# WTF? Pay Up or We Let Your House Burn Down? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 6, 2010, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210 "2010-10-06T03:08:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 24
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/461 "2010-10-15T22:34:58Z")
> [@Giraffe](#): > > > [@jtgain](#): > > > > It is like insurance. I’m not saying he could pay his $75 premium after the fire started, but that he should pay full price for the service. > > > [@Giraffe](#): > > > > He might have thought he was still entitled to buy their services on demand, but he wasn’t. > > This seems to be the part you’re missing. The system only works if everyone pays in a little when their house isn’t on fire. Some people might prefer to pay nothing until their house is on fire, and then pay more at that point, but _they don’t get to make that choice._ Now is also the time when we have to point out that other fire departments (I think including this one) tried that and couldn’t get people to pay. Turns out, when their house is on fire, they tend to offer to pay “anything, anything at all, just save my house, pets, and bibles.” Then afterwords slip off to the bathroom. What do you suppose is going to happen the next time? As far as I can tell there are still lots of people that choose not to pay (including Cranick I assume). Who do you think learned their lesson from this? The morons that try to skip out on a $75 subscription fees? Or the morons running the fire department that let themselves get put in this position? ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/462 "2010-10-15T22:43:52Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > It is like insurance. I’m not saying he could pay his $75 premium after the fire started, but that he should pay full price for the service. It was extensively documented earlier in the thread that when the fire department allowed people to pay $500 after-the-fact, they collected in less than 50% of the cases. So they stopped allowing people to pay after the fact because _most people who say “I’ll pay anything!”, don’t._ Sure, they fire department could spend thousands of dollars in lawyer and court fees trying to get $500 out of Crannick. Or they do basic arithmetic and decide that their services simply aren’t buy-on-demand. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/463 "2010-10-15T22:45:17Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > > [@Giraffe](#): > > > > I know it’s only been said like 700 times in this thread, but that’s not how it works. It’s like insurance: if you let people opt in after they know they need it, why would anyone pay premiums? _He missed his chance to get fire fighting services._ Because he was stupid. He might have thought he was still entitled to buy their services on demand, but he wasn’t. Because… (wait for it), he was stupid. > > > > Life sucks when you’re stupid. > > It is like insurance. I’m not saying he could pay his $75 premium after the fire started, but that he should pay full price for the service. Please tell me you’re really being dense on purpose. Please. There is no established “full price”. The actual “full price” relates to salaries (not just fire fighters, who apparently are volunteers, but also of City employees involved with purchasing, training, and otherwise supporting the fire brigade) plus direct expenses for fuel, supplies, etc. plus overhead costs and depreciation of equipment, insurance costs, perhaps rent, and certainly others I’m missing. I’m pretty sure that only the City Manager (or whatever equivalent City bureaucrat deals with financial matters) could even hope to calculate this number. Fire fighters on site would have not a clue. There is nothing in the City’s system whereby “actual costs” of City fire services are calculated or invoiced. There is though an “established fee” of $500 when fire fighters service an account. But this applies **only** to _ **people enrolled in the City’s subscription fire service** _. And we are, once again, back to Cranick’s refusal to participate in the system available. Which was, as **Giraffe** says, _ **stoooooopid!!!** _ ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/464 "2010-10-15T22:54:14Z")
> [@Giraffe](#): > > > [@Monty](#): > > > > Page 10 and how many times has it been pointed out that, contrary to the OP’s wording, the fire department is not from the local government, but rather from the government of another community? > > If they were decent individuals, they would fight fires across the land, asking for nothing in return but the sheer joy of helping others. WAIT! We have to go back and re-examine **Monty** ’s revelation! These were not local firefighters!! They’re from _another community!!_ OMG!! _THESE ARE FOREIGN FIREMEN!!!_ Now it all becomes clear. They weren’t real 'Mericans after all. Glad we’ve finally cleared that up! ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/465 "2010-10-15T22:54:47Z")
> [@CannyDan](#): > > > [@jtgain](#): > > > > It is like insurance. I’m not saying he could pay his $75 premium after the fire started, but that he should pay full price for the service. > > Please tell me you’re really being dense on purpose. Please. > > There is no established “full price”. The actual “full price” relates to salaries (not just fire fighters, who apparently are volunteers, but also of City employees involved with purchasing, training, and otherwise supporting the fire brigade) plus direct expenses for fuel, supplies, etc. plus overhead costs and depreciation of equipment, insurance costs, perhaps rent, and certainly others I’m missing. I’m pretty sure that only the City Manager (or whatever equivalent City bureaucrat deals with financial matters) could even hope to calculate this number. Fire fighters on site would have not a clue. There is nothing in the City’s system whereby “actual costs” of City fire services are calculated or invoiced. > > There is though an “established fee” of $500 when fire fighters service an account. But this applies **only** to _ **people enrolled in the City’s subscription fire service** _. > > And we are, once again, back to Cranick’s refusal to participate in the system available. Which was, as **Giraffe** says, _ **stoooooopid!!!** _ Na, it was brilliant. The stoooooopid part was leaving his grand_child_ home with matches but without supervision. Shouldn’t there be a law preventing that? Just think of the loss to society as a result. Clearly we need a fire burning age limit, some where greater than 22. Or we need to ban fires of any sort. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/466 "2010-10-15T22:58:21Z")
> [@Giraffe](#): > > > [@Monty](#): > > > > Page 10 and how many times has it been pointed out that, contrary to the OP’s wording, the fire department is not from the local government, but rather from the government of another community? > > If they were decent individuals, they would fight fires across the land, asking for nothing in return but the sheer joy of helping others. Yeah, but that dog won’t run. At least not now. Not in Tennessee. What? ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/467 "2010-10-15T23:00:20Z")
Won’t run, but will it burn? ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/468 "2010-10-15T23:16:57Z")
