Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?
tomscott.com
tomscott.com
As my history professor put it, "going to the Holy Land was an incredibly expensive endeavour reserved for a very few. There's no way anyone was going to waste it on young, inexperienced children".
Nearly every source we had saying that the crusade involved children came much later, after a few writers referred to the same source with a mistranslation (think reading "me and the boys" as referring to actual children).
But people spent 500 years discussing the horrors of the children's crusade without ever really questioning if it happened.
Funnily enough, the word "infantry" comes from the same word as "infant". IE, the young guys on the battle field.
> In 1814, for example, Napoleon conscripted many teenagers for his armies.[28] Thousands of children participated on all sides of the First World War and the Second World War.[29][30][31][32] Children continued to be used throughout the 20th and early 21st century on every continent, with concentrations in parts of Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.[33] Only since the turn of the millennium have international efforts begun to limit and reduce the military use of children.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_military
I can see how it would be controversial because an argument could be made that children only are useful when you have some kind of artillery that doesn’t require the strength needed for a bow / crossbow. Still, I wouldn’t discount anything, especially on the purely modern subjective view of “it wouldn’t make financial sense”. Lots of human endeavors and actions don’t make financial sense. It’s not the only axis upon which humans behave.
I suspect of the controversy probably arises from the age “child” denotes. Is it a prepubescent human (lets say 10 and under) or a teenager (let’s say 13 and over).
While a Crusade made up primarily of children is not realistic. The 'People's Crusade' was a thing. During the first Crusade 40 thousand or so poor peasants and various religious fanatics including many women and children departed Northern France a couple of months before the 'proper' army left.
It wasn't pretty. Along the way they murdered thousands of Jews, sacked or attempted to sack multiple cities and most of those who survived the journey were eventually massacred by the Turks (according to some that's one of the reasons why the Turks were so ill prepared when the actual Crusader army arrived, they expected that all westerners were poorly armed, disorganized and had no understanding or proper warfare... )
Whole areas exported there population as soldiers, mercenaries and mining people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard Most of them were like the taliban in afghanistan, interlocked in eternal holy wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
Well obviously the taliban aint real either. A mountainous area, in eternal intertribal warfare.. not actually accepting the nation state.. ridiculous thought.
The english soldiers fighting in the independence war against the americans, were partially germans, sold by in debted aristoctrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junker_(Prussia)
This was the reality on the ground, even up until the 2nd worldwar. The only escape for the peasants and althose 2nd,3rd sons who were bound to the land, was to go on pilgrimages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrimage or to flee to the "new world" were the nicer frontier awaited them.
I find the idea of a children crusadd very plausible. The crusader knights surely promised the conquered lands to peasants who would follow them. And pre-pestilence europe was certainly crowded.
Idealism is nice. Success self hypnosis is nice. But not believing in the brutality of bygone reality, while some parts of it are still around you, is foolish, and spreading that foolishness, is preparing for it to repeat itself. Work hard and meaningful, if not for yourselves, then to prevent the return of the olden times.
What do Junkers in Prussia have to do with the Hessian mercenaries who fought in the war of independence?
It was Frederick II who leased the army of Hesse-Kassel to the British. He was not some random indebted aristocrat but rather the ruler of a sovereign state. The soldiers were 'professionals' who volunteered and were paid a salary. Not (as you make it sound) random peasants conscripts sold off to pay of some debts.
> This was the reality on the ground, even up until the 2nd worldwar.
> The only escape for the peasants and althose 2nd,3rd sons who were bound to the land, was to go on pilgrimages
Yes. The only escape for peasants in the 1800's to 1930s was to go on pilgrimages.
In any case middle or upperclass people were more likely to go on pilgrimages than peasants (proportionally) even during the middle ages. Any long journey was prohibitively expensive for most people to afford.
> The crusader knights surely promised the conquered lands to peasants who would follow them
Generally crusader knights, especially the nobles were not too keen about taking thousands of untrained peasants who have to be fed and supplied with other provisions by someone on Crusades without providing anything in return. Generally various unorthodox/anti-establishment religious preachers like (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Hermit) were the instigators of most 'popular' crusades.
They were ussually opposed by the nobility, the clergy and the bourgeoisie. For instance Shepherds Crusades of 1251 and 1320.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldatenhandel_unter_Landgraf_...
Read the Kantonspflicht part. They were drafted peasants.
>Yes. The only escape for peasants in the 1800's to >1930s was to go on pilgrimages.
Read old newspapers and alamanachs. They regularly locked vagabunds up into workhouses and the "euthanization" in the camps starting 1930 was just a continuation of that policy. Religous pilgrimage, entering servitude (sailor on ships etc.) or being rich was the only way to be able to migrate over long distances.Of course there were the usual religous purges, which pushed parts of the population to migrate to "safe havens" in the local klein-staaterei.
https://wiki.genealogy.net/Franken_J%C3%BCdisch https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugenotten#Hugenotten_in_Deuts...
>The crusader knights surely promised the conquered lands to peasants who would follow them
I was wrong there. It was mostly greek-orthodox and armeniens. If you read the sources, the whole crusade affairs were a mess, regularly bogging down in local warfare and criminal activity along the road.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BCrstentum_Antiochia#Geog...
It turns out that it was a real phenomenon, and many children did leave home, but being children, practically none of them made it to the Holy Land. The journey for many was much, much shorter. And likewise, for many it was merely a spiritual crusade and they went nowhere but "TO GOD!" as they were heard to shout.
There were eyewitnesses and contemporary accounts, and I compiled an impressive list of sources to document what could be gleaned from those accounts from a modern perspective.
This story sounds actually plausible as it may not be that far from where the children started to a port city.
The Wikipedia article mentions that also, but only after one of the children who apparently had visions from God and said the Mediterranean Sea would part into two and leave a path (sort of like the Red Sea for Moses) for them to march directly to the Holy Land...when that failed they settled on hitching a ride on ships from people who turned out to be slavers.
It's pretty big jump from "it never happened" to "some things happened, just not the way the stories told us."
> No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn
> Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee.
They protected the neighbouring property.
ERs in the US are required to provide stabilizing care to patients who come in, even if the patient can't pay, by law. It's a law because otherwise some of them wouldn't.
I hope that was a joke
Reinstating the penalty is going to cost political goodwill, which is why the Dems aren't doing it.
Regardless of whether the penalty is or is not in place, I wouldn't recommend being poor and sick, regardless of whether you are insured, or are freeloading.
It also pales in comparison to the burden and costs of existing system in the US.
If your point is just that the US healthcare system is far more-broken than most, and in some unique ways, all for no good reason—sure, yeah, of course that's true.
The court case as a whole argued that because the GOP changed the ACA in a manner that made part of it (the $0 fee) illegal, the entirety of the ACA should be made illegal.
The fifth circuit agreed with some of the arguments in the case (the fee one), but did not practically change anything about the ACA.
And then SCOTUS, surprising ~everyone, ruled that actually the whole of the ACA is constitutional.
Look at this timeline, and you tell me - who spent years trying to re-introduce the free rider problem, and to break the ACA? Congress, the president, and the plaintiff states... or the fifth circuit, which when presented with a singular, narrow question, ruled that a $0 fee (whatever that is) isn't a tax?
