A .13% property tax increase isn’t an increase of 0.13% of your property tax (which would indeed be not very much), but an increase of the base rate by 0.13 points (so, 1.13% instead of 1.00%). On a $100,000 home, that would be a difference of $113. So the fire department tax would have been $113 per 100k in assessed valuation - not the federal budget but more than $75 for sure, as you note.

I am not quite sure why there’s such hostility towards their existing arrangement from Amanda, however. Does everyone have to live in the same urban design with the same set of services and the same preferences for paying for things via taxes versus paying for things with fees? These folks have decided to rent the services of a local government rather than expanding their own. That seems like a win-win to me.

Damn shame about the animals though.

I’m hostile towards it because it’s stupid, exploits the firefighters’ basic decency so that many people can freeload by not paying the fee—-which I’ll bet is more common than you’d think, and it freeloads off people who do pay taxes.

I got a lot of flak for saying that the fire department had every right to not put out this fire.  That community voted against providing blanket coverage and relied upon a semi-privatized solution: pay or take a risk.  I’m not in favor of houses burning down, but I am generally in favor of people getting the government they pay for, whether it’s a lot or a little.  Don’t want roads?  Then don’t pay for them.  Don’t want police?  Cut the budget.  Don’t want a community hospital?  Don’t build one.  Want no taxes?  Welcome to Shitville.

I was very disturbed when there was some victim-blaming shaming of the man whose house burned, as his story was very emotional and his pain wasn’t in any way going to make me smug.  I wanted the shame to be upon that community and its leaders and voters, but when pets are burning it’s hard to make a point.  It’s a story that can easily be framed as government not acting, but it’s also a case of government doing what it was paid to do.

What I really want is for firefighters, who are generally well-paid professionals with many skills to be appreciated with cash.  Obion County doesn’t seem to respect that, though the city of South Fulton does.  Good for the better governments.

Gene Craddick had conflicting stories about his “mistake”.  He alternately said it was an oversight and he said he thought he could pay the $75 when the fire department showed up, which makes me think that he has no idea how governments, businesses, budgets, taxes, wages, costs, insurance, capital investment, and everything else involving money works.  The more he talks the less I have sympathy for him as a person no matter how devastating his loss.

3letter, agreed—-this is a classic example of how the parties who are truly responsible will not have to be held to account.  Everyone is focused on the largely irrelevant question of Craddick himself.  The problem is the community, the leaders, the voters, etc.  The problem is decades of anti-government rhetoric being wielded by pundits with a wink to imply to their audiences that they won’t be forsaken in all this—-just the “undeserving”.  Subsequently, when something like this happens, the wingnuts have to run to argue that the victim deserved what he got, because it’s critical that they maintain the illusion to their followers that they can’t be next.  But Craddick is a white dude living in a rural-ish area in a red state.  Actually, it can be them.

There are actually plenty of ways to structure an opt-in fire department so that you minimize the freeloader problem without letting people’s houses burn down, so the debate here isn’t centrally about the morality of such opt-in systems. It’s about whether firefighters should ever be told to stand down because the homeowner hasn’t paid their fee.

I feel bad for the South Fulton Fire Department, getting so much negative publicity because they were nice enough to be willing to provide service to residents of the stupid taxophobic county for a fee. Just goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished.

My theory: because libertarianism is, as it always has been, nothing more but a pseudo-intellectual gloss painted on straight up assholery to make it seem shinier than it is.

I think you’re absolutely on target there.

Susan of Texas came up with a similar formulation for this in a recent alicublog thread:
“Conservatives are authoritarian followers. Libertarians are authoritarian followers who think they are authoritarian leaders.”

You’d think the anti-bureaucratic right would have been outraged in the other direction.  A government bureaucrat stopped the fire department from putting out a fire.  I don’t know about where you live, but govt. offices make mistakes all the time.  Often, it’s just a misunderstanding and a hassle to get it all figured out.  In this case it was deadly (for the pets).

Imagine for a moment that Mr. Craddick did, in fact, pay the fee, but some paperwork snafu put in name in the wrong column.  Fires happen 24/7.  County offices close at end of business—nobody there to check in the middle of the night.

Really, Angus?  How do you not have freeloaders if there aren’t consequences?

Yeah, if the county took this opportunity to reflect on the fact that their idiotic anti-tax policies got a guy’s house burned down, it would be worth it. Except for the deaths of the pets, of course. I assume the firefighters would have gone in if there had been any humans trapped in the house - in general I feel they should have done the same for any living things.

But at any rate, I doubt the county will ever see that this is a result of their stupidity. The same way Republicans can cripple the entire federal government and still manage to blame LIBERAL BIG GOVERNMENT.

This is exactly what’s been bothering me about this. I have a very clear lineitem on my water and sewer bill for fire protection. It’s part of my taxes. And the reason that particular line item is as steep as it is (I’m paying slightly less than $100 a year), is because there are a whole bunch of little townships outside of ours that don’t have dedicated fire departments and don’t want to pay for our fire department to come out to help them. They still want our fire department to help, mind you, they just don’t want to pay for it.  So we get to pay for that, too. I would dearly love for our FD to declare that if they don’t get reimbursement from the township for assistance, they’ll leave it up to the all-volunteer FDs of the area, but somehow I doubt that will happen.

When I heard about this guy who lost his house and his cat and his dogs because he didn’t pay the fee to the fire department, I did feel bad for him, but mostly because he had to learn the lesson the hard way.

This case does open a LOT of questions, though, like what if he HAD paid and there had been a clerical error, what if there were people inside the house, etc. But I was as shocked as you were to see the left wing discussion engine spin this into some sort of “horrors of privatization” model when it was a simple case of a tax crank learning what taxes are for.

Deliberate ignorance of basic cost-accounting principles has been a libertarian/conservative problem for a long time. Just ask anyone who’s pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps while ignoring the aid of public education, public libraries, roads, police and fire protection, federal and local departments of product safety and environmental protection and so forth. Now of course from one point of view the marginal cost of many of these public goods is negligible (that’s why they’re supplied as public goods in the first place), so they’re right they shouldn’t have to think about paying for them on an individualized basis. That’s what taxes are for. Oops.

Same thing goes with the supposed “free-market” solutions to all manner of problems. They typically don’t recognize the huge up-front and dead-weight costs involved in litigation or hiring private security or selling children to the highest bidder. But imagine if your purse or wallet was snatched by an indigent criminal in libertopia. There better damn well be a few grand in it to even think of paying the private police to recover it and punish the perp. Same thing with a company that stiffs you on wages or a product or service you paid for—make sure you won’t be spending way more than you might recover before you take them to court.

Infrastructure: it’s what makes prosperity possible. Anything else is just leaching off others, whether your neighbors or past generations.

(And I think I said somewhere else that the Granick case is a particularly odious one because it’s almost always going to be a better financial idea for someone not to pay a fire-protection fee. Fires aren’t that common nowadays, so the odds of getting hit while you own a particular property are low. And it’s also almost always a better financial idea for a fire department to put out a nonpayer’s fire, because the danger and the risk to payers’ property increases the longer the fire is burning…)

Despite the fact that this is a pitch-perfect example of why liberals are right, though, you find liberals are the ones who are upset about this and conservatives are far more likely to be basking in the pain of the Craddick family.  Why is this?

My developing theory is that very few people understand economics worth a damn, and most people go on feelings. Liberals feel that there is a social contract. Conservatives feel that there’s only tribes.

I assume the firefighters would have gone in if there had been any humans trapped in the house - in general I feel they should have done the same for any living things.

You do have to remember that fighting fires is a dangerous job.  Fire fighters do die on the job.  To save pets, I do believe they generally have to put the fire out first.  When my mom’s house caught fire, they put the fire out, then got the dog (who was fine).

Some people think we live in a society…  You comments about rending the social contract are spot on.  I’ve recently had some talks with friends int he UK about the devastating cuts the government is imposing there, and it is the same thing:  “We (The Conservative Party) no longer accept that there is a social contract.”

