I am not question the moral imperative to save lives, just whether they are legally required to do so.
As an aside, I would think if I were a fireman, I would feel morally obligated to put out a fire regardless of whether the owner’s have paid protection money. Either way, it doesn’t address my point of how they would know if lives were in danger in the first place. If they are, in fact, legally required to save people, trying to ascertain whether the owner has fire protection, and if not, whether people are in the burning home, would undermine that effort in some cases.
You are confused about what protection money is. Protection money is extorted money; the payee is being protected from the mobster collecting the funds.
If the fire department’s funding derives from a voluntary payment by the persons in a given area – in other words, does not come from taxes – then the fire department cannot afford to make non life-or-death exceptions. If they do no one will pay the fee, and the fire department will go bankrupt and not be able to do its job at all. Whom does that help?
This is a PDF document proposing the implementation of a county-wide fire department in Obion County, Tennessee. It specifically mentions situations such as Mr. Cranick’s, that rural property owners who do not pay the annual fee “fall on the mercy of a municipal department who provide services on an as needed basis” and that “only rural property owners guaranteed to receive fire protection services are those who choose to pay for it.” I think it’s implicit that such an arrangement is legal.
All of the departments in my county collect an annual fee for services, but it’s a component of the property tax.
I’ve only been to 1 fire where we deliberately let a house burn in a non-training situation, and it wasn’t over fire fees. The house was squalid, paid off, and uninsured. The owner lived in it, but was in essence a squatter in his own house. By the time the first truck arrived it was structurally unsound, and we could not safely enter to put it out, so we let it burn.
The usual fire protection system is socialism pure and simple. Everybody pays in whether they use the service or not, and those who actually use it don’t have to pay anything extra. And we know that socialism never works. In a capitalist society, fire departments should be private enterprises, and when you call for help, you should be required to show proof that you can pay for their services before they will come out. Get government off our backs and let the insurance companies decide who can get protection and how much it should cost.
In the GD thread someone provided a cite that the same homeowner (note there is a Gene Cranick Farm in that location on Google Maps, so hardly just a home in need of protection) had a fire in 2007 and was allowed to pay after the fact. After that I would never “forget” again, but apparently this homeowner did.
Not sure if that’s an apology, but I don’t see how you could honestly come away with that conclusion given the phrasing of the OP and the context:
“As an aside, I would think if I were a fireman, I would feel morally obligated to put out a fire regardless of whether the owners have paid protection money.”
You really thought I meant extorted money collected by a criminal enterprise? Really? Either way, consider the matter resolved. I meant fire protection money.
I took it that way because you changed from using the phrase protection fee to using the phrase protection money, and the latter has a specific idiomatic meaning. When you said you did not intend the idiomatic meaning, I took you at your word. Please take me at my word when I say that I simply misunderstood. I don’t think it was an unreasonable misunderstanding on my part, as I am not in fact a mutant telepath.
Well, I just had my General Question ‘should I move to a capitalist country?’ answered. Thanks everybody!
Back to the topic, I wonder what would have happened in a situation like WhyNot’s postal problem - you move to this county, your mail isn’t getting delivered and in the middle of fixing the situation, your bill for the firefighting is sent and becomes lost. You never learn that you needed to pay this fee. It sounds like a nightmare! I hope there are several reminders to pay the fee. I never would have thought about having to pay this separately, it comes out of the big chunks of money the government takes out of every paycheque and at income tax time in Canada.
The libertarian in me would say that without irony. The economist in me recognizes “public good.”
Actually, not all departments are fee free. More and more are charging for their services. This is actually a pretty good idea. It can reduce the tax burden by reducing the appropriated funds to cover only the operating expenses and salaries. The property owner (and their insurance) would be responsible for the additional costs associated with actually delivering the service. It would be important to maintain a steady budget for operating costs rather than try to charge those to the property owners, because the operating costs should be predictable from year to year, whereas I suspect that the number and severity of fires varies greatly from year to year.
This opens the door to complete privatization of fire departments via contracted services. The city puts out a bid every year (or five years, or whatever) to a private company for operating the fire department. The private fire department would then bill the property owners as described above. I should think that we’d have to have the city audit the revenue from fires, though, to ensure that only actual expenses are billed rather than expenses plus a margin for profit. This because, a lot of anti-private-sector people will claim that a private company will be motivated to commit arson in order to inflate its revenues.
you just asked to exclude the reason for a company to try.
No business is going to take a zero profit contract, that’s what government agencies are for.
If you demand similar coverage for less money, you just end up with $10/hr firefighters using older gear.
Having worked around the biz I have mixed feelings about privatized fire departments. I think there is room for structural changes to how fire departments are staffed, but I seriously wonder what the firefighting world would look like if it turned into a much lower paid profession.
Maybe I overlooked it, but how did the fire department know this guy hadn’t paid? I assume there’s a few hundred properties that are supposed to pay, so I doubt they know off the top of their heads who’s paid and who hasn’t. Do they stop and check before responding to each call?
[QUOTE=Driver8;12991124Remember, this fire department was not for this area, they were for a nearby town. I don’t see why they would be responsible for fire fighting in this rural area. It would kind of be like saying that you are responsible, and should have traveled here and helped put out the fire if you had heard about it. [/QUOTE]
All over California, other fire deparments send men and equiptment to help other areas- well outside of their taxing athority- when there’s a fire disaster. In fact, I beleibe CA send stuff to the 9-11 disaster in NYC.
Why did the fire dept respond at all if they knew they weren’t going to do anything?