Now, as of 2022, we are in a world where the ACA has been thoroughly litigated, and is still here, with the free rider problem hanging like a millstone over its neck.
It should have never been a tax specifically because it's an unconstitutional act. Calling it a tax is the letter vs the spirit of the constitution.
If you and others like yourself want to ensure everyone has health insurance then __make it mandatory for the state to pay for it__. Anything else and you're just taxing the poor for being poor.
That is an interesting opinion, but at this point, both a conservative, and then a super-conservative, packed-with-federalist-society SCOTUS has disagreed with you twice on this issue (5-4) and then (7-2). It's about as written-in-stone as you can get in the United States.
The courts think this is above-board, the executive thinks this is above-board, most of the public thinks its above-board, it's safe to say its above-board.
lets not use that as justification, shall we?
carrying private service X is required for you to exist in the united states. If you don't pay for X, you get fined Y as a punishment.
yep, I'm sure the powers-that-be considering that above-board should be the only justification we need!
It was also perfectly constitutional[0], hence the need for that 13th amendment. And that civil war thing. As it turns out, the constitution kind of sucks[0], it has a lot of problems with it. Fewer than it did in the past, but we aren't quite at the end of history just yet.
You're going to need a better complaint than 'it's unconstitutional', as this is pretty verifiably constitutional. The people who have been empowered[1] by the founding fathers to determine what is, and what is not constitutional have determined that this is constitutional. It's not a matter of opinion at this point.
> carrying private service X is required for you to exist in the united states.
And that's nothing new. Government can compel all sorts of things from you. Showing up to contribute your labour to a jury duty. Involuntary servitude in the military. Taxing the land you live on. Following emergency orders. Not heading a communist political movement. Every society - even this society - provides you with privileges, and requires obligations from you.
This obligation has been ruled to be well within the legal framework of this society, and if you think it should be outside that legal framework, you should look into passing a constitutional amendment on the subject.
Or, you could believe that this obligation is a constitutional, but bad idea, and have the legislature repeal it. Either way, it's currently constitutional. [0]
[0] You're confusing 'constitutional' with 'just'. They are not the same thing.
[1] Actually, SCOTUS' powers in this sphere are what's unconstitutional[2], but we all close our eyes, and collectively pretend that they are.
[2] You're not going to find anything in either the constitution, or passed legislature granting SCOTUS the incredibly broad powers it currently enjoys. These powers were invented out of thin air, and are backed by neither fiat, nor democratic will. All that the constitution says on the subject is 'We should, like, probably have courts. That should do stuff, maybe.'
the question is whether or not the government can force you to pay for a __PRIVATE__ service just for __EXISTING__ within the borders of the US.
There is __NO PRECEDENT__ for this. The closest you can get are things like car insurance where you're required to carry insurance in order to drive on US roads. You can choose not to drive, you cannot choose to "not exist".
That puts this into an entirely different category. The fact that it originally got rationalized as a tax opens a whole different can of worms. Good luck refusing to pay taxes.
Additionally, the whole point of these cases was not simply to get rid of the penalty. The idea was to get rid of the penalty so they could go back to the supreme court and again claim that the mandate is unconstitutional because now there is no "tax" associated with it.
I don't know where things are at now, but it seems unlikely to go anywhere now because it would be difficult to argue that buying insurance is required at all at this point. So we are left with the backup gop strategy of hoping that disarming the mandate will simply bankrupt the program. At least until republican voters wake up and realize that the program is miles better than what we had before.
This mandate makes sense from a moral point of view, especially for true emergency situations. However, the act didn't take care of the cost of care, which was placed on hospitals and ultimately passed on to other patients and the government. Obamacare attempted to address this issue.
EMTALA also distorted US healthcare be redirecting poorer people to expensive emergency care rather than preventive or primary care, which might well serve many of their needs better. That's also something that Obamacare was designed to fix.
$80 billion of 3.4 trillion. A rounding error.
It's one thing to declare something too dangerous and work on containment, but what's being described here isn't that.
For deaths, there's maybe 300 accidental deaths, 10,000 - 15,000 homicides, and like 60,000 suicides. Non-death injuries scale similarly, with the caveat that like 6,000 ish people per year try to kill themselves with a gun and fail, but still injure themselves.
Reading the article, that's not true.
They watered down the fence line to protect someone else's land.
> Firefighters did eventually show up, but only to fight the fire on the neighboring property, whose owner had paid the fee.
> "They put water out on the fence line out here. They never said nothing to me. Never acknowledged. They stood out here and watched it burn," Cranick said.
So to your examples...
> They will save your life. They won't treat your trick knee, erectile dysfunction, or failing vision.
It would be closer to the story if it was "they won't save you, but they'll spray down everyone else with a disinfectant to protect them from your disease."
I thought in the US, hospitals were only required to stabilize, not treat, non-paying patients. For example, if someone has cancer, they are not required to perform surgery or chemotherapy, just stabilize their symptoms at the moment.
So will firefighters. They'll save your life to the best of their ability, no matter any contracts, payments, taxes, etc.
Saving your house is another matter.
We’ll always risk to reward. But more and more the phase after life saving is trending toward “surround and drown” - not that I want to fight like detroit in the 2010’s, but yes we do make a call sometimes to stop risking when lives are all confirmed safe.
In fact Hospitals were not required to treat you until 1986, which was part of the COBRA act.
Prior to that there was a large practice of "Patient Dumping" where a hospital would kick you out if they found out they you couldn't pay for your treatment. Hospitals in the US would literally let you die out side the ER doors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...
The same logic could apply to police... what if all the crime is coming from an unincorporated part of town? Do you just go and start policing it (kind of like an invading army occupying)? Or do you erect borders / station patrol cars near key locations?
They will save you from an acute emergency, stabilize you, then dump you into a care home with inadequate care or to the street as appropriate, where you play the long game of succumbing to whatever ails you.
The FD had tried for years to find a workable solution and failed because the people in the unincorporated part of the county just didn't want to pay for fire services. IIRC, the county had tried three times in the previous decade to pass taxes to either fund the municipal FD or set up their own; three times the residents of the unincorporated part voted against it. The FD had tried retroactively charging owners, and spent more on collections than they'd earn.
If you don't pay, you'd have the lowest priority. But there is no reason other than bureaucracy that they couldn't have handled it.
Even then, there's still the value of the land.
> South Fulton's mayor said that the fire department can't let homeowners pay the fee on the spot, because the only people who would pay would be those whose homes are on fire.
Though I am fully in support of just letting the house burn.
And it doesn't have to be guaranteed if it works 90% of the time.
The second part is more significant in people simply don't have the money to pay.
[1] https://stories.opengov.com/somervillema/published/BhSqQ0eG2
Or there would simply be no fire service at all because the rural area isn't profitable to service.
Or do you have any evidence they actively opted out of the $75 payment?
I discussed the case a lot at the time it happened, and it never came out that he "forgot" to pay the fee. It was very clear at the time that he thought he didn't need to and they'd put out the fire anyway.
1) Insured by another company. The sensible course of action is to fight the fire and bill them. Every company benefits from such cooperation.