It’s not just fire departments—it’s parks, public swimming pools, libraries and a whole host of services they aren’t willing to pay for but willing to leech off.

I actually know a lot of people who caught on immediately. I posted the link on Facebook, and my commenters started in about “Oh boy, this is what we can look forward to in a libertarian paradise!”

The libertarians are trying hard to convince themselves that everyone is on their side with this, but I think most people can see that this (and Colorado Springs’ reduced services due to never-raise-taxes bullshit) are really, really bad things…

As a side note, I do find it amusing that the suburbanites and exurbanites are so dead set on avoiding taxes, but are willing to put at least the same amount of money into commuting to work for an hour and a half one way. I’m not sure why Shell, Exxon, and BP deserve their money more than the government does… Wait, yes I am. It’s because Shell, Exxon, and BP don’t give their money to black people.

atheist, I agree.  I think that’s what I was getting at towards the end—-liberals react out of empathy and compassion.  Conservatives, particularly “liberatarians”, think that having a lack of empathy makes you tough and manly, and so they go straight for gloating.

There is nothing new under the sun.  The thing about conservatives that always amazes me is that they have no sense of history at all, even while they are manipulated by people who offer them a comforting and inaccurate view of history.  There was a time in this nation’s history where only the wealthy could get fire services and where there was no regulation of industry and so on.  It didn’t work and, because it didn’t work, it was changed.  That time was a long time ago, so the lessons that led to regulation and public services have been forgotten by those who can’t or won’t read.  And so it goes.  We’ll have to have another unregulated disaster of a country before we get some semblance of sanity again.  There’s nothing new under the sun and those who forget history and so on.

Amanda @10:

Really, Angus?  How do you not have freeloaders if there aren’t consequences?

One possibility would be to charge non-payers the actual cost of putting out the fire—which would probably run into thousands of dollars.  Hardly ideal, since if everyone did that there’d be no money to maintain an actual fire department, but better then letting someone’s house burn down, IMO.

I guess Libertarians would think Crassus was simply a particularly ingenious entrepreneur when he was setting fires and charging the good people of Roman a fortune to put them out.

If the towns folk were true libertarians, and not just freeloading ass holes, they would have had some provision where anyone who didn’t pay the fee was responsible for all the costs for putting out a fire. That is what happens when you forgo other forms of insurance. They set up a ludicrous system hoping that the firefighters would have to eat the costs.

Another piece of this story is that the fire department would charge people after the fact for their services, but people had no legal obligation to pay and the fire department had no legal way to force them to pay, so less than 50% of the people who were charged actually paid the bill.

I had figured this out a while ago, but it’s interesting to see it proven true once again:  conservatives are freeloaders.  They want those of us who want to live in a nice society to pay their share so they can use the things we paid for without having to pay themselves.

No wonder they’re so obsessed with “welfare queens”—they don’t like anyone else cutting in on their racket.

“The point of having some collective organization in charge of handling this stuff is so that every individual person doesn’t have to replicate the bureaucratic work of tallying up all the services they use and organizing payment for them.”

By all accounts, this particular fire department was very good about following up with people if they didn’t pay their fee.  Non-payers would get at least one phone call after the annual deadline asking if they had meant to not pay and explaining the risks of not paying.  Which is still a waste of everyone’s time compared to a line item on the water bill or property tax invoice or whatever, but it does sound like they did their best to make sure that people weren’t going without protection out of simple flakiness.

I’m of a few minds on this.

First, the compassionate mind: these people needed help, and the fire department was there.  That means they should get the help they need, and bill collectors and namecallers can come around AFTER the fire is out.

Then there’s the economic mind, in which I largely agree with Amanda, but isn’t it an available penalty to just screw with their credit?  Charge them the cost of putting out the fire—or just the $75—and if they don’t pay, or at least start making payments, harrass them with collection calls and report non-payment to the credit bureaus.  In other words, there are other things you could have done to them for not paying than letting the house burn down.

Finally, though: I’ve never met a fireman, paid or volunteer, who didn’t know exactly how dangerous a house fire it.  It was stupid, irresponsible and borderline criminally negligent of the fire department to assume that there was nothing explosive in that house, and that they could control the fire just because they were there.

I honestly can’t find any way to stand behind letting the house burn down, and that’s before I get to feeling sniffly about the dead pets.

@Comment #21: Amanda Marcotte on 10/14 at 09:37 AM

atheist, I agree.  I think that’s what I was getting at towards the end—-liberals react out of empathy and compassion.  Conservatives, particularly “liberatarians”, think that having a lack of empathy makes you tough and manly, and so they go straight for gloating.

Really, you went directly to the heart of the issue by mentioning the social contract.

Along with all mentioned above, what bugged me was the inability to accurately report the situation by the media, ex. Olbermann framing it as the guy paid taxes and they want him to pay again. And even worse the complete inability by people who frequent blogs like ThinkProgress or C&L;(who I assume has got sum book learnin’) to understand the situation. This seems to be the root cause almost all of our country’s problems.

It was a microcosm of the news cycle, bad reporting enhanced by bad reading comprehension. I can sort of accept the misunderstanding about taxes and services, but the local news ops were sad. On the TV video the reporter was saying things like the Crannick’s started a fire that was far enough from the house, no it wasn’t, How do I know? The house burned down. Even though the fire supposedly took 2 hours to reach the house, the thought of letting the pets out never occurred to them?

Another explanation is that they started the fire and then left the property. Leaving a fire untended in a rural area affected by drought is a big no no and a great way to piss of your farming neighbors. If the grass was as dry as the neighboring fields were, that fire burned thru the grass to the house in 5 or 10 min. But it’s better to blame the neighboring city who has no obligations to you than admit you’re an idiot.

I think Amanda is entirely correct in saying that this is freeloading. And on the one hand, there’s a case to be made that unless there are consequences for freeloading, a lot of people will choose to do it.

But on the other hand, what’s the alternative? In this case, it was letting a guy’s house burn down. Yes, freeloading is bad, but letting a person’s house burn down is worse. They might both be moral issues, but I think the latter really outweighs the former here.

I view firefighting as emergency care. Anyone should get it, no questions asked, if they need it. They can hash out the money later if they need to, but if you need emergency surgery or your house is on fire, that’s priority number one and everything takes a backseat to that.

I put this on another (nearly) dead thread, but i think it belongs here:

This is the key reason why Republicans (as they currently define themselves) shouldn’t be elected to political office:  They think keeping the War Department running at full steam and continual enlargement of the police state are the only legitimate functions of government.  In every other area they cry “government is the problem and not the solution!”
From the beginning of history any time there has been a group of more than 10 humans living together there has been some form of government, even if it is as simple as choosing one person to be their leader/decision maker.

Without some form of leadership and centralized decision making there is chaos.  All forms of government — monarchy, oligarchy, republic, democracy, etc. — are aimed at keeping a society working together and reducing the endemic chaos.  Some forms may work better in certain situations than others.  But ultimately the existence of government is as natural a part of being human as eating, sleeping, and having children.

When a political party announces to the world that you should elect them to government offices specifically because they will not govern, that should be a big, red, warning sign.  Anybody with the sense god gave seafood should be able to recognize the simple truth of that.

There is one 100% certain fact:  There will be a government.  That government can be effective and efficient, or it can be an organized crime syndicate, or some unholy combination.  The choice, in a democratic republic like the USA, is ours to make.  Choose wisely…

***

I add to this that it’s obvious to anyone with any sense that we all benefit from a well-running society, which includes services and infrastructure almost no individual could provide for themselves. 

But the very fact that all benefit seems to be the biggest corncob up the asses of the wingnuts, teabaggers, “libertarians”, and miscellaneous right-wing nutjobs who go all Howard Jarvis on this stuff…

Ex. #infinity

“It’s about whether firefighters should ever be told to stand down because the homeowner hasn’t paid their fee.”

