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Comment by loopdoend | Hacker News Reader

This would of course tie in with the private police force and private fire service, right? And when the customers stop paying and sue the company into oblivion, who handles the calls? Do you prevent monopolies from forming so no one company becomes responsible for all 911 call traffic? That doesn't sound very libertarian to me.

Let's presume we're interfacing with public services here, just for shits and giggles. What happens when grandma Jean forgets to pay the bill one month? Does she lose access to those public services when she needs them most because her 911 is redirecting to a busy tone?

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1. When people say "but what about monopolies?" they seem to forget that we do currently have a giant monopoly, which is government, that prohibits others from entering the market by force, not just by market instruments such as predatory pricing (although that's the case too, since it is claimed the price of government services is zero). Even if you disagree with me that monopolies historically never remained monopolies for long without government support, wouldn't you at least agree that a private monopoly is still better than government, because I can still stop paying immediately and not expect men in suits from IRS on my doorstep?

2. Proponents of government services always bring up cases where grandmas or disabled or poor people somehow suffer because they don't have enough money/physical abilities/brains to handle things. I agree those cases exists, but it very often is presented as if half of the society is in someway dysfunctional and requires government help (even if that's indeed the case, we should rightly see this situation as abnormal and fix it, not feed it). But the truth is, in a society there's indeed always a % of people who are dysfunctional. My guess is, it should be no more than 5-10%. Those people can be helped by voluntary donations and charities. Beyond that, we got people who made their choices in life (not buying insurance, eating unhealthy, drunk driving etc.). While I'm not necessarily claiming those people should not be helped when they need it, but the decision to help or not should lie with the body that actually does the job: that is, if a drunk uninsured driver is brought to a hospital, it is up to the charity that sponsors it and the hospital managers or doctors to decide whether to help him or not. By leaving this decision up to the government we simply incentivize all sorts of bad behaviors at the expense of people who have no intention of supporting it.

1. The government monopoly, as broken as it is, should not discriminate in matters of health and safety, whereas a corporate system that you're proposing would. I am Canadian and am not interested in defending the American system. We have free healthcare (so long as you're a resident paying taxes, and others of course are billed after receiving care).

2. So, in your world, the guy who seemed to have alcohol on his breath can be left to die at a hospital. Sure. I think that's poor example, you'd be hard pressed to find doctors who would refuse to save a life in such a case. The reason I trot out grandma is because it is the poorest and weakest in our society that need protection the most, and your system would leave all that in the hands of some charity... hand-waving away all the issues that creates.

1. I respect the fact you don't want to discriminate when it comes to matters of health and safety. I, on the other hand, would like to discriminate. If a person who led unhealthy lifestyle knowingly requires medical attention, I want to have a default option of not paying for this out of my own pocket, because I don't know that person at all. Now, say I'm a Canadian citizen too: would you give me the same amount of respect and not require me to pay tax money for the things I have no intention of supporting and allow me to only pay to my insurance company?

2. In my world what's most likely to happen is that this guy would be helped immediately, but the hospital stuff later will report the incident, the guy will lose his driving licence forever, will be unable to buy alcohol and will be required to pay to the hospital over time. I'm not gonna go into detail of how it is achieved without a government, but it's quite very possible and would even be enforced more effectively.

So, yes, my main point is: forced universal anything is bad and immoral. Everyone should know exactly how and where their money go and be free to decide what to do with their money. If I dislike how my charity works and if I dislike that it doesn't help drunk drivers, I switch to a different one which does. If everyone in a society agrees to pay for universal healthcare voluntarily without a threat of IRS or similar agency showing up if they don't pay, then I have no problem with it.

> "If a person who led unhealthy lifestyle knowingly requires medical attention"

It's interesting how, when this particular viewpoint comes up, the hypothetical individual is always deeply irresponsible, borderline malicious. But the person making the argument never is.

> "Now, say I'm a Canadian citizen too: would you give me the same amount of respect and not require me to pay tax money for the things I have no intention of supporting and allow me to only pay to my insurance company?"

No, because this is a fundamental philosophical difference that runs to the core of who we are. I value the collective, and am willing to make sacrifices to my individual in order to advance the whole.

As a Canadian citizen myself, stay on your side of the border, please.

> It's interesting how, when this particular viewpoint comes up, the hypothetical individual is always deeply irresponsible, borderline malicious. But the person making the argument never is.