2) Uninsured. The moral hazard problem, if too many people are not paying the only sensible approach is to let uninsured buildings burn.
At any rate, in response to the story, the county changed it so paying when your house was already ablaze was a punitive but not impossible option. I believe it was $3,500 when they instituted it.
Which, frankly, seems like the proper way to handle the moral hazard.
How do you deal with freeloaders in society?
Meanwhile, governments have excellent was of collecting on low-four figure debts secured by real estate.
And, as I pointed out, the appropriate punishment for freeloading is paying a heavy fine when you opt to use it.
If you're in the middle of nowhere you're probably also on unincorporated land, but the challenges of being in the middle of nowhere have nothing to do with the land being unincorporated.
People do live in some of these less-accessible part of the island, but it's outside of the department's service area. Fires in other areas are officially the responsibility of the regional fire service, like for forest fires. Our department might go on certain calls, especially life safety, but will typically keep some people and vehicles back in our own service area in case calls come in there as well.
I think the term for people outside of the district is "self-insured", because nobody else will be able to assist quickly.
Universal health care might have changed the firefighters' minds. On the other hand, perhaps other liabilities would not have been covered too, so maybe not.
Just because this was an emergency doesn't mean it wasn't unexpected. We would want firefighters to go the next town over if there was a fire there, so it seems like their insurance policy was improperly under specified.
They did have a plan, and they did execute on it - exactly as they advertised.
...and if they decided to risk it, and put out the fire anyway - and tied up all their pumps hoses ladders and trucks, and then another call comes in a few miles away - from someone that did pay for coverage - how much liability would they have for tying up all of their equipment at a fire they are not supposed to be fighting, and thus unable to respond to the fires they are supposed to be responding to?
People in this country should be free to make stupid decisions - and free to suffer the consequences of those stupid decisions.
The linked article aside, letting buildings burn down is in fact standard procedure for fire fighters. A sufficiently dense fire is extremely hard to stop as long as it can fuel itself and a controlled burn down is often the only reasonable way to end a fire. It's not like anything would be recoverable in any case.
Defensive operations on an active fire ground are standard operating procedures; no argument.
But most departments do not operate the way this department in Tennessee does where they did not run the call when it was received because the caller was not on their participant list.
They would have likely encountered a brush fire or, at most, a room and contents fire from the structures closest exposure based on the story and they would not have let it just freely burn.
Where I live firefighters certain actions will require a fee (obviously not paid to the firefighters), like pumping out a cellar or felling a tree on private land which is not threatening any property, but actually not fighting a fire when it would be easily possible would be unthinkable.
This means that often saving lives and saving property can not be done simultaneously. Some time ago here there was a report about house ownwers getting upset at firefighters for just standing around "doing nothing", while their property burned, which happened exactly for the reason outlined above.
Also it says that this TN guy had insurance. I wonder if it would have been worth his insurance company's while to make sure that $75 was always paid, either by paying it themselves, or making him pay it, or paying it and sending him the bill, and somehow making it a condition.. to protect themselves from having to pay out... as the London article is about insurance companies starting fire brigades themselves for that very reason
Not to mention the question of duress when the FD shows up and says "sign this and we'll put out the fire."
Back on the farm, which is 30 minutes from the nearest fire brigade, one does have to pay to opt-in for fire service. They still answer the phone if you're not on the list. You're also strongly encouraged to have a pond or cistern near anything you want saved. I don't know if the farm's mortgage required payment of that fee, but I do know we were given insurance discounts for having ponds near the houses and barn.
I do know of one case of a particularly belligerent property owner who refused to pay, had fires, still wouldn't pay, etc. who did eventually wind up with firefighters watching his property burn. Hard to really feel bad about something like that.
At that time and place, fire protection wasn't considered a public service unless you lived in town. I never heard anyone question the arrangement and there was little appetite in that era for the tax increase that would've been required to provide universal protection.
Most states also have a county, but this is different from a township. New Jersey and Pennsylvania (as part of the original 13 colonies) don't take part in the federal township system and have their own system with the same name that is otherwise not related.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. People at the time must have known that fires in cities were extremely dangerous because they could spread over a great area. It's logical that insurers would want to work together to prevent all fires, purely out of self-interest to protect their insured properties, and then sue the pants off negligent and/or uninsured property owners after each near-miss.
The paper in TFA says as much, but it's weird to me that people would uncritically accept the proposed narrative in the first place.
Unless the fire service is paired with insurance covering the cost of a rebuild? But I don't think the original fire services offered that.
I suspect not, because property ownership in England used to be secret - ie. Even the government may not have known who owned land. And if you don't know who owns it, who must pay the bill?
The incentives are very clear, if nobody does it, no fire brigades will exist. (I can also imagine other reasons, e g. membership might have been required by some law or by association.) And in the end every fire which is extinguished is a fire which didn't spread.
Just some little aside, today there are people who do firefighting for free. What are the incentives for that?
Yeah it sounds to me from the article like the insurance was for the rebuild, and the firefighting was something the insurance company did to reduce their payouts.
So I imagine if you didn't have insurance, you still were at more risk than if you did, similar to now, because the fire dept isn't going to save everything every time.
The coverage is apparently to pay for damages. It's not fire insurance, it's property insurance, in case of fire.
That's the point though. In spite of the logical and practical evaluation, there was evidence from multiple, trusted sources that said otherwise. And history is full of people doing dumb things and making bad decisions, so why not this one too?
Also, it's self-affirming - "Look at us! We've got problems, but at least we know well enough to fight fires when there is one, despite money problems"
Consider the following:
* The first Fire Brigade, in Rome, was established by someone who would insist on buying your building before extinguishing the fire [1]
* In the present day, you can live in an unincorporated area, decline fire protection offers from the county and from your insurer, and the fire brigade won't come out if you have a fire [2]
* The article provides 11 different sources for the apparently incorrect claim London's insurance fire brigades circa-1700 let uninsured buildings burn.
Personally I find it quite easy to understand why people might believe the incorrect claim.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus#Rise_t... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna39516346
It’s quite possible it is true, but we are a long way from any direct evidence that it was generally the case.
We are the defacto fire and medical insurance providers in metropolitan areas that employ/staff fire and EMS departments. Funded by property or sales tax, we have become the primary care providers for thousands of people in our cities.
We also get called for water leaks, hazardous spills, vehicle accidents, construction mishaps, swift water rescues, hiker rescues, venomous snake removal, bee attacks and dangerous hive removal, roof collapses, natural gas leaks, stubbed toes, fentanyl abuse, mental health emergencies, gun fights, knife fights, cooking fires, refrigerant leaks, trench collapse, people and things stuck in very high places, flash floods, electrical problems and much much more...
Unfortunately, the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the fore and fire fighters would tend to go to prospective clients’ houses in groups, making loud comments like ‘Very inflammable looking place, this’ and ‘Probably go up like a firework with just one carelessly-dropped match, know what I mean?’”
-- Terry Pratchett: Guards! Guards!
