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Comment by that_guy_iain | Hacker News Reader

Even with this information included. I think the moral of the story is America has some very serious third-world problems. The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die." Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys. Not only that, the fire department refused to accept money to put it out.

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.

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You started a huge nationalistic flamewar and then fueled it over and over again. Other people broke the site guidelines as well, but your account was by far the main cause, and you broke the site guidelines very badly in several places. Please don't do anything like this again.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34072882 as well.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34054804.

> I think the moral of the story is America has some very serious third-world problems. The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die." Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys. Not only that, the fire department refused to accept money to put it out.

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.

Yes, fighting fires is dangerous. Can't blame the firefighters for not fighting a fire that they weren't legally or contractually required to fight, though fire departments can and do often volunteer to fight fires in other jurisdictions, so they could have (and perhaps should have, but that depends on the details of the fire).

I agree with your categorization of this as a US issue,not a "3rd world" issue.

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.

But it’s not “money rules everything.” Americans spend tremendous amounts of public money on, for example, extending the life of old people a few months. American social security is quite generous compared to other countries.

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.

> Americans spend tremendous amounts of public money on, for example, extending the life of old people a few months.

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.

Medicaid means testing is driven by the moral belief that people should support themselves before turning to the public for help. It’s driven primarily by that moral ideology, and not a desire to save money. In other respects Medicaid is extremely generous: no co-pays, no cost-benefit calculations for treatments, etc. But Americans in many cases would rather spend more money ensuring that public support only goes to deserving people than they save by doing so.

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.

Do we really want a system where a very elderly person, with say millions in assets, gets all their nursing home care for free in their final years, just so they can leave a bigger inheritance to their kids? I don't.

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.

I didn't say millions in assets -- in fact, the way the system works is that those are the only people who come out with any of value to pass down to their heirs! The system is working for those people as intended; they benefit from lower costs (since everyone has to pay market price) and they are not penniless from it. The rest are drained of everything they spent their life building, and denied the opportunity to share that with their loved ones.

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.

>>The rest are drained of everything they spent their life building, and denied the opportunity to share that with their loved ones.

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.

> Even Americans aren't so tribal as to hold grudges between towns and adjacent unincorporated land.

They aren't? Cuz I'm seeing this exact thing every day on my local Nextdoor.

> "They didn't pay, so they die."

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 isn't a thing in the US. Hospitals will stabilize anyone, regardless of ability to pay

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.

It's not done for "PR". US hospitals are required to treat emergency cases, by law. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act[0], passed under President Reagan, codifies the mandate.

(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...

We don't have "socialized medicine". You can go to the ER without insurance and with signs & symptoms of a heart attack and they'll try to keep you from dying, but they won't give you the triple-bypass and medicine you need to keep it from happening again in a month—unless they think you'll be able to pay for it.

Without making any moral argument one way or the other: If people who can't pay and would otherwise die are given "free" treatment then we have socialized medicine. The costs are spread over everyone else.

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 hair-splitting for no reason, to the point of destroying communication. Nobody (because this is HN: yes, apparently at least one person, but you know what I mean by this) means ERs having to eat the cost of stabilizing uninsured dying/in-labor people when they say "socialized medicine". You can draw some parallels, but trying to put that, plus all the things people actually mean by the term, under the same umbrella, is a step toward making it meaningless.

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.

I fully admit to being hyperbolic.

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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".

It's lawmakers trying to avoid the PR disaster.

>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.

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.

> The US has the highest preventable death rate in the developed world.

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-...

> The US has the highest preventable death rate in the developed world.

>> 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.

Completely agree, maybe if the USA got rid of the FDA and the whole concept of prescription medicine we'd be able to buy cheap medicine without the all the protectionism that the state bolts on.

>> But the hospital won't/can't allow it for bullshit reasons.

Bullshit reasons like they don't want to go bankrupt and not be able to serve anyone at all?

> 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.

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.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

“Hospitals will stabilize anyone, regardless of ability to pay.”

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.

This is false, a hospital cannot kick you out, you need to agree that you are ready to leave.

That’s BS. I’ve been to the hospital plenty of times in USA and have never been asked if I’m ready to leave.

Patients get discharged when doctors say so.

> > "They didn't pay, so they die."

> 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.

> The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die."

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.

No. People _seek out_ unincorporated land _because_ they don't want to be beholden to city services or any of the trappings of civilization. It's like Texas as a whole, opted out of power-grid interconnection with the rest of the country, specifically so they could deregulate their industry.

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.

I think it's obvious there's a price at which point opting out of fire insurance makes sense. For unimproved land, that price might be quite low, perhaps even $0.

If you want the benefits of society you can't ignore the costs. Every home that is protected by fire departments pays taxes in the developed world, this family chose to live in unincorporated land. Btw - The fire was started by the homeowners grandson who was lighting trash on fire and afterwards the homeowners son assaulted the fire chief.

> I think the moral of the

> 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?

> firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys

Please reconsider your apparent lack of appreciation for the work and risks of others. Firefighting is not "playing with toys."

They have a water gun. They chose not to stand at a safe distance shooting water into a burning building. Because... water is too expensive to waste on these people who didn't pay their taxes or whatever. Instead, they chose to stand at a safe distance, not shooting their water gun, and just watch the building reduced to ash.

I see you are doubling down on belittling the work of others. In an unincorporated area (that is to say a place where erecting a domicile is not supported and yet also not forbidden) the firefighters may not have water for a "water gun," as you say.

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.

>The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die."

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.

The question is: on one hand, any sane adult should be able to make whatever decision they want regarding their own health and property (some text in small font goes here).

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...?

I don’t think this person actually has much experience with local governance in the US, because collectivized responsibility and mutual aid is a hallmark of basically every local government I’ve experienced, across the US.