I’m not sure, but isn’t it sometimes the case that cities are responsible for paying to extend sewer lines to new developments outside the city limits?  My understanding is that cities subsidize their cheapskate suburbs and exurbs in all kinds of ways, not just in an instance like this.

It will be a year next week that my brother’s house burned down (he, his wife, daughter and the dog made it out safely, though according to the tax-base supported professional fire department, three minutes longer and they all would have died). My niece, my father and I all got to the scene while it was still burning and there were six fire-trucks on the scene. It was a near total loss and had to be reconstructed over several months (while my bro lived with his family in our parents basement because you still have to pay a mortgage on a burned down property while its rebuilt).

With our social contract in place, it was a devastating event and process. We’re in a mid-sized, Southern city (that tends Blue, but isn’t really a bastion of progressivism, though we like to think it is).

Whenever I read about these Libertarian, free-loading asshat communities, I can’t help but think of the essential question I read about in a Salon.com article a few years ago:

Would you rather be rich in Congo or middle-class in Denmark? Sensible people would say Middle-class in Denmark, but our fucked-up money is the ends, not just the means, valuing society with its “I’ll be rich someday” fantasies have convinced enough of the know-nothings that rich in Congo is the better condition. Fuck everyone else as long as you have a compound. Prosperity piety, celebrity culture, anti-government sentiment born out of the Southern Strategy of the Republican Party to obscure their racism and the politicization of facts (aka attack on science, data, history, etc.) have further rendered a large portion of the population incompetent to make rational decisions regarding their and our collective interests.

Our strategy has to be to convince the non-voting population to vote, to make election days a national holiday, to extend the voting window and to make a Constitutional Amendment Movement for the Recognition that only People count as Citizens, not Corporations. The ingrained know-nothings aren’t going to change, they haven’t since 1964 and waiting for those baby-boomers to die out isn’t going to save our collective asses from our coming (and present) challenges. Pointing out that they are trying to create Congo is important, but in terms of real energy, the focus has to be on the disenfranchised and on making suffrage truly available to all citizens.

The professional fire-department that came to my brother’s house was well trained, efficient and kind. We are all grateful to them and of course to the founders and citizens of our city who through taxes and continued political support helped build a community where security is good, services are extended and the schools are funded in a more equitable manner than the schools I initially grew up with in suburban California. I am thankful for their vision and it is our job to maintain our communities for generations to come.

Generally, the developer is required to pay the cost of extending services to new developments.  I don’t know that this is universal.

While we are at it- what if he had paid for garbage pick-up and didn’t burn it in the barrels by his house?  Then there wouldn’t even be a fire to burn down his house.  It’s not rocket science to understand how fire works, nor is it all that complex to get rid of garbage in other ways- I assume they had a drop off site they could drive to, that’s the usual rural solution.

What if when they noticed that the fire was moving towards the house they had taken the animals out themselves.  Surely there was time for that-I helped put out a fire from a nearby neighbor (who was also burning garbage in a can), and although it moved faster than we could hose it down, there was plenty of time to go into the house and get stuff.  Which, we had to do because there was one hose, and the rest of us filled buckets till the fire department got there.

The Crannick family has a whole lot of ways they could have prevented this- 1) not burning garbage in the first place 2) watching their garbage while it was burning 3)paying the $75 and finally 4) saving their animals when it was obvious that their house was going to catch fire- which doesn’t fix everything, but it does save the animals.

We have a teapartier/wingnut running for city council here.  He has no ideas about how to improve anything, his platform is based entirely on, “Government bad, too many taxes”.  So it was a bit amusing when it appeared in the local paper that he had called the police out and requested increased patrols because someone had stolen two cardboard yard signs urging people to vote for him.

One possibility would be to charge non-payers the actual cost of putting out the fire—which would probably run into thousands of dollars.

This is exactly what they should have done—he’s not paying taxes for this particular service, and he was foolish enough to assume he wouldn’t have to pay the $75 fee to opt in. They should have put out the fire (as a public safety issue) and then saddled him with a bill to the tune of 10s of thousands of dollars—as a Randian tycoon I’m sure he could afford to pay.

I’m sure this will be the solution in this county and other counties and greater urban areas when it comes to serving these unincorporated exurbs filled with rugged individualists. As an opt-in service offered by the county/urban area, it will also be incumbent upon them to let potential users of this critical service know about the options frequently and clearly.

Libertarians being what they are, though, the morons’ response will be a demand that everyone in the county go the Crassus/Wm. M Tweed route when it comes to fire protection. As with Medicare, they believe that “government should keep its hands off firefighting” (and public sanitation, and policing, etc, etc)

So it was a bit amusing when it appeared in the local paper that he had called the police out and requested increased patrols because someone had stolen two cardboard yard signs urging people to vote for him.

As Kim Stanley Robinson said, “That’s libertarians for you—anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.”

The Crannick family has a whole lot of ways they could have prevented this

All things considered, I’m sort of surprised that the Crannick family, upon seeing the house catch on fire, didn’t immediately rush inside and sit around counting their money and cataloguing their possessions while the house burned around them.

atheist at 14: Many people seem to treat economics as a sort of religion, something that has to be accepted on faith rather than through reason and experimentation. This is very much true for the Free Market crowd, who are nearly Leninist in their approach to the Free Market. When the flaws of the Free Market are pointed out to them, they just say that we never really had a “True Free Market”.

  Bonus: If you really want to annoy libertarians, remind them that there can be no private property without the state since the state is the only effective defender of property rights.

I’m more concerned about the trend of municipalities charging fees on top of taxes for services they should provide in the first place. I’m talking about ambulances that charge to taking you to the hospital (or even responding to an accident) and schools that make parents pay for everything from books to cleaning supplies.

Service fees, lotteries and casinos: The three guaranteed ways for politicians to raise revenues without losing their jobs over tax increases.

I have talked to a couple conservatives about this and they justify the destruction of the Craddicks house by claiming it is a lesson to others.  It is only a lesson for people who live in Libertarian Utopias(known as hell to most of us).  their explanation has a certain patriarchical feel to it, saying you need to learn your lesson and realize that I am always right.

I view firefighting as emergency care. Anyone should get it, no questions asked, if they need it. They can hash out the money later if they need to

Absolutely agreed with the first sentence. The problem with the second part is that a large-scale moral hazard is created when the terms of the financial issue aren’t laid out as clearly as possible in advance—and if you don’t think that will happen, you haven’t seen Libertarian whinging and special pleading in action.

I view firefighting as emergency care. Anyone should get it, no questions asked, if they need it. They can hash out the money later if they need to

Or, as FDR explained, in a somewhat different context:

‘Well, let me give you an illustration: Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do I do? I don’t say to him before that operation, “Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it.”’

All things considered, I’m sort of surprised that the Crannick family, upon seeing the house catch on fire, didn’t immediately rush inside and sit around counting their money and cataloguing their possessions while the house burned around them.

The policy apparently was, the fire depeartment would put out the fire only if lives were in danger.  Clearly, therefore, what the family ought to have done was rush back into the house.

I honestly can’t find any way to stand behind letting the house burn down, and that’s before I get to feeling sniffly about the dead pets.

Given that the general feeling of the populace is that they don’t want to pay (or it’d just be taxed), you can reliably bet that if they just put the fires out anyway, nobody would pay the fee, and within a few years there wouldn’t be a fire department anymore.  It’s the standard Free Rider problem.

I had been prepared to get all hot and bothered by this case until I read that this was the SECOND fire Craddick has had.  The first one was a chimney fire a couple of years ago and again he had forgot to pay the fee.  Fire company shows up and he agrees to pay the fee and the fireman put the fire out.  The difference this time?  Their insurance company now only provides coverage when they do firefighting/rescues for tax paying or fee paying customers, not for activities that would be considered good samaritan in nature.  Which makes sense, as that’s an insurance issue many medical professionals have to contend with.

”...you can reliably bet that if they just put the fires out anyway, nobody would pay the fee, and within a few years there wouldn’t be a fire department anymore.”