> The first ever Roman fire brigade was created by Crassus. Fires were almost a daily occurrence in Rome, and Crassus took advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department, by creating his own brigade—500 men strong—which rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the firefighters did nothing while Crassus offered to buy the burning building from the distressed property owner, at a miserable price. If the owner agreed to sell the property, his men would put out the fire; if the owner refused, then they would simply let the structure burn to the ground. After buying many properties this way, he rebuilt them, and often leased the properties to their original owners or new tenants.
Besides: it isn't clear we should incentivize untrained professionals to run into burning buildings. Ships are somewhat unique in that the people who are saving you are also sailors, and are presumably at least minimally qualified to help another ship in distress.
At least in the US - most areas assess the value of the structure and the value of the land separately.
I'd be in favor of providing a lien on the existing title in the amount of the structure's value (or some relatively high percentage of it, maybe depending on how much is salvaged by the firefighters) if the fire department puts out an uninsured building.
There's no reason to let it burn - it's a waste of resources, big source of pollutants, and a risk to neighboring areas. But I also think you can't reward property owners for taking a gamble that their property won't catch on fire.
The government has the ability to tax for such services. As a partner who own a piece of a rental property in a ex-urban town, the volunteer fire company levies a tax that amounts to $300/year (based on valuation) which covers 2-3 towns with fire, ems and paramedic services.
And in your case - the results are actually very similar (What do you think happens when you fail to pay your city/county taxes? A lien on your title happens...)
So again - I'm all for creating shared services and paying for them, but some folks aren't. In those cases I'd still rather not see people's homes burn (for all sorts of reasons) and this is a meaningful incentive to put the home out.
There seems to be a lot of people on this site that think life is fair.
Is it fair that you paid for firefighting and your neighbor didn’t but still had their house saved during a fire?
Arguably no, but that is completely irrelevant as it is still in the greater public interest for the fire to be put out.
There’s a certain childish aspect about caring about fairness in these types of situations as opposed to what is right and moral.
Honestly - I think your attitude here is actually far more childish than mine. You're preaching about what's right and moral - I'm discussing practical details and incentives that might make people actually go do a thing.
My attitude is hardly making an assumption that life is fair - it's about making sure that service (fire fighting) has a space in which to exist at all.
Because what we're really talking about here is a social contract...
When it becomes clear that violating the social contract has no downside - many more folks start to do it, and we rapidly end up in a spot where the company that wrote the contract (Us - we the freaking people wrote the contract) are bankrupt. And now not only do the people not paying not have a fire service... NO ONE has a fire service. Because few people were willing to chip in the money when they got the benefit for free.
So back to your silly, silly question:
"Is it fair that you paid for firefighting and your neighbor didn’t but still had their house saved during a fire?"
That's absolutely relevant outside of a single isolated case. It might not matter for one instance - it matters a whole freaking lot in aggregate.
Voters in the county in question did eventually approve "universal" fire response, either small prepaid fee or post-paid full cost after response, but it sounds as though they won't consider converting the fees into standard taxes until 70% of residents have opted in to protection. Quite a few people who live and vote there seemingly have no interest in fire service.
A place where the people who control the place are so reactionary and regressive that a piddly increase in a tax levy requires a 70% supermajority is a place to move away from. Gross.
I imagine some similar issues have happened at sea, but it seems harder to take advantage of and make profit on, since it probably wasn't too common for ships with expensive cargo to sink. And even if they did, it would be hard to guarantee getting there in time. Whereas in a city, fires are a pretty regular occurrence.
So while a pretty good system, it's not without its flaws and perverse incentives.
The best IMO way to view this is to first clarify whether or not that service falls into the 'natural monopoly' category, at least when it comes to basic provision of services. That category is defined by having a lack of meaningful or feasible competition, i.e. would multiple competing services result in a better outcome than a single state-run service would?
My view is that provision of fire and police services, health care and education services, water, electricity and fiber optic connectivity service, as well as the maintenance of roads, etc. generally fall into the natural monopoly sector, with caveats:
1) People should be able to augment basic services however they wish, to they extent they can afford. One can purchase a fire engine and a water tank and keep it on one's property, for example. Private security guards can be hired to augment police protection. One can hire a home nurse and expensive medical equipment, etc. Private tutors can be hired to augment a child's education.
2) State-run services should have competitive processes built in - i.e. we may have a public fire department, but the manufacture and sale of fire-fighting equipment is a competitive business and should not be monopolized, etc. Corruption in the form of fire officials giving preferential contracts to sub-par manufacturers in exchange for bribes should be a serious criminal activity, etc.
Here's the problem with such schemes. Often both the providers and the customers of "augmenting services" will have an incentive to hollow out the state-provided service until it's substandard.
For instance, let's say the government provides "basic" health insurance but allows private plans. Then the providers of private plans will lobby the government to keep the "basic" service as low-quality as possible, so that people are incentivized to buy the private plans. Furthermore, those who purchase private plans will not personally benefit much from the state-provided scheme, so they will have little interest in its success and little desire to subsidize it.
In the worst case, the result is that the state-run service becomes permanently low-quality. Then people attribute this to public-sector inefficiency and say that "obviously" the free market would do a better job. Then the state-provided service gets abolished when it never had a chance to succeed.
For regulated monopolies, there's further the distinction well if they are paid by the users of the service, or by taxes levied on the general population.
When it comes to water power and electricity, I think individuals should be able to opt out if they do not want the service by the Monopoly.
If you don't pay it, a 10% penalty is added. The next step, a lien is placed on the property.
They never stop picking up the trash, though. The next purchaser of your property has to pay the existing trash bill!
This same council raised water rates so they could reduce the penalties for late water bill payments.
For example,
- In some states there's a cap on property tax increases. So the moving to a fee-model takes it off the tax levy by making it a user fee.
- Bundling trash services with the tax levy is inequitable in that commercial properties are subsidizing services they do not use. A 20 unit apartment building usually has to use a private hauler, for example.
- Some places try to setup consumption based models, where you pay per occupancy unit or even by the bag.
- every household gets trash collection service, no matter what
- every household must pay a flat fee for trash collection service, no matter what
Why charge it as a separate fee?
If you have more space/land in between, it doesn't matter nearly as much.
As far as I know, there are still plenty of examples of that model failing hideously in various ways (eg: [1][2], and many examples of unproductive competition from TFA itself). This article is specifically about firefighting in London, in a certain time period — notably starting after the Great Fire, when presumably those dangers were fresh in people's minds.
And also, to its credit, I think the article leaves the question pretty muddy and un-answered.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus#Rise_to_power_and_wealth
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Tweed#Early_careerIn regard to the legend - I don't think that anyone ever said that fire brigades would refuse to put out uninsured buildings where the fire might spread to other buildings, that fire brigades couldn't be induced by cash to put out the fires of the uninsured, or that cities never offered baseline inducements for fire brigades to put out fires whether the buildings were insured or not. That would be adding content to the "legend" in order to debunk it. Looking at the record and finding out that all of these things happened is expected and unremarkable.