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?

> "They didn't pay, so they die."

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.

No, the moral of this story is you taking a single part massively out of context. And the fire department didn't go out. So they wouldn't have known if someone's life was at risk. So stop you're nonsense.

> And the fire department didn't go out.

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.

>Again, more misinformation!

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."

So the fire department was contacted, did not hear of any lives at risk, and did not show up. What an entirely reasonable response to getting a service request from someone who has not established a SLA with your company.

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.

> So the fire department was contacted, did not hear of any lives at risk, and did not show up.

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.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

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.

The claim is

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.

> 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.

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".

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There is approximately a zero percent chance the 911 operator neglected to ask if anybody was in the burning house. They didn't save the house but they did show up anyway to contain the fire.

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.

Just because the person on the phone doesn't know if there is someone in the house does not remove the possibilities. But that isn't the only way there could be a risk to life from a fire. There are many things a firefighter is trained in to be able to correctly judge the risk to life. A 911 operator is not a trained firefighter. Dismissing the training of firefighters have is very disappointing.

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.

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a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls

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Even if we take your points at face value, which other comments clearly don't, you seem to be coming from a rather ethnocentric perspective. It seems that you value "solving problems" above other things, I'd hazard that your personal philosophy can be categorized as negative utilitarianism. This isn't a universally shared perspective. There are many other worldviews that prioritize other things besides reducing suffering. In the case of the US, it seems to me that Americans value individual liberty over ameliorating suffering. These values do in fact come into conflict often, and there's no one "right" answer.

This is a case of a family who chose to live on unincorporated land because they wanted less government protection. It's a severe edge case involving very individual circumstances. You can't make any conclusions about the US from this.

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."

>Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys.

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.

The alternative is they wouldn't be allowed to live there. America allows people to get into situations that may result in harm to them if they are not careful. We do the same thing with healthcare and our nutrition. We still allow tons of processed and sugary food even though we know it will result in slamming our healthcare system but hopefully you have insurance.

>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.

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.

> 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.

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."

"America is HUUUGE" comes up everytime someone says anything at all. Too many guns? America is huge. Urban sprawl? America is huge. No trains? America is huge. The US is #4 in terms of total area, behind russia, canada and china, and closely followed by brazil and australia. If the others manage at least some of this stuff, one would imagine that the US can do it at least as well.

Do you have any familiarity with those countries and where people live?

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?

The trains in Xinjiang compare very favourably with those in the US. The media paints a very one-sided picture of what life is like there; not to defend the CCP's awful actions, but if the way certain communities in St Louis get treated were reported the same way...

>Xinjiang compare very favourably with those in the US

https://www.chinahighlights.com/china-trains/urumqi-lanzhou-...

LOL, keep spreading that propaganda comrade!

All I was saying was that the easiest argument to shut down a discussion is to invoke the fact that "America is huge". Nothing can be done, bc it's huge, end of story.

You’re giving China credit for being huge while talking about what goes on in 1/3 of its land area.

The US is populated end to end

So what's your point? A comparable part of the US railway network is what, Chicago to Denver: 10% less distance, 33% slower even over that shorter distance (much the same as the non-high-speed trains in Xianjing), 1/4 as frequent (and that's only if we ignore that Xianjing also has the slower trains) - and significantly less punctual IME (to say nothing of nicer to ride).

My point is that over that distance, any train is impractical?

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?

> My point is that over that distance, any train is impractical?

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 can't post like this here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.

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.

Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The solution is that the government steps in and says "No, you must". And American culture does not like when government says "must".

But in the rest of the world, we act like grown ups and accept that sometimes, it's perfectly okay.

No, you have this backwards. Acting like a grownup means taking responsibility for your own actions and not expecting the government, or any institution, to magically make sure nothing bad ever happens to you. Paying for services like firefighting is fine; but being forced to pay for things because some government bureaucrat decrees it is not.

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.

Acting like a grownup means that you realize that not all things that happen to people are their own fault and that you yourself can’t totally avoid bad things no matter how careful you are. It also means to understand that some things can be handled much better by a shared effort instead of everybody on their own. That’s why we have police, firefighters and the military.

I think this is exactly where reasonable people disagree. Some (myself included) feel that acting like a grownup means exactly that everything that nature (not other people) inflicts on you is your responsibility. This includes your house catching on fire or your person contracting a disease.

No reasonable person thinks this.

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'm not so sure - entire revolutions have been had about this, and extensive documents written, for centuries[1]. Not everyone is a negative utilitarian.

I value living a society where cooperation is (maximally) voluntary. Involuntary cooperation is indistinguishable from a degree of slavery.

1. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp

Declaration of human rights was about the right to have your house burn down? You always learn some new made up crazy thing on the internet!

No, it's about not being forced into compulsory insurance schemes in various disguises.

Can you quote the specific bit that supports your point? Because I see some bits that go in the other direction.

> Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.

Point being that liberty itself is a value that it is reasonable to optimize over negative utilitarianism.

> Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society.

Willfully becoming a homeless drifter is in fact hurtful to society :)

This is actually the main point of contention. Prior to United States v. Butler, the government's power to provide general welfare was limited/narrowly interpreted. Whether individual liberty supersedes general welfare or vice versa is the main disagreement. My point is only that reasonable people can disagree about this.

Police, firefighters, and military don't have to be provided by governments. There are plenty of historical examples of all three being provided by private institutions (indeed, the article referenced in this discussion talks about such institutions for firefighters in England over a period of several centuries).

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.

Why is it not acceptable for someone to lose everything when three different entities (probably more) say "hey you should do this".

> And American culture does not like when government says "must".

Except when it's about treating everyone like terrorists in airports, I presume.

Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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