No, I may be the most irresponsible person in the world. The difference is, I'm not asking you or anyone else to pay for it.

> No, because this is a fundamental philosophical difference that runs to the core of who we are. I value the collective, and am willing to make sacrifices to my individual in order to advance the whole.

So would you then personally come to my house with a gun and demand money and escort me to jail if I politely refuse to pay, explaining my reasons? Will you do this, knowing my family is going to suffer? Will you look my kids in the eyes and say "Your daddy is a criminal because he refuses to pay for what I think is right".

> As a Canadian citizen myself, stay on your side of the border, please.

Please do not assume everyone here is from the US. I'm not talking about a specific country, I'm talking about a principle. US is socialist in many ways too.

You're going to have a very hard time owning anything in Canada that isn't subject to seizure without paying taxes. So this hypothetical property you'd be trying to protect would cease to be yours.

We don't throw people in jail or point guns at them, and frankly even if you weren't paying income tax you would be paying tons of sales tax that you can't avoid. Worst case scenario you'd be forced into bankruptcy, tax debt is dischargeable up here, unlike in the US.

So the question remains: would you personally come to my house to cease it and explain to my kids that they are now homeless because their daddy simply disagrees with what you think is right and refuses to pay to people you believe are good?

>because their daddy simply disagrees with what you think is right and refuses to pay to people you believe are good?

I'd leave out this part.

edit: or to be clear, I'd be as likely to say that as I would be to say to the children of a burglar, "I'm arresting your father because he wanted you to have nice things."

That's an interesting twist. You're basically calling me a burglar, even though it is you who intends to take my money away from me.

I'm not calling you a burglar.

> not asking you or anyone else to pay for it

Sure you are. The moment you're out of your financial depth you'll scream like a little girl and recant.

You presume that a private system yields some kind of low-cost alternative to single-payer systems. That's not the case, and it's so far from true in the US that it's laughable.

You are the one who needs to look into his kids eyes and explain why they can't have critically needed health care. It should start with "Daddy can't do math", and end with "and so my beliefs were more important than your well-being".

Silly libertarian.

Here's how Canadians (and I'm one of them) think about health care: Some of us do crazy, unhealthy stuff, and some don't. We all have the same healthcare. Be free, do your thing. Live your life the way you want to. It costs way too much to have different healthcare for different people.

Some of you "land of the free" people really don't get it.

Being free to leave your job, and free to live your life that way you want to (without actuarial oversight) are pretty important.

Those are way more important to me than the last nth percent of optimization I might be able to do on my own personal wallet by taking on all the idiocy of privatized, customized health care.

Here's an example of that kind of situation happening for a fire department in Tennassee: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/10/04/122193/county-f...

That policy is about as backwards and fucked up as the idea of privatizing a 911 service. Those "firefighters" should be ashamed.

As a counterpoint, I refer you to all the other counties in the US where receiving this vital service isn't contingent on your bills being paid. I can see these people losing their home to a fire because they failed to acquire home insurance, but I can't see how moral people would stand by and let a house burn to the ground over an unpaid bill.

I'm not so sure. It makes some sense: Here is a service we are happy to provide, in a sense a form of insurance. The point of it is that the community pitches in, to cover the catastrophic case that we hope no one has. If you decide not to pay into such a cooperative scheme, you're abusing the trust of all of your neighbors if you expect them to save your home anyway. This is part of the reason we often use taxes to cover the cost of things like this.

On the other hand, in this case they had already deployed, and it would have been nicer if there had been SOME price that they had thought of as the "fee" for service to non-subscribers. 5k, 10k, etc: better than losing the house. Once you advertise something like that, though, people will stop subscribing, and decide to gamble that they won't have a catastrophe. The price has to either be high enough to discourage that, or high enough that the fire department can cover its operating costs by servicing X fires per year.

If you had bothered to read the article, you would have found that the fire fighting service was offered by a neighboring jurisdiction to a jurisdiction that had no fire service of its own.

Many rural U.S. counties have no standing fire fighters. Fires are fought by volunteers, often using donated equipment. There is nothing immoral about a town offering enhanced fire service to subscribers outside the town.

Similar arrangements are also common between ambulance companies and subscribers. Old people with a fixed income consider it a great deal to pay $50 a year or so for discounted service.

What happens when grandma Jean forgets to pay her phone bill?

Hopefully grandma Jean notices her phones don't work prior to the heart-attack.

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