The fires that we would expect not to be put out if the "legend" were accurate would be fires that happened to uninsured buildings that didn't endanger nearby structures, buildings owned by people who didn't have enough cash or credit to convince an uncontracted fire brigade to act, that were close enough to the city to be accessible to a fire brigade yet far enough away that the city didn't feel responsible for them. Additionally, the chance that a building owner might simply pay (under flaming duress) a brigade that showed up would mean that they probably generally would show up, and if they weren't ever willing to watch a building burn, they'd be undercutting their own last minute deals.
These are the exactly the fires that we would expect not to be in the record. Fires in detached structures, owned by people with no money.
It seems that the city started rewarding brigades for putting out fires in uninsured households based on the order in which they arrived. Additionally, they were consolidating/federating in order to take on larger contracts - which incidentally meant [original scholarship] that the consolidated/federated brigades would always get the first arrival bonus through this collusion. As the number of independent brigades dwindled and the socialist city reward money became large enough that the actual insurance element receded to only being profitable for large contracts rather than individual homes, the consolidated block of fire brigades organized their own nationalization.
This whole "unincorporated land" execuse is a sad state of affairs. The whole "You're not with us, so it's not our problem" mindset is really why America is so low down on every single ranking in the world, except for military might. It seems like a constant battle to make sure you're doing ok at the expense of others. School kids getting shot? It's ok, I can still have my gun. Unarmed people getting shot by police? It's ok, they haven't shot me. Corrupt police officer hired a town over? It's ok, he's their problem now. People dying because they can't afford to visit a doctor? That's ok, I can.
Instead of grouping together the US has decided to constantly separate it self among itself. Other countries have orginisations that deal with entire areas. The US each town has to have it's own. It results in a lower quality of service. Not every town can afford x,y,z fire equipment that is only going to be used once a month but an biradge that deals with 10 towns and would be using it two times a week can.
The thing is, the solution to most of the US' problems aren't hard. They're already figured out by everyone else. We all just have to put up with hearing about the craziness that comes from the country that thinks it's great while their ass is on fire.
This didn't happen. A building burned but everybody was fine. Had lives been at risk, the firefighters would have intervened. The "moral" you are taking from this story is predicated on gross misinformation.
Again, more misinformation! They did go out, and made sure the fire didn't spread off the property. If anybody had been imperiled, the firefighters would have helped. FFS, it's right in that article:
> They put water out on the fence line out here. They never said nothing to me. Never acknowledged. They stood out here and watched it burn," Cranick said.
And if the firefighters were rude to these people, it's probably because the people who lived there were a bunch of anti-social shitheads and the firefighters knew it. But the firefighters did go out anyway. Stop your nonsense.
No, they went out after the neighbour phoned up because of a fire on their property. Anyone who has fully read the article will know that. So stop your nonsense.
"Firefighters did eventually show up, but only to fight the fire on the neighboring property, whose owner had paid the fee."
Do you personally work at a company? If so, I demand you to help me fix a problem I'm having. I haven't paid you, but that shouldn't matter. What's that? You won't help me? But you helped my competitor who did establish a contract with you in which they paid you a monthly fee in exchange for a guarantee you'd help them when the needed it.
The horror. The absolute travesty. Society has failed.
The article doesn't say that does it. They say the fire department was contacted and responded that they weren't on the list. They refused to accept any payment. And only turned up when someone who was on the list called.
We have a phrase for people like you, jog on.
The claim “firefighters wouldn’t come if someone’s life was in danger from a fire” is extraordinary. The evidence “firefighters didn’t come when no one’s life was in danger from a fire” isn’t.
Come up with real evidence or quit bellyaching.
that the firefighters didn't know if anyone's live was in danger because they didn't show up.
The evidence is
that they refused to show up when called and only showed up when called by someone else. Without being prescene at the scene it is not possible for a firefigther to know if someone's life is endanger or not because the person calling isn't trained to know that.
The real evidence for the very basic claim is there.
Yeah... that's about the weakest argument I've heard this week. Firefighters don't have magical spidey senses to tell them whether someone is trapped in a burning building. They will go based on what the homeowner says -- it doesn't take special training to verify that 3 people live at your house and all of them are on the road with you watching it burn.
Fire department certainly isn't risking life and limb to comb through an actively burning building verifying it to be empty when the homeowner themselves already said it was.
>that the firefighters didn't know if anyone's live was in danger because they didn't show up.
Person: Hello, my house is on fire come save it please.
FireDepartment: Is anyone's life in danger?
Person: No.
FireDepartment: Thank you for letting me know.
That's how easy it is, same conversation would happen whether or not they were on "the list".
a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls
The claim of callous disregard for human life you're making about American firefighters is completely unsupported by evidence. The closest example you have is case where nobody was harmed. But we've already established that you don't let facts interfere with your narratives.
The person on the phone often doesn't have all the info. It often happens that fire department only discover a risk to life upon arriving where someone mentions that someone is in the house. Or that X,Y,Z is there.
Someone phoned the fire department. The fire department didn't visit because they weren't on a list. The person who was making the decision if there was a risk to life was not on scene nor trained to make that decision. Someone dies the lawsuit would be massive for that level of incomptence.
a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls
This isn't a thing in the US. Hospitals will stabilize anyone, regardless of ability to pay. First responders- police, ambulance, fire fighters- will save any life they are able to. Preventative health care is a different story, and even that is complicated.
Unincorporated land holds a very tiny percentage of the population of the US; trying to use this as an analogy for the rest of society is just disingenuous.
> Other countries have orginisations that deal with entire areas.
So does the US. Even unincorporated land falls under the jurisdiction of whatever county it happens to be in as well as the state and federal governments; the only difference is it doesn't have a local town government... because there is no local town.
This is the bare minimum to avoid a PR disaster. When someone is dying slowing of a chronic condition (diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease) the US system will just watch them die unless they have insurance.
(This is, to my mind, what caused the United States to end up with socialized medicine-- albeit a socialized medicine system where we don't get to have public discourse about how it works.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...
Uninsured and under-insured people are cited as one reason why treatment costs are so high. Whether these cases actually contribute to costs in a substantive way doesn't stop the mandate to provide free emergency care being used as a political football.
This is like a burger joint telling you they don't serve onion rings, and then you insisting that in fact they do, because they put circle-cut onions on their burgers, and technically those are both rings and onions. Like... OK? So what? Which framing: "this place serves onion rings", or "this place does NOT serve onion rings", is more likely to confuse a diner?
The only times I've seen people really, seriously try to frame this as "socialized medicine" is when they don't understand how very limited the mandated scope of care is. It doesn't amount to much more than "you can't let someone simply die or give birth on the curb right outside your ER". The vast majority of what counts as medical care isn't part of it.
Where I live, in a rural area of a red state with a lot of wealth disparity, giving free medical care to anybody absolutely is seen as "socialized medicine". (Of course, there'll be a healthy dose of divisive racial and class politics mixed in to the argument, too.) The reasons behind that opinion are absolutely motivated by lack of understanding, but there are strong political beliefs there as well.
I'd like to see substantive discussion about how the US healthcare "system" really works. This is a detail that a lot of people don't know about or understand. I think the idea that "we already don't let people who can't pay just die" has a good moral argument behind it.
