Cranick's Folly: Libertarianism at its finest?

Great Debates
21

I think the key word there is cooperation and by refusing to pay the subscription fee they weren’t cooperating with the community. I checked out the South Fulton Fire Department’s website and it says they have nineteen firefighters but I don’t know how many of them are volunteers and how many are full time (not counting the chief who started out there as a volunteer).

According to the Fire Department’s site they service the city of South Fulton as well as the incorporated areas of Fulton as well. In addition, they have a Rural Fire Protection service that operates within a 5 mile radius of the city. According to another article it is this rural subscription fee that wasn’t paid.

I’ve lived in an unincorporated part of a county and paying for services is a bit different. While I got water from the city I was on a different billing plan, I took care of my own sewage with a septic tank, and I had to contract with a private business to haul my garbage away. Those homeowners made a decision not to pay on the assumption that the fire department would help them anyway. While I certainly don’t think they deserve to have their house burn down they possess the lion’s share of the blame.

Of course the fire department might want to rethink their policy. As others have suggested they might want to bill people who don’t have a subscription fee. This is clearly an archaic system but fire departments and other services like those in large metropolitan areas can be prohibitively expensive for small towns. Of course the alternative is for the South Fulton FD to end the subscription service and limit their working area to the city itself.

Odesio

22

Here’s my take on the issue.

This is an example of a Libertarian approach that immediately leads to disaster for others besides the poor schmuck that they feel should pay the price for not meeting their standards.

A part of you wants to say “serves the Cranicks right”, but what does that part of you say about those “righteous” people next door who suffered the consequences of that problem? This approach will be absolutely catastrophic if there is ever a nasty infectious disease, say like another Black Plague.

Forget Marxism or Libertarianism, this boils down to what works and what doesn’t.

23

I’m surprised that the Crannicks weren’t charged for the firefighters’ work to save the other house.

THAT would be logically consistent Libertarianism.

24

Intimidation. It makes it clear that if you don’t pay they’ll make a point of watching while your house burns, even if it costs them money and puts others in danger.

25

As the fire fighters made no threats I don’t see how you can claim intimidation.

26

File it under “Actions speak louder than words”. You can easily intimidate someone with deeds moreso than words.

27

It’s intimidation because their inaction causes a disproportionate amount of damage. Keep in mind we’re talking about a $75 ‘subscription’ here, and the guys offered to pay “whatever it takes” to put out the fire. The conclusion can only be that they want to scare other non-subscribers.

28

Their deeds weren’t the least bit threatening either.

29

Oh, my…

30

What doesn’t work is to have residential areas without defined fire department coverage. That is a service that cries out for governmental authority, where taxes are levied and the residents get adequate coverage. The county government failed to do their duty, and residents were forced to buy coverage from unrelated municipalities.

What is truly unfair is to lay the blame on a fire department for refusing to put out a fire for someone who is not in their municipality and who is not helping to fund the service for everyone.

31

In further developments, apparently the fire chief failed to purchase the supplementary security coverage from any of his local police departments.

32

IMO, everyone was at fault.

  1. The homeowner who did not pay. They took a risk upon themselves here. However, this I consider to be the most minor infraction of all.
  2. The county Government who didn’t have county-wide services. This was worse, it shows they have a huge and potentially deadly problem with infrastructural planning.
  3. The fire department that ignored the Cranicks’ plea for help. That was the worst fault of all. Any fire department worth its salt knows the danger of letting a single house fire burn uncontrolled. Most of these guys know the history of city-wide fires. You can imagine what the results had been if these guys were paramedics refusing to respond to a critical injury or cops not wanting to respond to a gun battle. The fire department said “we’re going to put multiple properties AND potentially even human lives at risk because they did not pay” (they said this with their actions not their words).

The reason why I say #3 is especially bad is because this says a lot about society. This is barely a step down from social Darwinism. Do we as a society just let someone die or let their property burn down, to the point of endangering other uninvolved people, because of money issues? Or do we get out there, save property and lives, and then perhaps charge the non-paying person for services rendered?

SF Tennessee can stay the course for all I care. I’m just glad that I live far enough away from other houses that a fire there is unlikely to reach me, and I’m glad I live in a part of the country that does not go by that mentality. Over here the fire department deals with a house fire immediately, as best they can. Over there they let fires just burn until they spread. If they stay the course that’s going to kill or render homeless a lot of people one day and it will cost that county dearly; if not in lawsuits then in lost property tax revenue.

On an off-topic note: never talk to Libertarians about the cost of anything in human lives. Talk to them about the cost in money; that they’ll listen to. :smiley:

33

The people next door are also free to decide if they want to pay the $75 or not. That’s libertarianism, you know, freedom.

I’m really amazed at some of the answers here.