...then some Reichwing stooge would suggest the fighting of fires be contracted out to some arm of Halliburton specifically created for this very thing.  Fees charged would be double or triple what the old fire dept. cost, and they’d probably have rules that said they could drop anyone’s fire coverage at any time (even during a fire), and they could decline to cover any property with “pre-existing conditions”, like being hooked up to electricity, or having gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles parked there (ever), or having any piece of vegetation closer than a mile, or having a house made using wood.  (Of course, you wouldn’t find out you had no fire coverage until your house was on fire, even though you already paid for coverage.)

Then all they’d need is a government mandate to force everyone to purchase fire coverage, at high cost, which doesn’t actually provide any useful fire coverage, and you’ve got a good start on a Libertarian Paradise!...

+10 points to liberals for defaulting to compassion and empathy, even at the cost of ideological purity. -1000 to conservatives for doing the opposite: accidentally rallying behind socialized civil services in their rush to join the schadenfreude orgy.

I’ve come to understand that conservatism has been so crazy for so long that it just hates everybody who lives in America.

So a conservative spends their life in constant fear of being abandoned by the Kewl Kids they hang with and thrown to the wolves, and therefore has to jeer harder and act fouler than everyone else.  It’s a bad middle school clique for one’s entire life.

These folks have decided to rent the services of a local government rather than expanding their own. That seems like a win-win to me.

No, you goob, it’s not a win-win, because as has already been pointed out, the fee Obion County was paying to “rent the services of” the fire department was lower than the actual cost of providing those services. They were being subsidized, essentially, and someone had to pick up that slack, and it wasn’t the magic tax fairy. It was the citizens of South Fulton, who actually pay for that fire department.

The government of Obion County thought they were so special they deserved to have people in the next town over pay more for fire protection so they and their citizens could get a discount on it.

Liberals could have used this situation to ask ourselves hard questions, like, “If people really are going to go out of their way to avoid paying into the tax base, shouldn’t their access to services be revoked?”

Is that really a hard question for liberals? If he’s libertarian (or cheap) enough not to want to pay his seventy-five bucks—even after they already put one out for him once for free, and told him it wouldn’t happen again—and dumb enough to set his own house on fire with a pile of burning garbage because he didn’t want to pay for pickup service either, then as far as I’m concerned, he gets to stand there and watch his house burn down. I feel bad for his family and his pets, but I just can’t bleed my heart a single drop for his dumb ass.

I had been prepared to get all hot and bothered by this case until I read that this was the SECOND fire Craddick has had.

From what I read, Craddick offered to pay the fee to the fire department at the scene but they refused.

“The first one was a chimney fire a couple of years ago and again he had “forgot” to pay the fee.”

I wondered if this would be mentioned.  It seems kind of unlikely that, as he claimed, he had always paid the fee, but he just *happened* to “forget” twice, and there just *happened* to be a fire the only two times he “forgot” to pay.

That’s asking a lot of coincidence, and I just don’t believe it.

The most disturbing thing I read about this incident was an article on the site of a magazine for insurance professionals.  The article was excellent, but the comments were appalling.  Most of the commenters (insurance people, remember) seemed to have no idea how insurance works, not to mention poor reading skills.  it makes me nervous about my insurance people.

The government of Obion County thought they were so special they deserved to have people in the next town over pay more for fire protection so they and their citizens could get a discount on it.

This is conservatism in a nutshell.  Look at their stance on abortion:  We don’t want anybody to have one, unless it’s one of us.  We don’t want to pay taxes, but we want the services they provide.  Conservatism is the Terrible Twos all grown up.

From what I read, Craddick offered to pay the fee to the fire department at the scene but they refused.

The fee is essentially insurance.  Most people don’t need the services, and the fee itself doesn’t cover the cost when you do need it.  You can’t pay for your car insurance after you’ve had an accident for the same reason that he couldn’t pay the fee once the fire had started.  Charging the actual cost at that point would have been reasonable, but given that it would essentially be an agreement under duress, II don’t believe it would be enforceable.

it makes me nervous about my insurance people.

A guy who does contract IT service to small businesses around here told me that some insurance agents told him they never bother to buy insurance for themselves.  He said they laughed when he asked and said “Insurance is something you sell, not something you buy.”  I interpreted that as meaning that these particular agents were very skilled in making sure that their policies never paid out when they were supposed to.

I hope this teaches people the lesson that privatized fire departments,  where you accept “personal responsibility” and pay for coverage instead of being forced to pay, is an egregiously stupid idea. In that kind of system, the only options for dealing with people who don’t pay is to let the house burn, or allow them to freeload off of the people who did.  (And once one person gets away with freeloading, many others are bound to follow. If you know they’ll fight the fire anyway, why would you pay?)

We should either agree that people should be forced to pay for fire coverage (through taxes), or we should agree people who don’t pay should be willing to lose everything. Back when the health reform debate was raging, conservatives were screaming about how they shouldn’t be forced to buy health insurance if they don’t want to. Of course, if disaster strikes—like they get blindsided by a drunk driver and have to be life-flighted by helicopter—how is a libertarian who demanded his right to be uninsured going to pay a bill that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars? He won’t. Somebody else will. That cost has to be paid somewhere, either by other hospital patients (who will be charged more to cover the tab), or the taxpayers. Unless we convert to a purely libertarian system (which will never happen because it would be inhumane for most people), of course pseudo-libertarianism like this results in freeloading.

I’m glad I’m not the only person seeing this that way. The situation IS a tragedy, but not because the firefighters refused to save his house. Its because fire protection shouldn’t be optional in the first place. But so long as it is, OF COURSE they shouldn’t save his house. I don’t get the argument at all that they should have saved it anyway. Its clear the homeowner thought he could save $75 with no consequences. Well, tough for him. He was irresponsible and paid a price. We shouldn’t allow people to be irresponsible like that, but if we do we can’t just rescue them.

The conservative notion that this guy is a freeloader is beyond bizarre. He’s one of them. He got to opt out of government services. Look what it earned him.

About the only concession I would make is that the Fire Department should feel free to offer their services a la carte for anyone who refuses to pay the fee but then wants their property saved. The fee is insurance but they can still be faced with the decision of paying actual costs. I’d say billing them for man-hours, equipment use, and a reasonable overage to cover the cost of maintaining access to those services would have been fine. Obviously, though, that’d be a quick way for the town to start owning people’s houses when the fail to pay their bills, so I can see why that might not be an attractive alternative.

@Comment #44: Lee on 10/14 at 10:46 AM

Bonus: If you really want to annoy libertarians, remind them that there can be no private property without the state since the state is the only effective defender of property rights.

Abso-frickin’-lutely.

The problem is that ‘libertarianism’ is basically a kind of mental armor, protecting them from understanding this fact. And so they generally talk about how if they, personally, were in libertopia, they would be too smart to get robbed, killed, enslaved, or what-have-you.

The “freeloader” aspect of this is a real problem I have to admit & I have no good notion how to solve it. But it seems to me that tribalism is the other side of the issue. These two tendencies are basically enabling each other at the expense of the communal tendency. When you’re a white escaping the city to get away from all the blacks, of course you’re gonna go to an exurb. And that situation is set up to enable freeloading.

@Comment #64: PAULSALATA on 10/14 at 12:19 PM

2/10

@ BSTu: “I don’t get the argument at all that they should have saved it anyway.”

One third of my argument is that housefires are dangerous and unpredictable enough that letting them wreak havoc on a single house and hoping none of the neighboring houses are damaged is stupidly risky even if the fire department is on hand.  It’s a public safety issue as much as it is a human decency issue—or rather, more accurately, it’s a public safety issue well in excess of as much as it is a human decency issue; I’m just hesitant to dismiss that side of it.

I dunno, Amanda, I saw a lot of smug-to-gleeful liberals on the subject of this story too, who were excited to be able to decry the Tea-Party-ish homeowner for reaping what he sowed.  Personally, I don’t think the guy needs a lecture about moral hazard when his house is burning, any more than I think a woman needs a lecture about proper birth control when she shows up to the clinic to get an abortion.  It’s an emergency.  Treat the person humanely and with dignity first, then worry about The Message It Sends some time in the future.