Suburb in a red state here, grew up mostly in rural red America, so I get what you mean. I'm sure there's also a lot of thinking that free ER care is a lot more expansive than it really is, and belief that "welfare types" (ahem, cough, cough, lay-finger-along-side-of-nose) regularly use ERs to get ordinary healthcare for free. As is usually the case, I expect laying out what's actually available and how the mandate actually works tends to soften resistance to it. I'm well aware that the Left does some of this too, but god I wish right-wing media would stop misleading Republicans about how basic things like social-safety-net programs and taxes work. The death of the Fairness Doctrine, however not-entirely-comfortable I may be with the thing, has been a curse on this country, in practice.
> I'd like to see substantive discussion about how the US healthcare "system" really works. This is a detail that a lot of people don't know about or understand. I think the idea that "we already don't let people who can't pay just die" has a good moral argument behind it.
Ugh, tell me about it. I especially think the enormous proportion of medical spending that's already public isn't well-understood enough. Especially since some of those tend to cover some of the most expensive demographics—the elderly, the disabled, soldiers. Failure to grasp how our current system already works leads to those infamous "keep government out of my medicare!" protest signs and, more importantly, failure to appreciate that shifting to cover everyone with one variety or another of government-funded healthcare is actually a far less radical shift than some seem to suppose it is.
Sorry if I pounced on you there, BTW. I could have been less confrontational with that previous post.
It's good. The nerd pedant in me can't let a mention of EMTALA go by without hammering on it. It's a bit of cognitive dissonance to inflict on the "free healthcare market"-types who have moral qualms about letting people die but aren't about to give an inch on "socialism".
The US has the highest preventable death rate in the developed world. People die because they don't get to see a doctor. First responders will save you. However, the amount of deaths because people couldn't pay is massive for a so-called developed country. Have diabetes and no insurance? That's pretty much a death sentence and they'll watch you die. Need surgery? No insurance? No surgery and death because of complications caused by the lack of surgery.
> Unincorporated land holds a very tiny percentage of the population of the US; trying to use this as an analogy for the rest of society is just disingenuous.
As used with the multiple other examples, it's an entire culture. Not just "Oh unincorporated land, that's just crazy". It's disingenuous to act like my point is hinged on unincorporated land.
> So does the US. Even unincorporated land falls under the jurisdiction of whatever county it happens to be in as well as the state and federal governments; the only difference is it doesn't have a local town government... because there is no local town.
There are state troopers who have jurisction over certaint things. However, there is then an array of other law enforcement agencies such as towns having a police department and sheriff departments which have jurisictions over certain things. They don't have a simple police force that deals with everything in that area. This results in crimes not being truly investigated because no one is sure whose job it is.
There is no regional fire department as shown in the linked news article. The fire department that was paid by a neighbour to ensure they didn't get fire damage ignored a fire nearby because they weren't paid by someone else. The ignoring of that fire resulted in fire damage to the paying customer. A regional fire department would have dealt with that.
They also have by far the highest obesity rate in the developed world.
> Have diabetes and no insurance? That's pretty much a death sentence and they'll watch you die. Need surgery? No insurance? No surgery and death because of complications caused by the lack of surgery.
I'm supportive of universal healthcare, but this is a huge exaggeration. If policy decisions are motivated by uninformed memes like this, then if we ever do get universal healthcare, it will be a disaster.
You can buy human insulin for $25 a vial at Walmart. It's not as good, but it's what people used a couple decades ago. Countries with nationalized healthcare often have long backlogs for treatments. The cancer backlog in the UK is over 2 million people and it's continuing to grow [1]. Also, if you are insured, you're typically going to get new and more sophisticated treatments on the US compared to most places with nationalized healthcare.
[1] https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2020/06/01/over-2-million-...
>> They also have by far the highest obesity rate in the developed world.
So... I am sure that is one reason of the highest preventable death rate. doesn't invalidate GP point.
> I'm supportive of universal healthcare, but this is a huge exaggeration.
Sadly in a way its not an exaggeration at all, will doctors and nurses literally watch you die of course not. If you go into the ER they legally have to stabilize you. But that's it. If I have cancer and and really sick, If they take to me to the ER, they will stabilize me but they want start treating the cancer. Even if its still early, they will watch you die over time as the cancer advances and makes you worse.
To be fair, I am certain the doctors and nurses want to treat you. But the hospital won't/can't allow it for bullshit reasons.
> You can buy human insulin for $25 a vial at Walmart. It's not as good, but it's what people used a couple decades ago.
I can't believe your defending poor people having to use worse insulin. How is that okay for you? We are talking about peoples lives, can the richest country on earth aim a little higher then throwing decades old medical knowledge at poor people to shut them up?
> I'm supportive of universal healthcare,
No you aren't, after that claim about supporting it, you spend the rest of your post shooting down universal healthcare.
> Countries with nationalized healthcare often have long backlogs for treatments. The cancer backlog in the UK is over 2 million people and it's continuing to grow [1].
> Also, if you are insured, you're typically going to get new and more sophisticated treatments on the US compared to most places with nationalized healthcare.
The UK has its issue, but from what I can see its because they are purposely starving it of money so they can ultimately privatize it.
America's health care is fucking garbage. There is no defending it, I'm so tired of spending my time calling several different companies to figure out why I am getting billed for something I shouldn't be. I'm not exaggerating either, literally one or twice a month I get the joy of calling my insurance and whatever doctor sent the bill and try and solve why my insurance won't cover it.
Bullshit reasons like they don't want to go bankrupt and not be able to serve anyone at all?
This isn't true. Healthcare spending has grown every year and has never significantly fallen relative to GDP. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
> America's health care is fucking garbage.
I agree, but it's not for a lack of spending. The US government actually spends more per capita on healthcare than the UK in total. I'm not opposed to universal healthcare. I'm opposed to politicians throwing money at a problem to buy votes, but that is the only thing that can result from a universal policy that results from healthcare at all costs rhetoric.
They will stabilize you and then kick you out to the curb quickly. And depending how they felt that day they will send you an outrageous bill.
Patients get discharged when doctors say so.
> This isn't a thing in the US. Hospitals will stabilize anyone, regardless of ability to pay.
It's weird that you think you've offered a retort here. A person who cannot afford medical treatment and experiences one or more of these emergency room visits followed by immediate discharge as soon as legally permissible is likely to die before their time, perhaps shortly after being discharged.
> First responders- police, ambulance, fire fighters- will save any life they are able to.
They do that sometimes when it suits them, but they certainly aren't legally obligated to.
It's not just a question of money, but legal arrangements. Going into a fire isn't a game--it puts the firefighters and their equipment at risk. What does the firefighters' insurance contract look like? If one of the firefighters gets hurt, is their insurance going to cover it when the fire was outside the jurisdiction of that fire department? Insofar as this illustrates a "problem" it's not a "third-world" one, but a distinctly American one. Americans are the most legalistic people in the world, and reflexively accept the consequences of the legal state of affairs. In many other contexts, that's a strength, not a weakness.
> This whole "unincorporated land" execuse is a sad state of affairs. The whole "You're not with us, so it's not our problem" mindset is really why America is so low down on every single ranking in the world, except for military might.
