. They will treat you and street you.
The FD in this scenario is under the same requirements. They will perform life saving measures, and that’s it.
Essentially, the fire department isn’t going to care about Cranick’s house any more than he does. If he wants them to protect it, he can pay the $75. He didn’t, so clearly he didn’t care about his house, and neither does the FD, or the county, or society.
It’s not really a punishment, it’s a result. He made a choice, this is the result.
People that smoke risk getting cancer. To me smoking is dumber than not paying $75 for fire service. Is getting lung cancer not a hell of a punishment for years of bad decisions?
Essentially what you’re saying is that Mr Cranick shouldn’t be allowed to choose for himself. What he needs is the government to tell him that he has to pay for fire protection service, and if he fails to do so face some form of punishment.