I’m sort of surprised that the Crannick family, upon seeing the house catch on fire, didn’t immediately rush inside and sit around counting their money and cataloguing their possessions while the house burned around them.

Well that’s certainly a snotty little thing to say.
I haven’t found any actual numbers regarding Crannick’s wealth in the the links Amanda listed; anyone find anything like that?

Bitter Scribe @45:
In MA, the ambulance service is not public, it is pseudo-private - that is, it is private companies contracted with an area to provide a service within it (usually more than one with a market share) that are then protected from competition from other private companies not included in the agreement.

Gracchus,

<blockquote>Absolutely agreed with the first sentence. The problem with the second part is that a large-scale moral hazard is created when the terms of the financial issue aren’t laid out as clearly as possible in advance—and if you don’t think that will happen, you haven’t seen Libertarian whinging and special pleading in action. </blockquot>

You’re absolutely right. It does create a moral hazard situation, which is why things like firefighting should not be optional services. But given that the situation is what it is, and the fact that the guy’s house is on fire, that’s more or less irrelevant. Faced with the question of what’s the right thing to do, the right thing to do is to put out the fire. If that means that the fire department then has to hash it out with him over the money afterwards, so be it.

The only solution to freeriding is to not let people freeride by opting out of essential services. That’s it. Any other solution is bound to fail because it runs into just such situations.

In fact, if we’re talking strictly philosophical differences, liberals should be the ones pointing out that if you don’t pay taxes, services will not be rendered.

It occured to me recently that conservatives, or at least teapartiers, are pushing “you pay taxes, you follow the laws and you don’t get anything from it; vote for us and you won’t have to pay taxes and follow laws” and Democrats really ought to be saying “... vote for us and you’ll get something.” Make “I’m from the government, I’m here to help you” mean something. Sell people on the virtues of what’s smeared as “socialism”; sell people on, maybe socialism isn’t so bad. No one is willing to step forward and say “the government should take care of people, to a certain extent.”

And basically everything in Comment 34. I couldn’t pick any bits more worthy of quoting than the others or think of anything to add MikeEss hadn’t said.

Well said, Jerry.  I was just reading about a similar situation in Alaska in which firefighters would occasionally have to just let the place burn.  The problem wasn’t solved until fire prevention services were built into the mandatory insurance payments the banks required before they’d lend mortgages.

“Compassionate” doesn’t have to mean “stupid.”

Is that really a hard question for liberals? If he’s libertarian (or cheap) enough not to want to pay his seventy-five bucks—even after they already put one out for him once for free, and told him it wouldn’t happen again—and dumb enough to set his own house on fire with a pile of burning garbage because he didn’t want to pay for pickup service either, then as far as I’m concerned, he gets to stand there and watch his house burn down. I feel bad for his family and his pets, but I just can’t bleed my heart a single drop for his dumb ass.

Ecxept, as nekouken points out, letting one house burn turns it into a public safety issue for other houses, and now we have a deadweight loss as the family moves into temporary quarters (probably somewhere in town) increasing the local demand for services without increasing the tax base. Letting people suffer the consequences of their own stupidity hardly ever works, unless they’re actually the libertarian ideal of someone with no dependent family and no co-workers who will have to take up the slack, no neighbors to be bothered by the vermin.

Its clear the homeowner thought he could save $75 with no consequences. Well, tough for him.

The trouble is that we’ve seen no information regarding whether or not this person could realistically afford $75.  Perhaps he is extremely poor and thought that surely lightning couldn’t strike twice.  For all the sneering at the electorate for not voting the 0.13% increase in taxes, it’s surely isn’t the case that the vote had a 100% turnout and there was 100% in favour of not increasing the tax.  What about the poor schlubs who voted for the increase, and don’t live in that area because they want to freeload on the nearby city, but because, say, they have family there, or because they just happen the like the place.  Perhaps he was one of those people? 

Perhaps not - maybe he is the feckless, freeloading idiot that people are making him out to be - but either conclusion is jumping without full evidence.  The individual circumstances are surely the smallest part of this sorry case of institutional idiocy - that being the existence of the very possibility for someone not have the protection of the fire services.

Ashley @ 62:
Not to harp on MA’s screwed up system, but here at least, medical insurance would not cover life-flight if you were in a vehicle accident of any kind.  All costs associated with a vehicle accident have to be administered through the vehicle insurance system. 

If you happen to have good medical insurance, the hospital, doctor et al are more happy about you showing up, because if after the red tape nightmare of the auto insurance system doesn’t pay, they get something from the medical insurance (usually).  It was almost 18 months before we got the last bill re my husband’s accident (where a teen driver turned left through a line of bumper-to-bumper traffic into his motorcycle, totalling it and sending him to the ER).  At least the kid had auto insurance and it covered almost everything.  The total bills were less than $3K.  The admin must have eaten up that much again.  It was insane.

Well that’s certainly a snotty little thing to say.

Bet you’re not a fan of the Darwin Awards, either.

Read comments #39 and #50 and tell me that this is a guy who thinks ahead. This is a tragedy for the family to be sure, and while I’m not going to go the conservative route of claiming this as a “lesson” for them (partially because the patriarch seems incapable of learning one), I’m not going to pretend that the outcome was some random act of the Invisible Bearded Sky Man™or the fault of the authorities, either.

I haven’t found any actual numbers regarding Crannick’s wealth in the the links Amanda listed; anyone find anything like that?

That’s besides the point. JoeDuhPlumbah wasn’t a $250-yon-aire as a result of his unlicensed skills, but it didn’t stop him from acting like one of the Koch brothers. From what I’ve read, Cranick has the same sense of bone-headed entitlement:

“I thought they’d come out and put it out, even if you hadn’t paid your $75, but I was wrong,” said Gene Cranick.

[...]

the Cranicks don’t blame the firefighters themselves. They blame the people in charge.

It’s the usual Know-Nothing/Teabagger response: blame God, blame the government, blame everyone but your own stupid self for your misfortune. If there’s a depressingly predictable follow-up to this story, it’ll probably be Cranick blaming his homeowner’s insurance company for not paying out, despite the fact that he’s 90+ days behind in paying his premiums.

I rarely agree with an argument from the right on virtually anything, but the one argument germane to this case that is hard to refute is this: if the Fire Department had put out the fire, the message that many would take from it is that the $75 fee doesn’t actually need to be paid in order to receive fire protection. A lot of people would stop paying the fee if they believed that the FD will put out all house fires regardless of whether or not the fee had been paid.

Nevertheless, I cannot reconcile with the argument that this system produced the best outcome (or even an acceptable outcome), even though it worked precisely the way it was meant to work. Wingnuts tend to gripe about the so-called “nanny state”, believing that people should be allowed to fall flat on their faces if they make poor decisions like not paying the annual fire protection fee. I think there are certain basic functions of any community which should not be privatized, nor should they be optional. The problem isn’t that Mr. Craddick failed to pay the protection fee, it’s that he had a choice in the matter in the first place. Given the destructive and volatile nature of house fires, I would not want to live in a community in which my next door neighbor doesn’t have fire protection, because if his house catches fire and is allowed to burn wildly, there’s a good chance that my house will alos catch on fire. Which means that those who do pay the $75 fee may be directly impacted if their neighbor hasn’t paid the fee.

The fee should never have been optional in the first, it should be built into the local tax structure. Call it the nanny state all you want, but sometimes the government does have a duty to protect people from their own stupidity, particularly when that stupidity left unchecked can harm innocent people and pets.

The only other feasible solution I’ve heard is a system in which those who refuse to pay the fee will still receive fire protection should their house catch fire, but they will then be hit with a massive fine for not having paid their fee. Perhaps $10,000 or so. Make it big enough that it will make people think twice about not paying the fee, knowing that it will cost them a fuckload of money to have a fire put out if they haven’t paid the modest fee.

atheist @ 67:
Did you gave extra points for spelling and grammar?  I don’t see how you gave a 2 otherwise.

