While I don’t agree with brickbacon’s assessment of the situation in general I’m going to side with his statement that a fire is an emergency.
Fire can be an emergency, especially when there is a risk to human life.
But the blanket statement “fire is an emergency” doesn’t carry enough validity to warrant legitimate discussion.
But they would put out the fire. That alone would do a lot to prevent unnecessary harm to anyone who may be in the house.
How do you know that?
Yes, it is. Why do you think people call 911 when there is a fire. It’s an emergency number. Just as every emergency room visit is not life or death, not every fire is; either way, they are both emergencies in a strict sense.
It’s not “essentially free of charge”. Hospitals still bill you, and they expect you to pay. In fact, they generally bill you more than the insurance companies pay. If you don’t pay, they often turn it over to a collection agency. They may not get every cent owed, but they don’t do anything for free. Regardless, just because someone doesn’t pay doesn’t make it free.
Correct if I’m wrong, but they refused to even come out. How would they assess whether lives were at risk if they won’t even bother to leave the station?
Society clearly cares, otherwise this wouldn’t be a news story, nor would we have blanket socialized fire protection in most areas. People care when someone else’s house burns down.
So should doctors not treat lung cancers for people who smoke? What about if the person has no insurance? Should they not be allowed to bill him after his treatment if he agrees to pay?
I know you’re a deceived right-winger who thinks your remark is some reductio ad absurdem of liberalism. You are wrong. It is a reductio ad absurdem of the absurd system the U.S. is gravitating towards, and will continue to approach as long as rightwing-dominated stupidism is ascendant.
The “liberal” system I envision would actually be more libertartarian than the Frankenstein system that the confused thinking of both extremes is driving us towards.
There would be taxpayer-financed health care providing minimal care, with individuals and insurers free to negotiate supplementary care without government restraint. Certain other community services, including fire protection, would also be taxpayer financed.
And, yes, taxpayers would pay their taxes, unlike in present-day U.S.A. where much right-wing “thought” has encouraged many Americans to believe tax evasion is patriotic.
On a separate matter, I’m curious: Do you play Go ?
I’m not reading through this entire thread, so this point may have been raised.
I am a recovering libertarian (more accurately, a recovering Objectivist), and one my differences with them is their lack of simple generosity. Generosity has always been a core American value, and stinginess has always been somewhat unAmerican. Through most of our nation’s history, we have enjoyed abundance, and have always shared that abundance whenever the need arose.
But stinginess has somehow become an American value of the Right. It is stingy not to be compassionate toward people who can’t afford medical care. It is stingy to deny the right of marriage to gay people. And it is stingy to allow a house to burn (and 4 animals to perish) because the owners didn’t pay a $75 fee.
Oh sure, the Libertarian answer would be that I’m being stingy to the firefighters and the taxpayers. They may be right, but their total lack of generosity is still unAmerican.
I didn’t have time to read through the entire thread so I don’t know if it has been mentioned, but family pets died in the fire. I’ve barely heard that mentioned in all the venues I’ve heard this debated in.
Does the fact that animals were allowed to burn to death over a $75 fee affect the moral landscape for anyone besides myself?
I know that legally speaking animals are property just like anything else in the house, but when it comes to collateral damage as a result of this ideological tug-of-war, I would think most people would draw some kind of moral distinction between inanimate objects and living things who suffer.
I know this is a step away from the philosophical debate about the role of government and personal responsibility or whatever. But that just rubs me the wrong way.
I seriously doubt that he was offering cash on the spot. He was asking to be billed, and as others have pointed out, it’s quite likely he wouldn’t (or couldn’t) have paid when the bill was presented.
Those who say the FD should just double the cost to account for non-payment are overlooking the fact that when you don’t get paid, whether it’s doubled or not, your net revenue is zero. Not to mention the fact that people who can’t or won’t pay $75 per year for the subscription are not likely to fork over $5,000 or $10,000. And those of you who suggest billing $100,000? Have you actually seen the kinds of houses that are common in these rural areas? Would YOU pay $100,000 to save a house that might have a market value of $40,000?
I consider myself a liberal, but I’m not sure you can expect government to solve every problem. If people choose to live in sparsely populated rural areas that can’t support services typically provided in more densely populated areas, I don’t believe that creates an obligation on those more densely populated areas – at least not without creating a corresponding obligation on those rural residents to pay for the services through taxes.
So you agree that the system they have is bad. Excellent! Glad we cleared that up.
Education?
This is why fire protection, like defense, is an inherently public good for which the simple free-market model breaks down. Allowing individuals to opt out of fire coverage and letting their property become the nuclei of spreading fires is like allowing individuals to opt out of national defense coverage and letting their property become al-Qaeda safe houses.
The people in that town set up a system where you get what you pay for from the government (because some people think that’s how government should work). This is the natural result of that retarded view of government. I bet everybody pays that firefighting fee now and I bet some people might even start to wonder if perhaps they shouldn’t just roll the whole thing into the real estate tax.
The problem isn’t the firefighters, the problem is the idiot who devised a system where things like firefighting isn’t a public service. It would be like imposing a special “police fee” and only coming out to check out disturbances at the homes of dues paying members.
There are some things that should be available to everyone regardless of ability to pay. Things like police protection, access to the courts, and health care.
As pointed out though, they did let his pets burn alive. And apparently they’ve let other animals burn to death in similar cases, like a barn full of horses.
Do we actually know if the SFPD was in a position to save the pets?
Slight correction, it was Cranick that let the pets burn, he also started the fire, and refused to pay the subscription fee. The FD owed neither him, nor his house, nor his pets anything.
A rather sociopathic attitude.
It’s not a bad system.
It’s the worst possible system imaginable.
Wait, it’s worse than that because last week I would never have *imagined *a system like this. My apologies if I wasn’t clearer over the past 6 pages.
Now, with that said, nothing in this system allows us to blame the FD.
You mean home schooling?
ha, no wait, it was the liberals fault!
Think about it, this fucknut is the product of socialized education. If his parents hadn’t been taxed enough already, they could have put him in a respectable private school where he would have been properly schooled in risk assessment and taking responsibility–neither of which are currently taught in government run schools (at least I don’t think).
That’s a rather sociopathic way of looking at it. But I as you said they are terrorists that started the fire, so it seems fitting that they’d trap his animals inside, you know, to really drive home the point. Did you know the cat was his granddaughter’s???
UPDATE: It happened again!
Pay your damn fire fees!
Holy fucktits…!!! If I lived in that county, after the last fiasco, you bet your ass I’d have paid the $75 fee or moved…
Poor people.