Page 4, and nobody’s posted this yet?
Early poll results are showing *near-identical results *for liberals and conservatives by proportions (11:5 liberals and 4:2 conservatives for approve:disapprove of the firefighters’ decision.). So, while we’re currently looking at a small sample, I’m going to go out on a limb here anyway and say that,**elfkin477 **and Rand Rover are a couple of fucking morons.
ITT, fucking retards spout off at the mouth while having zero clue what fucking happened.
HE WASN’T PAYING TAXES FOR THIS SERVICE. HE AND OTHER PEOPLE IN HIS COUNTY VOTED AGAINST PAYING TAXES FOR THIS SERVICE. WHEN HE WAS OFFERED THE OPPORTUNITY TO PAY A FEE TO RECIEVE THIS SERVICE, HE DECLINED, AND THEN EXPECTED TO FREELOAD OFF EVERYONE ELSE.
Water in that area is a limited commodity for firefighting, because it has to be brought in on the trucks. Do you think it would be *honorable *to use the water to try to fight the fire at the house of someone who didn’t pay, and then not have it to save the house of someone who did? If so, you’re a retard. But I’m pretty sure we’ve already established that.
Bonus points: Do you think that a firefighter has a responsibility to risk their life to save a nonliving object when the owner of that object has refused to pay for your services in any way, despite being given the opportunity to do so, and despite having received those services before even after not having paid?
I see what you did there.
Yeah, they can charge it to the unicorn farm down the road. Moron.
What do you do for a living? Whatever it is, I want some of it right now. Goods, services, I don’t care. And I’m not going to pay you for it. What’s wrong? Aren’t you honorable?
The way we do it here is:
Well, you call 911 and the Firebrigade comes out, then they charge you for that service. If you don’t have insurance for that, than you pay the Firebrigade out of you own pocket. If it is a fals alarm, then you pay a call-out fee and might get procecuted - depending on how cute you look or who you know, we’re in Ireland after all.
This guys a fucking charter member with 4,000 posts
EL, you admit you haven’t read the thread. You proceed to make a completely stupid statement regarding a “for profit model” that has absolutely nothing to do with this situation. You use that stupidity as a basis for insulting the US and capitalism in general.
Guess what you fucking Canadian bitch, get off your ass drive to rural Canada and figure out how many of your own countryman don’t have fire service.
This made me laugh out loud… to funny
None, in my province (Saskatchewan). You see, any places that aren’t a city are put into a Rural Municipality. My uncle farms, and pays taxes to the Rural Municipality of [place]. When one of his large farming sheds caught on fire, he called 911 and they dispatched firefighters to his farm. Now, the RMs and the cities work out how they want to divide services. Technically it was the firefighters of the RM of [other place] who came, but because we’re fucking socialists, the government had arranged for this to be the norm and coverage to be available to everyone under their normal taxes.
The firefighters of the RM of [other place] are technically volunteer firefighters, if they would not have been able to handle the fire, the nearest city would have dispatched their department that had more resources. But because my uncle pays his taxes, it didn’t matter to him, because help would come no matter what.
What about every rural house in the Northwest Territories?
Huh? It was “feasible” for his neighbour, who paid his $75.
This story raises several issues, but ‘too remote for fire service’ isn’t one of them. The firemen were standing right there.
Rural as in population density not distance. I’m not saying this is the case but; if one person lives in the middle of 50 square miles, and if as people are suggesting everyone has to have fire service. That one person would have to build the fire station next door to his house and then get the government to hire him to protect himself.
That’s still talking about distance.
That may be an important and valid issue, but it is not raised by this story. Fire service was, in point of fact, available in this particular case, had the man paid his $75.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that coverage must be extended, no matter how remote.
What you’re ranting about is 100% unrelated to this thread. This is about someone who *could *have had the services of a fire department, and *would *have had those services, but instead chose not to pay the obscenely low annual fee, and then was shocked when he didn’t get what he didn’t pay for.
And my point all along is that system is obviously stupid and broken.
Which is also unrelated to the fact that the system, for good or ill, was the one they had at the time of the emergency.