Even Americans aren't so tribal as to hold grudges between towns and adjacent unincorporated land. The significance of the house being on unincorporated land is that it demarcates the legal boundaries of the fire department's jurisdiction. A public body acting outside its jurisdiction can have all sorts of consequences.
As an ex fireman, in a so-called "3rd world" [1] country, we often got involved in fires "beyond our juristriction". Our job was to put fires out, not worry about insurance or legal liability etc. We were never reprimanded for doing so, and there was never a suggestion of anything other than gratitude.
[1] 3rd world was originally the term for non-aligned nations during the cold War. The West was the "first world" (obviously), the USSR was the second world, and the rest was the 3rd world.
Not surprisingly, since a majority of the unaligned countries were in Africa, South America and Asia, 3rd World became a perjoritive term for "undeveloped" or "backward".
If being "backward" means not having the "money rules everything" approach of the USA, then long may we remain backward.
Instead in Americans are extremely rigid about rules and norms. You never just “not worry” about “legal liability.” It’s a country where criminals can sue you if they injure themselves robbing your house. For the most part, this is a good thing. Americans will also never ask you for a bribe, like is typical in the third world country I’m from.
Medicaid is extremely stringent when it comes to income and asset thresholds for nursing homes (and in many states receiving social security can effectively disqualify you from Medicaid, even though Medicaid would be more helpful). So in many cases that public money is only applied once hospitals and nursing home facilities have plundered the estate of the soon-to-be deceased until the debt is paid or there is nothing left. Something as routine as old age will often wipe out any potential generational wealth building in all but the upper class.
I bring this up because I think this actually goes back to the original argument in the US that money does, in fact, rule everything. That's ultimately why Americans don't question their legal frameworks-- that's what guarantees the liabilities and debts and who keeps what in the end, not the other way around.
You see this all over the place. American schools will spend $50,000/year ensuring a child with dyslexia can get individualized educational support. But they won’t give free lunches to kids whose parents could technically afford them but don’t use their money wisely.
Going thru this now with my own elderly parents - I am perfectly OK with medicare ending up owning the equity left in their house, and meager other assets - to recoup money spent on their care - people should support themselves with whatever resources they have available, before taxpayers are asked to pick up the expense.
The thing is that death is a universal experience; Many, if not most of us, will end up needing some form of late-life care. Private insurance companies often won't cover what is ultimately inevitable. It would make sense for more of our public policy to aid in what is so common.
The average nursing home cost is $7k/mo. The average nursing home stay is 1-2 years. That's enough money to bankrupt most US families entirely yet comparatively little in the public budget. We spend _much_ more public money on incarceration every year.
But why shouldn't they be drained of their life savings if they move into a nursing home and need to pay for care? If they have the money - any money - that is only going to be left to their heirs, why shouldn't it be used to pay for their own care?
It is an honest question - why should I inherit money from my parents estate, and the taxpayers pickup the bill for their care? If they died today, and medicare didn't claw back from their estate, there would maybe be 200K that needs to be split 5 ways - why should my siblings and I get this 'windfall' and expect the taxpayers to fund their nursing home?
I honestly don't understand why this isn't fair.
They aren't? Cuz I'm seeing this exact thing every day on my local Nextdoor.
The reason you think this may be because your preconceptions stopped you reading what was written. This is not what happened, and not what happens.
I'm really curious where you're from.
On the specific point of unincorporated land, I think you're vastly underestimating how physically large the US is.
For example, Rovaniemi seems pretty isolated from the rest of Europe, right?
It's level of isolation (both in terms of distance to the next large city and hospitability of the land in between) is similar to Las Vegas. Salt Lake City isn't too far off either. America is huge.
The US just has too much empty land to offer urban-level fire services to everyone who chooses to live in the country side. It's logistically not possible. So instead if you choose to live in the wilderness, you can also choose to pay for protection, but if you don't, then I'm not sure exactly what your expectations are.
In terms of 'whataboutism' - Europe (assuming that's where you are) sure loves shedding the responsibility for the chaos they caused in the colonies, while living in buildings paid for by/made out of materials physically stolen from those colonies.
Right. The issue isn't so much that "America lets people die because they don't pay." It's that "America gives people the freedom to live in the middle of fucking nowhere, including where a state or local government can't reasonably commit to offering reliable emergency services."
Do you really think that metrics on quality of life in Krasnoyarsk Krai or Northwest Territories are drastically better than Wyoming?
I wont even get started on what life is like in Xinjiang.
EDIT: Also, you're saying that Australia, Canada, Russia and Brazil have good train infrastructure? And getting even more pedantic, you're a fan of the trains west of Chengdu?
https://www.chinahighlights.com/china-trains/urumqi-lanzhou-...
LOL, keep spreading that propaganda comrade!
The US is populated end to end
Like sure China has fast trains in a small area, but west of Chengdu, they don’t, so saying “China is a country nearly as large as the US with a robust train network” is a red herring.
The US is much more spread out than China or Russia, even if land areas are of similar scale.
This supports the original point that it’s hard for large countries to have robust train networks, which was the idea that was being challenged.
Did you not read the whole thread?
It is practical though. Those 21 trains a day to/from Urumqi aren't running empty; I'm sure part of the motivation was national pride (as with most megaprojects anywhere), but those high speed lines were built primarily because they're useful.
> Like sure China has fast trains in a small area, but west of Chengdu, they don’t
And yet, as per your own link and my response, train service west of Chengdu is still significantly better than in the US. The US being big and spread out is just an excuse.
You've unfortunately been posting unsubstantive and flamebait comments in other places too. Would you please stop? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, so we eventually have to ban accounts that do it.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I assume insurance of any kind doesn't exist in the rest of the world, since everyone else would have long figured out that you just don't need to pay it and then reap the rewards afterwards by just claiming it then? Or would insurance companies in Europe just stand by with their big bank accounts and refuse to pay? Sad state of affairs, very third world of them.
But in the rest of the world, we act like grown ups and accept that sometimes, it's perfectly okay.
And acting like a grownup also means letting people take the consequences of their decisions. According to other posters in this thread, the family in question repeatedly refused to pay a fair price for firefighting coverage, and the fire was started by a family member. That means the consequences are on them.
If you truly believe this, your perspective have been warped by the culture you are immersed in.
It sounds like you don’t find value in living in a society.
Try living in a different culture than USA for 6 months to a year and I suspect your eyes will be opened.
I value living a society where cooperation is (maximally) voluntary. Involuntary cooperation is indistinguishable from a degree of slavery.
Point being that liberty itself is a value that it is reasonable to optimize over negative utilitarianism.
Willfully becoming a homeless drifter is in fact hurtful to society :)
Nor does charity for those in genuine need need to be provided by governments. Indeed, charity throughout human history has worked best when it is provided by private institutions made up of people who genuinely want to help others, of which there are plenty in the US as there are everywhere, not by government departments staffed by bureaucrats.
Except when it's about treating everyone like terrorists in airports, I presume.
Please reconsider your apparent lack of appreciation for the work and risks of others. Firefighting is not "playing with toys."
If they had access to water, a standoff approach with "a water gun" would only control the fire from spreading more broadly than building and damage the structure through inundation. If the structure was salvable, then the work of a firefighter is to control combustion to extinction using tools to manage the movement of air and other gases so building materials stop burning and do not reignite. It is a close-in effort.