Last week I went to the casino, sat down at the roulette table and declared loudly, “I’m betting it all on black.” The ball went around, bounced a bit, and landed on black. I then demanded I be paid my winnings. The indignant dealer laughed and refused. I said, “How dare you not pay me what you owe.” This escalated, and escalated some more. Eventually the owner of the casino was brought down, security got involved. And finally the owner said, “Listen, the way it works is that you put your money down. If it wins, you get paid, if it loses you don’t. The next time you want to bet on black, you need to put money down BEFORE the wheel is spun.”

I was pissed, I mean REALLY pissed. So on my drive home I started calling lawyers that I knew. While trying to dial I lost control of the car and hit the guard rail fucking up my front axle and tire.

I called AAA and demanded they tow my car and provide me with roadside assistance. The woman that answered kept refusing. She said that I didn’t have a subscription with them. I said that’s bullshit, I’ll pay the $10 yearly fee, and that she has a duty to send me a free tow truck.

Well, that failed, so I had to push my car to a repair shop. The guy there said he’d need my insurance info to see what was covered. So I called my insurance company and demanded they fix my car. The woman on the phone gave me the same bullshit line as everyone else. Apparently if I don’t have a policy with them, they refuse to fix my car. I told them they have a duty to fix my car, it’s unsafe for me to be driving (pushing) it. But they still refused!

So then I had to push the damn thing home, which was really hard and I messed up my back. I went to my doctor and demanded that he fix my slipped disk…

34

Apparently (and I have no cite, this is from memories of a discussion thread elsewhere) fire departments that work on that basis have a hell of a time actually collecting.

35

[quote=“Le_Jacquelope, post:32, topic:556104”]

If that single house is outside the city limits and several 100yds away from the nearest neighbour, in an area with zero risk of fire, where’s the danger?

No sure whether that applies in this particular case, but I don’t think your principle is sound.

36

Okay, well if you believe that then fine.

But now let’s measure the consequences in pure dollars and cents.

The fire department is the last line of defense and their standing back and refusing to help* made for an even more expensive and potentially deadly mess. It cost the county even more money in lost property tax revenue when the firefighters let the first house burn, and House #2’s insurance company lost money covering the damage done as the fire spread. (We’ll assume not to care about the insurance company for House #1 - bah, throw 'em under the bus, right?)

In short, it cost everyone more money to stand by their “morals” than to simply come and put out the fire at house #1. If the county were run as a business (as Libertarians would likely want it to be) the option they chose was much more expensive than the option of saying “fire department, put out that fire in house #1 and charge household #1 for services rendered”.

  • I wonder if the house they did come to save was in their municipality or not?
37

I’m not sure how far the second house was from the first; but the fire did spread to their house. So if they were 100 yards away, it made no difference: it still spread.

My principle is a moral one, and one based on the history of city-wide fires that start in exactly this way. (As other posters have pointed out before me.)

However, I also took a dollars and cents approach. It will cost the county more in lost property tax revenue to let the fire department take this approach and it resulted in an “innocent” neighbor being affected, which meant a hit on their insurance policy. In short, this approach was not profitable.

I also offered a compromise: the fire department deals with the fire regardless of the homeowner having paid or not, and then back charges the homeowner for the cost of services rendered.

38

If they, as a matter of routine, save the house, nobody with the subscription will keep up the subscription. It’s $75 wasted, because your house will be saved anyway. I can safely ignore the bill they send, they’ll still come out and save my ass if I’m in trouble. So we have an underfunded FD dealing with a huge area that they cannot adequately support. They don’t have enough people or training to support a large unfunded area, so support gets worse everywhere. Then who do you blame for the people who die in a fire because the FD is busy out in the County helping folks who don’t pay a red cent towards fire coverage?

The only other option for the town FD is to suspend the subscription service altogether. Provide service only within city limits, and tell the outlying areas they’re on their own. They are not part of the town, they don’t pay taxes to support the FD, and there’s no moral or ethical reason for the FD to go outside of their defined area of support to help people who aren’t bothering to set up and pay for their own FD.

In terms of charging after services rendered, how well does that work for Emergency Rooms?

39

If it’s $75, why didn’t the guy pay it?

I keep waiting for some bureaucratic fuck up, like the guy had been paying for decades but some file got misplaced. But it’s really just a case of this guy made a choice. There was risk involved. He decided that he’d rather have the $75 instead of fire protection.

Why do we tolerate this behavior? Why are so many people here demanding that the government step in and bail him out?

He knew the risks. Not paying the $75 was risky. Are we going to try and claim that someone mislead him? That he was duped by some high pressure sales tactic? Might as well blame Obama and subprime borrowers while we’re at it.

It’s not as if he just moved in and didn’t know about it.

And lastly, the fee is “only $75” because of a group based policy. Everyone chips in $75 so that 1 in 1000 get $75,000 worth of fire response. Do people really believe it only costs $75 to have a fire crew there? That wouldn’t pay for the diesel to drive to his house.

Putting out his fire tells everyone in the area that they were suckers for paying $75 a year.

40

I would expect insurance companies to require their customers in counties like this to pay the annual fee of $75. If that’s so, then perhaps they weren’t insured.