Yes but effective fire service is fast. People are spouting off about why these people didn’t vote to raise taxes for fire coverage. At some point the response time is so great that it doesn’t matter. A municipality has fire stations that are spread around the whole area and provide quick response times. They extended the option of coverage to areas immediately outside the municipality, effectively saying, we will be a little slower, but if you pay for the service we will get there. But what about the guy that is 20 miles further down the road, and 20 miles after that, at some point the decision is made it doesn’t matter, so why pay.
Maybe when they voted, all the people 10 minutes away from the municipality voted yes, and all the people an hour and a half away voted no, so they extended an option of coverage to those who wanted it. Makes perfect sense to me.
Come on Quimby how would you “fix” this broken system? Would you make a guy an hour and half from the nearest fire station pay for a service that was useless to him? Would you build a new fire station in an area without enough population density to support it? How would you fix it?
If you’re willing, I have another way of looking at what you just said:
To start with, the voters weren’t stupid. They essentially had a choice between a tax funded system, or an individual payer system–both of which would have resulted in the same $75 being collected and going to pay for a service.
Which is one of the funnier things I find about UHC debates, a plurality of Americans see paying $75 to the government as different from paying $75 directly for a service. In the end, it seems people really like choice, which is even funnier because THESE residents didn’t really get a choice, there was only one fire service available (cough Comcast cough). And there isn’t anything inherently wrong with that, even if it means people make bad choices.
So you said, “A mature society realizes that people in general are poor at assessing risk.” And that is absolutely true. The problem is then that means so is government. After all, what makes them any better? The other side of this coin is that a lot of people fall for “insurance scams” like with car rentals. I remember a movie store used to offer “insurance” every time you rented for $1. I was offered a $7 per month insurance plan for my phone. Radio Shack offers “insurance” for batteries!
As a result, who is to say that the government would have produced a better result? Chances are, to be “good at risk assessment” often translates into “playing it safe” which then translates into OVER protecting.
There is a tendency towards assuming that some how the government can save us. But to see the folly in that is only a matter at looking to all the burned out houses in PROTECTED areas.
My conclusion is really just that the system played out exactly the way it was meant to, and isn’t inherently broke. It’s not the system I would prefer, but it does actually work (siting his neighbour’s house as proof). The only difference in his area is that instead of paying the county $75 he pays someone else. He simply decided not to because he didn’t want fire services, and more than I want an extended warranty on my phone.
The real issue is that Cranick didn’t care enough about his house to make it worth saving. So what if it burns to the ground? We as a society really don’t care that much about anything else he owns, why care so much about his house?
They have reliable access to actuaries.
Nurrrrr.
I’d actually love to see how this scenario would play out to an actuary.
What is the probability of having a house fire?
What is the probability the fire will be too big to contain?
What is the cost of a house fire?
What is the incremental cost difference to home owner’s insurance?
How much garbage does he burn?
As far as risk assessment goes, his insurance provider is probably the most idiotic out of all the players in this retarded little opera, and wouldn’t we assume they have access to the best actuaries?
I’m not sure what I hadn’t thought of this before, but his insurance provider has already crunch all of these numbers. The probability of the fire, the cost of the house, distance to fire station, and a hundred other factors. But they’re the ones that lost out in all this, while Cranick wins. I can guarantee* you Cranick hasn’t paid more into his policy than his house is worth. As an example, I have a $300k policy that costs me $800 a year–I’ve got 370 years before I lose out on the deal.
*I can’t really guarantee anything
Do you have a cite for this? I’ve seen several news stories refer to a proposed $0.13 increase to property taxes (whether this is a flat increase, or on a per $1,000 of assessed value basis I have no idea), and someone on another forum even linked to the document the department prepared for the county government showing their options.
But I haven’t seen a cite yet to indicate that this was a decision made by the county’s citizens voting, rather than an arbitrary choice made by elected officials. $0.13 is a far cry from $75; even if the increase was to be $0.13 per $1,000 of assessed value, you’d need to be living in a $500,000 home for that to equate to the $75 fee.