I’ve seen this whole episode argued in several different places, and the results have been the same. On one side you have a bunch of people who are horrified that the fire department stood there and let the house burn down, and some of them will even argue a moral duty on the part of the fire department to save the house regardless. On the other side you have a bunch of people who recognize the practical side of it all: that the fire department is an operation that runs on money, that there are various levels of concerns like safety and moral hazard and the history of Crannick, the county, and the fire department’s efforts to handle the demands place on them. ``` Since Gonzomax is happily to call all of us in the latter group a bunch of heartless psychopaths, I'll feel free to psychoanalyze him. The members of the first group have a deeply romantic idea about what firemen are. They're not people who have a particular job. They're warriors in the noble fight against the scourge of flame. It's not a profession, it's a calling, a vocation. They're like priests or junkies. It doesn't matter how they get what they need to fight fires, they need to fight fires, damnit!, and the petty bureaucrats can figure out the rest. Letting Crannick's house burn down as a matter of policy stabs that romantic image in the heart and then skullfucks a kitten to death on top of it. What we're witnessing in Gonzomax's rage is the death of a childhood vision, where firefighters stop rescuing kittens from trees only long enough to take the fire station dalmation out to pee and wash the bright shiny red truck one more time. Really, the best comparison here is to teachers, another profession where it's said to be a labor of love more than a steady paycheck. Gonzo, if the county voted against funding its own schools and offloaded its children on the municipality's schools with no provision for funding the extra load, and the school allowed the county children to come if their parents paid a small yearly fee, would you be damning the teachers for refusing to teach the children of the county residents who wouldn't pony up? Who said "I'll pay when junior gets his diploma"? Who went on national media trying to ride a wave of indignation that the teachers wouldn't work for free? ``` ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/469 "2010-10-16T02:00:06Z")
So can we go back to #427 now that everyone understands what I am saying? Or have you all not read the thread? ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/470 "2010-10-16T02:02:00Z")
> [@hansel](#): > > Sure, they fire department could spend thousands of dollars in lawyer and court fees trying to get $500 out of Crannick. Or they do basic arithmetic and decide that their services simply aren’t buy-on-demand. So all of the private businesses in Tennessee who bill for services are left with no redress? ---
**Author:** ![tumbleddown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@tumbleddown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tumbleddown)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/471 "2010-10-16T02:39:27Z")
> [@hansel](#): > > Since Gonzomax is happily to call all of us in the latter group a bunch of heartless psychopaths, I’ll feel free to psychoanalyze him. The members of the first group have a deeply romantic idea about what firemen are. Or we have an idea that when a person or group of people has the physical capacity, the specialized training, the specialized equipment and the availability to perform an extraordinary act – which fighting a house fire certainly is – which will prevent someone or, in this case, a family of someones, from losing everything that they own and potentially facing irrecoverable ruin, and that person or group of people are right there, non-pressing matters like unpaid fees or property taxes or boundaries that are 30 yards up a road are less important than the exigent circumstance of having an uncontrolled structure fire doing tens of thousands of dollars of damage, killing pets, destroying irreplaceable items. The money could have been recovered at a later time, the house could not. The money plus a fine could’ve been recovered. The entire cost of the firefighting operation could’ve been recovered after the fact. It’s not romantic, it’s practical. It’s ethical. ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/472 "2010-10-16T02:49:04Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > So all of the private businesses in Tennessee who bill for services are left with no redress? Do you think that the South Fulton Fire Department is a private business? ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/473 "2010-10-16T02:51:33Z")
> [@tumbleddown](#): > > It’s ethical. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/474 "2010-10-16T03:02:22Z")
Oh bog please, please, somebody shoot me in the head before I find myself in a thread where I actually agree with **Rand Rover**!!! I’m going to bed. I fervently hope this nightmare will all be over in the morning. ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/475 "2010-10-16T03:17:55Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > Turns out, when their house is on fire, they tend to offer to pay “anything, anything at all, just save my house, pets, and bibles.” Then afterwords slip off to the bathroom. Were they planning on passing down smoke damaged, water damaged bibles? ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/476 "2010-10-16T03:42:37Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > So can we go back to #427 now that everyone understands what I am saying? Or have you all not read the thread? I went back to post #427. Did not deliver. I would not read it again. ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/477 "2010-10-16T05:20:34Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > So all of the private businesses in Tennessee who bill for services are left with no redress? Private businesses in Tennessee probably don’t hand over goods until they’ve actually got the money, or perform services until a significant deposit has been made. They probably also haven’t failed to collect in more than 50% of cases and continued in that mode of business. ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/478 "2010-10-16T05:28:36Z")
> [@tumbleddown](#): > > The money could have been recovered at a later time, the house could not. The money plus a fine could’ve been recovered. The entire cost of the firefighting operation could’ve been recovered after the fact. It’s not romantic, it’s practical. It’s ethical. No, the money could not have been recovered at a later time. They tried that and failed in the majority of cases. I think that, if there were some relatively convenient and cost-free way to recover those fees, they would have. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/479 "2010-10-16T13:25:26Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > So can we go back to #427 now that everyone understands what I am saying? Or have you all not read the thread? Speaking of not reading the thread, try post 431. Seems you missed it the first time. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210/480 "2010-10-16T16:53:46Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > So can we go back to #427 now that everyone understands what I am saying? Or have you all not read the thread? OK, I’ll answer 427 for you. Yes, they do. So what? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210.md?page=23) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-pay-up-or-we-let-your-house-burn-down/556210.md?page=25)