But given that the situation is what it is, and the fact that the guy’s house is on fire, that’s more or less irrelevant.

Absolutely. As I said at #41, this is a public safety issue first and foremost, and they should have contained the fire immediately. But I guarantee you that if they had and then billed him for time, equipment, risk, etc, etc on an itemised basis he would have taken the same attitude. The quotes would have been almost exactly the same.

Of course the only real solution to the moral hazard is the mandatory tax-based one you mention. Cranick certainly would have been better off, even if (as I suspect) he’d miss his tax payments—as opposed to fee-based “solutions,” fire departments don’t check with the tax department before putting out a fire in the community.

I was sick when I learned that animals died. What would have happened if his elderly mother had been in there as well? This beaurocratic response is simply idiotic!I think they should have put the fire out and sued him to get the money. It also wouldve been irrationally invasive to the neighbors who wouldnt be able to rest or go about their daily needs because theres a blazing inferno next door. The loss of sleep, stress, intrusion into work life should be sue-able!

Paul, it’s not much of a public safety issue when you’ve got the fire department right there in case embers blow onto the next house’s roof.

You also argue that “[l]etting people suffer the consequences of their own stupidity hardly ever works.” So it’s better for the town residents, whose taxes support the fire company, to pay for those consequences instead? From the sound of it, they have a hard enough time affording the fire coverage they’ve already got, which is why they require payment from county residents who want coverage as well. How do you figure it makes sense, then, that they should take on an extra few grand of debt on behalf of somebody who didn’t bother to keep up his $75-a-month end of the deal?

And, Katherine, your impulse to fairness does you credit, but you might want to think about the possibility that what you consider ‘institutional idiocy’ may in fact be borne of the town’s being pretty damn near broke, which tends to be the case with little bitty nowhere towns in east Tennessee and other “flyover country” places that no one in Manhattan is sensible enough to care about.

What would have happened if his elderly mother had been in there as well?

They’d have put the fire out, that’s what. They’re cash-strapped, not inhuman. But you’re advocating that the neighbors sue somebody who just watched his house burn to the ground, because it disturbed their beauty sleep—so I suppose I’m not too surprised that you should need this made explicit.

The fee should never have been optional in the first, it should be built into the local tax structure.

Read the comments and the news articles—the county recently voted on a proposition to establish a tax-funded fire company of its own, and the issue didn’t pass. Unless you think the township should have the power to tax people who live outside its borders, I’m not sure how you expect this to work.

Actually, Alkaloid, it would be a $130 tax (100,000 X 0.0013). OK, I’m a math geek; sorry to quibble over $17.

It was money from ALL the STATE taxpayers that bought the firetruck…who are they to limit who gets access.  They want a fire department they can pay for it on their own and refund the federal and state taxes they STOLE

I’m not sure, but isn’t it sometimes the case that cities are responsible for paying to extend sewer lines to new developments outside the city limits?

This. A while back there was a to-do because a township outside of my small Wisconsin hometown wanted sewer and water extended to them. My town said “We can do that. Here’s how much it will cost you.” That wasn’t what they wanted to hear, because what they actually wanted was to freeload off the taxpayers in town. They wanted their low country taxes but also the benefits of living in town. As far as I know, they are still on their septic systems out there.

On the other hand, the township my parents live in is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but they do pay their taxes. They pay their taxes so they have their own tiny fire department, maintenance of the lakes, etc. But that township is mostly made up of vacation property and retirees, so there is a large tax base even with a small population.

The trouble is that we’ve seen no information regarding whether or not this person could realistically afford $75.

He’s a homeowner. If he can’t afford $75 a year to protect a home—not an investment, not a consumer good, but a home— worth at least several thousand dollars, then it’s the home he can’t afford.

Read the comments and the news articles—the county recently voted on a proposition to establish a tax-funded fire company of its own, and the issue didn’t pass

I wouldn’t take any betting action on how Cranick voted on that proposition—assuming he voted at all.

an illustration of the problems that erupt when a bunch of Americans think they’re too good to obey the social contract, and build miles upon miles of exurbs with gated communities, gates that symbolically shield them from either having to rub shoulders with people they don’t consider Real Americans, or pay taxes so that we can all have public goods, like fire departments.

Ahem.  King County, where I live, has a multitude of unincorporated areas (exurbs essentially) which we in Seattle subsidize with our tax dollars, because they don’t feel like paying for their own services and infrastructure.  Those exurbs are not populated by racist white people but rather by Southeast Asians, East Africans, and Hispanics who can’t afford to live anywhere else.

he said he thought he could pay the $75 when the fire department showed up

Well, that’s totally reasonable.  Certainly it doesn’t cost more than $75 to pay several firefighters to risk their lives saving some moronic shmoe’s property.  Amirite?

it’s almost always going to be a better financial idea for someone not to pay a fire-protection fee. Fires aren’t that common nowadays, so the odds of getting hit while you own a particular property are low.

Well, I don’t know.  Does it make sense to have fire insurance?  And, the odds are, insurance isn’t going to pay out if you refused to do something basic like make sure firefighters are going to save your property.  My insurance rates are based on the proximity of a fire station to my apartment, the year my building was constructed, and whether my building has functioning sprinklers and fire detectors.  I’ll bet that Cranick isn’t getting a penny out of his insurance company (assuming he even had insurance).

The trouble is that we’ve seen no information regarding whether or not this person could realistically afford $75.  Perhaps he is extremely poor and thought that surely lightning couldn’t strike twice.

The guy’s a homeowner, and the fee amounts to $6/month.  Homeownership isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay, but people who can’t afford the responsibilities of owning a home (get this) shouldn’t own a home.

The fee should never have been optional in the first, it should be built into the local tax structure.

Read the comments and the news articles—the county recently voted on a proposition to establish a tax-funded fire company of its own, and the issue didn’t pass.

I’m aware of that. My position there is similar to the previous position you cite… the issue of creating a tax-funded fire department should never have been left to the whims of the electorate, either.

The problem isn’t that voters opposed the creation a taxpayer funded fire department; it’s that voters were even allowed to choose not to have community-wide fire protection in the first place.

Perhaps my postion on this is a bit impractical, but I just oppose the idea of letting popular opinion dictate whether or not a particular community will have fire protection.

Fire protection is a public utility that should never be left to the whims of voters. The biggest reason for that is because the potential harm to innocent people and pets is too great to allow people to choose whether or not they will have fire protection.

I’m sure there are communities where people would vote against funding police protection as well… that such a sentiment might exist and might enjoy popular support in some areas doesn’t mean that it would be a good idea to allow people the ability to opt out of police protection.

You’ve gone from systemic analysis of a problem to personally insulting someone you know nothing about because they were the victim of a tragedy.

No, I’m aware of the situation because of the tragedy. I read the articles and the history, and my conclusion is that the guy has the same sense of idiotic entitlement and magical thinking as your average Teabagger or Libertarian—an attitude that leads directly to situations like people voting against a tax-funded fire department (and I agree with Murrow Fan that this shouldn’t even be a matter of voting), which in turn contributed to the tragedy.

That’s not called “one-to-one just-deserts,” that’s pointing out a destructive attitude borne out of stupidity and ignorance. If you don’t like the way I used reductio ad absurdum and black humour to make my point, that’s a matter of style, but I stand by the point.

You’re right.  Our tiny house (which is actually inside a city limit, but only barely) is $160K.  At 0.13%, that’s $200.  $75 is hardly as much as what is apparently needed to fund a fire station!

John Rove @ 46:

I have talked to a couple conservatives about this and they justify the destruction of the Craddicks house by claiming it is a lesson to others.  It is only a lesson for people who live in Libertarian Utopias(known as hell to most of us).  their explanation has a certain patriarchical feel to it, saying you need to learn your lesson and realize that I am always right.

