Because he’s an idiot. Let their house burn, right?
What’s the alternative? Fires don’t stay contained - as we can see in this case, it spread to his neighbour’s house - who HAD payed - while in all likelihood his neihbour’s house would’ve been fine if they’d bothered to start putting out the fire ASAP instead of being dicks.
I already said that as far as I’m concerned, they could charge him the full cost of putting out the fire (including reasonable costs for having a fire dept in the first place) and add in some additional “fine”. It would still be more efficient, more fair and less dangerous than just standing there with your arms folded.
Back-charging the non-paying household $1000 for saving their house despite not paying the $75 yearly fee would be quite a deterrent to anyone else deciding not to pay the $75 a year.
If they own a house and you have to back-charge them money, slap a lien on the property if they cannot pay. You’d have their address, right?
The correct answer to this issue is mandate tax participation across the whole covered area. Free market principles only work where demand is flexible. Safety services should be socialized, because human beings do not properly process risk.
The fire department here was unethical and inefficient. They had to sit and watch the guy’s house burn so the home of the subscriber next to him wouldn’t be threatened. The overall cost would have decreased substantially if they just put out the fire and sent the guy an invoice.
I wonder whether his failure to buy the service will invalidate his insurance coverage. Then he’s really boned.
It seems to me that the most humane way to run this system is to set it up so that the FD always puts out the fire, but if the owner has not paid the service fee, the jurisdiction that responded to the fire gets to put a $5000 (or whatever amount) first lien on the property. That would give mortgage companies an incentive to require payment of the fee like they do with fire insurance.
Christine O’Donnell opposes abortion in all circumstances. Sharron Angle does too, adding the reassurance “I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives.” I suppose these are not authorized Tea Party spokespersons, if there are such things, but just finding this quote took the limit of my interest in pursuing this exciting political movement.
I didn’t give my own views about Cranick’s Folly in OP, so let me state them now. I condemn the Cranicks for not paying the $75, and I do have an itty-bitty teeny-weeny amount of sympathy for the fire department’s stand on “moral principles”, if that’s what they’re calling it. What is heart-breaking is to see America’s hatred of taxation and government and embracing of the stupidest right-wing doctrines result in something like this, something I daresay foreigners will laugh at in amazement.
I agree with emacknight. If you’re going to be libertarian about all this, be friggin libertarian. Don’t waffle back and forth about “yeah, he didn’t pay the fee, but didn’t they feel morally obligated to do something?” Stand strong! Make an economics argument, something to do with Pareto optimality and avoiding moral hazard. Point out that if two fires had occurred at the same time with one truck on duty and only one of the callers had paid his fee, the fire department would have been clearly justified in responding to the one who actually paid up. Argue that, in the long run, this will probably encourage those homeowners to pay the fee and reduce the number of fires.
But whatever you do, don’t champion libertarianism and opt-in government and then try to argue morals and charity. Have the strength of your convictions.
Yes. I’m sorry, but yes. I don’t want the guy’s house to burn down, but that is the basis of risk/reward.
He was told in advance: pay $75 a year and we’ll provide fire protection, don’t pay and you won’t have fire protection.
He made the choice. It was an idiotic choice, but it was his to make. (he may have also made the choice to leave a bunch of unattended candles burning next to his stock pile of oily rags…)
Again I need to point out, if this guy doesn’t have home owners insurance, does Allstate et. al have a duty to give him money? Think about that for a second because I don’t believe you’ve properly considered that aspect.
At least consider this first concept before worrying about all the others. The guy had a choice, it involved risk. He decided he’d rather have the $75 a year instead of fire protection.
Maybe he crunched the numbers: He’s had that house for 57 years, that’s $4,275 (plus interest) for the 1 in 1million chance his house would burn down. Over the past 57 years he made the right choice. Maybe his house/stuff is worth less than the $75 a year. Maybe he’s got great insurance and this will get him a new house and better stuff.
He made a choice. If we all (including him) agree it was stupid, shouldn’t he bare that responsibility?
I’m going to try and find a cite for this, a few years ago I had the pleasure of riding in a Minneapolis ambulance. Afterwords I was trying to find out how much it cost and the article I found describe it as $1200, and included the point that they expect half of all clients won’t pay. So as a result, those that DO pay are actually paying **twice **as much. Which ultimately leads to more people not paying.
Incidentally, what most are describing here is called, “privatizing gains and socializing losses.”
We establish that it’s okay for the home owner to sit on that $75 ever year. And when it comes time to pay he won’t/can’t. So the public [fire department] has to pick up the tab. Is that really so hard for people to see?