On the other hand no sane adult will refuse medical insurance: it's an outright suicidal behavior, unless you have a seven-digit sum in your account.
So...?
> story is America has some
> very serious third-world
> problems.
That's true, and that's true of other first-world nations, too. America has plenty of problems. However, this fire brigade isn't one of them. It they work through insurance then, if you havent paid the insurance, you shouldn't be suprised when they don't put out your fire.
I was a volunteer fire fighter for a while, and I did it because 1.) I'm kind of an idiot about danger, and 2.) I think it's important to help others.
There are many other people in the US that will go to ridiculous lengths to help others.
> Not only that, the fire department
>refused to accept money to put it out.
It that's how it's supposed to work? Your building catches fire, the F.D. rolls up, and you hand them $75 right there? Are they supposed to carry cash in case you don't have exact change? Set up a stripe account so they can take credit or debit?
And when the consequences of their actions came calling, the rest of civilization stared, agape and aghast.
Here's the question though: Should it be legal for people to opt out of these things? Can they be forced to comply? If your answer is "no sane person would opt out of fire insurance", I would agree. But sanity is in short supply in the US lately.
I would argue that it's not a question of laws in isolation, it's a question of laws perverted by brainwashed people acting against their own self-interest because they've been sold a tribal identity of exceptionalism, by America's enemies, for the purpose of weakening America, and it is working better than they possibly could have dreamed.
Your argument is based on a false premise. Nobody died. In a life/death situation, the fire fighters will do whatever is necessary to attempt to save lives, but they aren't worried about a structure that a homeowner chose not to protect.
In your country, if someone chooses not to insure a home, will the government rebuild it for free? What's the difference? I'm assuming the non-indigent case where someone can afford to pay the insurance. If someone is indigent they probably don't own a house. If it is government housing, then it of course would be rebuilt by the government.
There are plenty of problems in the US, but you have greatly exaggerated this particular issue.
Pass the guacymolo.
As an aside, “You're not with us, so it's not our problem” could better be stated as “you organized your entire life around not contributing to the collective welfare by dodging taxes in unincorporated land, then not contributing to the fire brigade.” The state should not incentivize people to engage in the worst antisocial behavior, and giving services to tax dodgers who should know better is a seriously misaligned incentive.
Perhaps life insurance companies should pay out to anyone who signs up and pays $20 from their deathbeds?
I wasn't able to find it again but there also people in Germany who lack health insurance due to an inability to pay and must rely on charity clinics. These are mostly elderly Germans who paid into a private system, foregoing the public system, and eventually lost health insurance after their earnings declined. It's just the US that has these "third world problems."
Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34072882 as well.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34054804.
Usually commonly held widely believed oral histories emerge for a good reason. So if it was commonly believed that insurance companies let un-insured buildings burn, then it is likely to be true at least part of the time.
Also, lets look at the source -- he is an "archive and heritage consultant", i.e. someone that solicits money for his research. Is he getting paid for this article? Is he writing this in the hopes that he will advertise his services for insurance companies?
My prior is that people repeat good stories somewhat independently of their truth value. Older stories that are hard to verify are more suspect. I think we should default to skepticism.
As far as I can tell[1], the only thing wrong with what you said is "Facebook sold...", where in reality, the data was surreptitiously gathered. Or are you referring to something else?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
* The quiz used public Facebook APIs to gather data; users accepted a "share this data with the app" permission request.
* Cambridge Analytica conned Republicans into paying them for services using this "superweapon".
* There's no evidence (other than self-serving press releases from Cambridge Analytica) that this had any material effect on the election.
With the understanding that (1) the data was taken without the permission of all people impacted (i.e. if your friend installed the app and gave their permission, then you could be affected), and (2) it's debatable how effective the data actually was for the campaign.
I think the "public Facebook APIs" descriptor is a little off — Facebook viewed it as a data breach and apologized (and got sued, and fined, etc). So it was pretty shady, not just simple above-board access.
At some point Facebook started getting flak for having APIs that grant access to data-about-friends. There are a couple ways of looking at this; one way is "I didn't grant my friends permission to share my data with an app!" the other is "you shared your data with friends via Facebook, what does it matter if they use the FB UI or some other app". It's a can of worms but I don't think anyone would call it a breach.
And I should correct myself that the phrase used by Zuck[1] was "breach of trust" not "data breach," though several other sources (articles, etc[2]) at the time did in fact use the term "data breach."
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180326162844/https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104712037900071
[2] (example) https://money.com/facebook-cambridge-analytica-data-breach-numbers/Originally writing in 1692-3, Daniel Defoe noted that the firemen were “very active and diligent” in helping to put out fires, “whether in houses insured or not insured”.[33] Insurance companies’ instructions to their firemen were clear – they were to attend and help extinguish “all” fires. [34], [35]
What specific issue with this do you have? Do you disagree with the content of “Of Assurances”, in An Essay upon Projects? Or the Union Fire Office Board Minutes?
Or did you just not read the article?
Maybe you two are talking past each other. One way to phrase the core question is: "did fire companies let competitors' buildings burn, regularly, as standard practice?" And I think the evidence in the article pretty strongly indicates "No." I think that's what you're referring to.
Another way to phrase the core question is: "Did it ever happen, at various points in history, that fire companies let competitors' buildings burn?" And I think the article indicates that it very well may have. And the possibility was absolutely used as a threat, even if it never actually came to pass.
I feel like even a handful of such incidents would have been so terrible as to get etched into social memory and passed on, and I think that's the sort of thing the person you are replying to was referring to.
So... I think you're both right (:
Yes, oral histories emerge for a reason, but that reason doesn't have to be "because it was literally true". There are countless oral traditions that are complete nonsense! Urban legends existed 200 and 2000 years ago just as much as they do today, and no historian would ever claim that you should take every oral history at face value.
> Also, lets look at the source -- he is an "archive and heritage consultant", i.e. someone that solicits money for his research. Is he getting paid for this article? Is he writing this in the hopes that he will advertise his services for insurance companies?
He was paid by a prominent YouTuber to find out whether a video said YouTuber made several years ago was incorrect[0]. That doesn't scream "conflict of interest" to me.
A relative is a retired fire chief of a city department and overall fire buff. He's spent 15 years engrossed in this stuff for various cities in the US - the answers vary! Usually in the 19th century there were different types of fire service. A fire brigade or volunteer company focused on protecting the city or subscribers, and protective companies who salvaged buildings or contents of buildings. Sometimes they worked differently in different places, and you need to understand the context of precisely when and where you are talking about.
Keep in the mind the nature of 18th and 19th century buildings - often row houses, often with shared attics, etc. Protecting property, then and now might mean sacrificing some buildings to protect others. Consider the destruction of San Francisco... when the leaders of the city fire department were all killed, and underground water cisterns damaged by the earthquake, a madman Army officer blew up half the city to "save" it.
The property insurance folks had a first priority to save the contents of a house - they may be dragging the piano and hutch out of a house while the house 3 doors down burned. Or they may have helped. From the perspective of contemporary eyewitnesses, what they report and write down may vary.