This line of thinking is entirely in keeping with George Lakoff’s theory that conservatives adopt a “strict father” mentality, where punishing the guilty is more important than preventing harm in the first place.  It’s entirely consistent with the conservative position on abortion (pregnancy as punishment for having sex) and healthcare (people who can’t afford it deserve to do without).  Appeals to the common good, or even fiscal solvency, fall on deaf ears here, since the most important thing is that people who are considered guilty not be allowed to get away with it.

I’m guessing this arrangement is reasonably common. I once worked with a volunteer fireman, part of a hybrid company (a few paid firefighters, the rest volunteers) who were supported by homeowners’ fees. Houses were built on 2/3 of an acre or so, far from the nearest city of any size. It was easy to tell which homeowner had paid the fee and who had not, because fee payers had signs in their front yard that were updated with a sticker for the current year. (The FD sign looked much like alarm company signs)

I agree that the alternative to paying the annual fee would be for the homeowner to sign an authorization for the on-the-spot estimated actual cost of the fire fighting, backed up by a recorded lien on the property. Then if he doesn’t pay, the FD would own a valuable asset.

@Aaron: “Paul, it’s not much of a public safety issue when you’ve got the fire department right there in case embers blow onto the next house’s roof.” ignoring the rather highly likel

If you can be sure that everything that connects the guy’s house to the infrastructure is up to code—electric, sewage, natural gas… any one of these could cause greater damage to the community than setting The neighbor’s house on fire.  This is what I was saying before: fires are too dangerous and unpredictable to reasonably expect the fire department to prevent that from happening by standing outside an watching.

@Comment #80: helen w. h.  on 10/14 at 01:29 PM

atheist @ 67:
Did you gave extra points for spelling and grammar?  I don’t see how you gave a 2 otherwise.

dear helen w. h.

Here’s my scale:
0/10 - beneath notice
5/10 - stupid enough to laugh at
10/10 - actually made me feel mad

I suppose they wouldn’t need the fire department so much if they were sea steading as in the true libertarian perfect fantasy. Oh well. Pity they can’t all fuck off into the oceans.

When I lived in Colorado there were periodically articles in the newspapers about people who had moved to rural counties in the foothills, to get away from Denver and pay less in taxes, who were shocked to discover that their roads weren’t being plowed.  And would then kick up a huge fuss about it.  It’s really amazing, the depth of the anti-government ideology in this country—I think white people really think that their tax money is spent entirely on members of minority groups.

I wrote about this a few days ago.  It is indeed a liberal point that if everyone behaved this way, essential services would not exist.  You are quite right, its a nail in the coffin for libertarianism.

Their hostility towards the man on account of his having made a mistake is a point I had missed, and a rather interesting one.  Looking back over a decade of conservative politics this country has really cultivated a disdain for mistakes in all its public figures.  What a horribly anti-human approach to an essentially human enterprise!

@85, TY. Math is hard!

The way to work a private solution is to charge the fixed fee to everyone who wants to subscribe to the service. Then if a non-subscriber has an emergency, they are welcome to sign a contract on-site, whereby the fire department puts out the fire and then charges the homeowner the actual cost of the operation - with a lien or note against the saved home, if necessary. That’s a win-win - subscribers get security and a fixed-cost protection package, while fires at nonsubscriber homes don’t cost subscribers anything, since the nonsubscriber has to pay the full cost.

If you want to get really wonky, the fire department could carry insurance against their costs in the event where they have to do a rescue (sweet grandma trapped in attic) but can’t recover for whatever reason. That wouldn’t cost too much and could also be assigned to the non-subscribers for payment by an allotment at the time of service.

And if you want to get sneaky, you can offer a modest discount to nonsubscribers on their expensive first burn if they agree (and commit) to joining the pool. “It’ll be $7400 - or $6000 if you sign a 10-year protection contract.”

As long as you correlate rights to responsibilities and stamp out moral hazards, private systems work very well. You have to protect against thieves, both those who would steal from the private system and those would set up private systems of theft. But that can be done in any reasonably honest governmental regime.

I personally favor this kind of highly market-based system, when it is wrapped in a social entity that pursues relatively progressive values. For example, there is no reason at all why the private fire department can’t be the Jones Valley Fire Co-Operative, have extremely democratic governance, devote 15% of its fee revenue to subsidizing service for the local poor, etc., but still use the starkly right-wing economic model outlined above. Indeed, there is a rich history of such private initiatives from progressives.

And the alternative, unfortunately, is either the Government Everywhere that more statist progressives like Amanda seem to favor (forgive me if I’m wrong there) where every town has a Fire Department (even if it would be way cheaper for them to piggyback on the underutilized department in the next town), or a really awful private environment where there aren’t even social enterprises softening the sharp edges of the market - where you can’t get fire protection at all because your Galt-loving neighbors say “I got a well and a bucket”.

I agree, the fire department could have showed up and said, “We can save your house but it’ll cost you $750 rather than $75”.  But the department wasn’t authorized to do that.  The fire fighters could have all just picked up and been good Sumeritians and pitched in.  But they apparently already did that once and the guy still hadn’t paid his fee.

Adopt a medical system model - the guy signs on the dotted line while the flames start getting higher, and the fire-fighters charge him after the fact for all the traffic will bear, plus a bit of a profit.

Perhaps I’m not aware of the full facts, but I don’t see any reason for compassion or empathy.  Except for the dog.  Cranick appears to have gotten precisely what he asked for, as did teh community around him.  The classic Mencken quote springs to mind: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

Bonus: If you really want to annoy libertarians, remind them that there can be no private property without the state since the state is the only effective defender of property rights.

Special bonus: Point out it’s not their money until they pay taxes on it, because the idea of money and property only makes sense in the context of a functioning State.  Ask precisely what they would do without a State if, say, the bank decided to zero out their account to enhance their profits that quarter…

One third of my argument is that housefires are dangerous and unpredictable enough that letting them wreak havoc on a single house and hoping none of the neighboring houses are damaged is stupidly risky even if the fire department is on hand.

Tort law.  You’re liable for the damages to your neighbours as well unless you adopt a “reasonable” standard of care.  Such as paying the goddamned fee.  So the firefighters show up, let your house burn while you sign an open-ended contract to pay them cost+ on fighting the fire, and you get whacked with a fee for the damage done to your neighbours during that extra time.

I dunno, Amanda, I saw a lot of smug-to-gleeful liberals on the subject of this story too, who were excited to be able to decry the Tea-Party-ish homeowner for reaping what he sowed.

Yup - I am smug.  I wouldn’t be smug except that the Tea-Partiers have made their own beds.  I’d have compassion for anyone else forced to lie in them.

Yeah, I had that coming.

...what I get for not refreshing every five seconds. Comment #105, I mean.

Phoenician, you have no proof how this person voted on anything and are being a jackass

He didn’t pay the fee, and apparently didn’t pay it beforehand when he had a fire as well.  That pretty much covers “getting what you asked for”.

Tort law.  You’re liable for the damages to your neighbours as well unless you adopt a “reasonable” standard of care.  Such as paying the goddamned fee.  So the firefighters show up, let your house burn while you sign an open-ended contract to pay them cost+ on fighting the fire, and you get whacked with a fee for the damage done to your neighbours during that extra time.

But tort law does the neighbor no good if a) they don’t have enough money to pursue the claim or b) the non-fee payer is judgement-proof (ie, if the guy didn’t pay the fee because he doesn’t have the money there’s no use suing him because you won’t get anything). 

I think the problem of freeriding is real, but I just don’t think that it’s ok (or even economically sensible*) to let bad things happen to freeriders. Which is why taxes are awesome - the whole community pitches in and everyone is protected, plus it’s way cheaper than doing it on your own.  And taxes come with an enforcement mechanism to cut down on freeriding. Win win.

I think this fire is an object lesson as to why privatization of public goods is a terrible idea. People are awful at judging their risk of an adverse event be it a fire or a medical disaster or unemployment. And most people have a knee-jerk desire to keep more money for themselves. The combination tends to be destructive.