It sounds like the US way of doing things, yes. I think all of this clearly shows that these kind of “free-market” type systems are inherently flawed when they’re dealing with stuff that’s potentially life-threatening, especially when it involves chance. The main problem in this particular case is that one municipality does have a tax-funded fire department, and the other has none. If you give people the “choice” of paying for ambulance services and fire services etc based on their personal preference, you’re always going to end up with a lot of stupid assholes who don’t pay but still have to be rescued just to prevent a lot of harm not just to themselves but to their neighbors.
If you want to argue this from the current situation over there, the correct way to handle this is for the fire dept. to not offer any services at all outside their own tax district. That’s not what they’re for and it reduces the service to the people who are really paying for the system and it also reduces the chance that the other district will ever get a decent fire dept. Either you’re all in this together, or you can put out your own damn fires.
Well, yes, exactly: If you’re not willing to pay for fire protection, don’t whine when the fire department watches your house burn, hoses at the ready to protect the house of the guy next to you who did pay.
Absolutely it’s a fucked up system, and they should have the county paying for fire protection for all through general tax revenue. But those measures get voted down because their taxes would go up and the fire chief would get to enforce fire codes. So they choose collectively not to have a fire protection, and then Crannick chose individually not to have fire protection.
I feel bad for Crannick that his house is gone, but feel no ire at all towards the fire department for watching it burn. Crannick got a harsh lesson in consequences. I hope others are paying attention.
Ah, another ‘attack libertarianism with a straw man’ argument.
Many libertarians, myself included, understand exceptions have to be made in the case of externalities, and having a fire burning in the middle of a residential neighborhood is a textbook case of externality. Many libertarians, including myself, understand the free rider problem, and understand that you can’t allow a situation in which people can refuse to pay for fire service, knowing full well that firemen will protect your house anyway. We also recognize that it’s wrong to NOT protect your house.
There are a few obvious solutions here:
Treat fire protection in a city as a public good, make it universal, and tax everyone to pay for it. Like we do in most places now. Only the most extreme libertarians think all public services should be privatized and made voluntary. All the ones I hang with are perfectly willing to make an exception for essential services like fire protection and police.
Treat fire insurance as fire protection insurance. In other words, if you pay the insurance and have a fire, the fire department puts it out for free. If you don’t have insurance, you pay for the cost of the fire department’s work. Which could easily be thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. But either way, your fire gets put out promptly.
Make fire insurance mandatory, but contract it out.
The case in the OP is the stupidest way to deal with the problem there is. AND, it involved government action. So making this an indictment of libertarianism is just silly.
You’re going to socialize the losses regardless. The county will pay the price in lost property tax revenue. Which is bigger? Lost property taxes because the house burned down, or paying the fire department to go out and put out the fire?
The county is not at fault here, at least insofar as they’re not able to establish a fire department (or contract wholesale with South Fulton’s FD). They’ve tried in the past and failed. The county just is people like Gene Crannick who moved out of the city to get away from the onerous taxes that pay for things like a fire department.
South Fulton’s FD is funded by the residents of South Fulton. They’re not losing tax revenue because of this.
Wow, this is so entertaining. I could make a movie out of this.
“South Fulton Fire Department, how can I help you?”
“OMFG! My house is on fire! Please help!”
“Please state our name so we can verify that you paid for our services.”
“John and Paulette Libertaria! Please hurry!”
“Sorry, sir, we don’t have any records of payments from a John and Paulette Libertaria. Do you have your receipts?”
“We can’t reach our receipts, the room is on fire!”
“Ah, well we can’t verify your payment history, sir and madam. We lost all our records last week to the Conficker virus…”
If I were the Cranicks I would get my property value reassessed pronto. Or just go homeless. Either way, someone’s going to lose property tax revenue because the house burned down. Or does no one charge property taxes there?
And when a firestorm sweeps out of the areas they are refusing to protect and levels the town, I’m sure the capitalistic righteousness of their position will comfort the dead and dispossessed.
Well, if that is how we are going to judge this, then you should consider the risk that someone who has lost his house or a loved one to a fire that the department deliberately let burn will redress his grievances with violence. This is exactly the sort of behavior likely to result in someone walking into the fire department with a gun and opening fire. Even as it is the fire chief got attacked. Considering that he endangered the lives of others i feel no sympathy for him.
Le Jacquelope, you’re making a logical fallacy, but I’m not sure which one. I want to say broken window.
The idea that the country loses tax revenue is irrelevant, and most likely inaccurate. As an example: if tax revenue is paying for his water and sewer, he’s no longer using either. Costs go down with revenue. He’s not generating any garbage, using public roads, etc. His house burning down isn’t any different than him moving away. Mr Cranick doesn’t exist to make tax revenue for the county, he pays taxes because he costs the county money.
Now, to reapply the broken window fallacy: his house burning down is a great thing for the local community. Contractors get hired, building supplies get bought, lots of money flows. His house burning down creates jobs and helps stimulate the economy. All of which are taxes, making the county MORE money. Or maybe not.
In any case, it’s not a valid argument for what we’re discussing.