* It’s not economically sensible because problems spread from the freeriders to everyone else. The fire could have moved from his house to the next insured house. Someone with no medical insurance can pass along an illness. Someone who loses their job can bring down property values by defaulting on his/her mortgage. And in each case it’s difficult to separate those who can’t afford to pitch in for the common good to those who are simply taking a gamble that everything will be fine.

Look, purpleshoes, being 67-years-old and owning puppies doesn’t mean this man isn’t still a complete fucking irresponsible idiot, who apparently did everything in his power to get his house burnt down. I understand it’s a sad situation, but I agree with others (above) that this couldn’t have happened to a more asking-for-it guy.

Someone with no medical insurance can pass along an illness. ... And in each case it’s difficult to separate those who can’t afford to pitch in for the common good to those who are simply taking a gamble that everything will be fine.

I think medical “freeriding” with regard to stuff like vaccination is a really interesting example. With vaccines, some people have to “freeride” because they literally cannot be vaccinated—they can have the best intentions in the world but need that herd immunity. And unlike financial/economic examples, it’s not the kind of freeriding that can be solved just by having a really excellent government or whatever (and I’d argue it’s not the kind you can 100% enforce, because it is putting something into a person’s body instead of just giving them a tax or fine.)

I don’t know if that idea really translates into stuff like fire protection, where you would only “need” to freeride for financial reasons. Fire protection is the kind of thing where you really can impose it on everyone ‘cause (unlike vaccines) there is no potential harm in having your house insured. The only problem would be people who couldn’t support the financial burden, which seems much more solvable to me.

Yes, and that you define it that way makes you a mean-spirited jackass.

Guilty as charged.

This is one of those points over which I write off libertarian relatives, and god knows I have less incentive to get along with you.

Difficult as it might be, I shall attempt to avoid losing sleep over this sad fact.

Having argued against wingnuts for years now, I have lost my patience. I save my sympathy for those people who will suffer incidentally, but I see absolutely nothing worth my sympathy when these types get what they asked for.  We can take it as a given that the fire service should be, as with most social goods, a collective enterprise, funded through taxes and available to all - but the information given is that the community voted against joining in this collective enterprise, and this man refused to pay the fee to join in as a volunteer.

Form what information we have, he asked for this situation.  He walked into a casino, laid his money on the table, and rolled the dice - and we are expected to feel sorry for him for losing?

I partially agree, purpleshoes:

Not paying the fee—his fault.

Living in Tennessee and still not paying the fee—still kinda his fault.

is how I’m looking at it.

Personally, I think it’s a ridiculously stupid system. It encourages freeloading. But he is part of that system; he was counting on being able to freeload with no consequences. So the fact that he has been smacked in the face by some of those consequences? I’m not wasting tears on him for that; it’s that everyone else around him who hasn’t suffered is particularly lucky, not that he’s particularly unlucky. When someone gets shot in the head playing Russian roulette I feel bad-ish for them, but I still think it’s their own fault.

But I really do understand why you’re sympathetic, and basically I applaud that. You’re a kind person, at least… though I don’t think either us more or less sympathetic people are wrong in this case.

Also, of course it caught fire. If it was the property in the picture, it was an OLD PINE FARM HOUSE. Those go up like torches.

Especially if you let your grandson burn trash. In an open barrel. Next to the old pine farm house. Into which said grandson had retired to take a shower. Really, what could go wrong?

I wouldn’t (and didn’t) phrase it as “he was asking for it,” but from end to end there was some powerful stupid at work here. The grandson acknowledged as much for his part in the disaster, but the grandfather apparently doesn’t share his level of maturity.

Now if my chain of abjectly stupid mistakes had left me in such a high profile mess, I would have gotten in front of the blame line ahead of the “people in charge” (i.e. bad ol’ gubbmint). When asked for comment, I’d spend half the time kicking myself for my idiocy, and the other half castigating the voters (myself included if necessary) who voted against the taxpayer-supported FD that might have saved the house or didn’t vote at all.

But that’s me—I also acknowledge responsibility for things like my computer’s carbon footprint, and do a fairly good job at learning from scary close calls (especially when someone’s been kind enough to cut me a break). But those are also the reasons why I’m attracted to liberalism instead of conservatism.

I don’t know if that idea really translates into stuff like fire protection, where you would only “need” to freeride for financial reasons. Fire protection is the kind of thing where you really can impose it on everyone ‘cause (unlike vaccines) there is no potential harm in having your house insured. The only problem would be people who couldn’t support the financial burden, which seems much more solvable to me.

My concern is the secondary effects of not providing what the freerider doesn’t pay for. Vaccination is a bit different, because there’s a built in understanding that the intent is to provide herd immunity particularly to those who are most vulnerable and thus unable to be vaccinated (often the medically vulnerable, pregnant women and their fetuses, and the elderly). But with social services the only barrier to contribution is financial. So I think that everyone who can pay should have to pay* (hence the use of tax dollars, as taxes are enforceable) and those who can’t pay should get the services for a reduced rate.

*And even tax evaders should get services. They should be treated for medical problems, their fires should be put out, they should have access to the justice system. They should also be prosecuted, but the dangers of not extending services are twofold 1) I don’t much want to live in a society where we don’t help people in need (particularly when there are children involved who didn’t make the decision to be freeriders) and 2) not providing services raises the risk that something happens to a non-freerider. Illness spreads, fire spreads, crime spreads, forclosures spread; we live in a community and everything is catching.  Stopping problems early is essential and that means helping freeriders to help everyone.

Ah, I guess gambling metaphors are inevitable. :p

I dunno, Amanda, I saw a lot of smug-to-gleeful liberals on the subject of this story too, who were excited to be able to decry the Tea-Party-ish homeowner for reaping what he sowed.

Yup - I am smug.  I wouldn’t be smug except that the Tea-Partiers have made their own beds.  I’d have compassion for anyone else forced to lie in them.

Perhaps I haven’t followed this story closely enough, but what is the basis for assuming that Mr. Cranick is a TP supporter? I know that he’s old, white, rural, and lingusitically unsophisticated, but is there any hard evidence indicating he considers himself aligned with the beliefs of the TP movement?

I would like to think that people who consider themselves progressive are intellectually evolved enough not to make snap judgments about someone’s character based on nothing more than the person’s flyover country demographic background and Southern drawl.

Also, for fuck’s sake, if I can find satellite imagery of his house someone should be able to figure out if he did in fact pay the fee last year and the year before (as per his statement). He’s 67 years old. Sometimes people forget shit. Jesus christ on a hot dog bun, some of the people in this thread suck. When your house floods because of the global warming caused in one very small way by the car you own or the computer you’re typing on, I will stand and laugh, because surely you deserve personal responsibility for collective trends you were a part of biting you in the ass.

Yup.

I get the rational argument that allowing people to have access to public utilities without paying for them creates the possibility that everyone else would follow that example and stop paying their fees thus causing the utility to become finanically insolvent. I don’t claim that Mr. Cranick bears no personal responsibility for his tragic loss, and I am fairly sure that he is presently kicking himself for not having paid the fee for whatever reason he didn’t pay it.

But reading through many of the comments here, I find myself wondering if a bunch of teabaggers confused Pandagon with the wingnut blogs they normally frequent. Some of the smug and cruel comments in this thread sound exactly like the sort of cruel statements that have been made by people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck this past week. It’s kind of nauseating.

Should Mr. Cranick’s tragedy serve as a strong example of why a la carte optional public utilities are a lousy idea? Absolutely.

Should compassionate progressives be expressing gleeful satisfaction over a tragic situation because it strengthens the rationale for mandatory tax-funded public utilities to avoid tragedies like this? Not in my world.

Should compassionate progressives be expressing gleeful satisfaction over a tragic situation because it strengthens the rationale for mandatory tax-funded public utilities to avoid tragedies like this?

Ah, there’s your problem.

i, It’s not “gleeful satisfaction”, or even “schadenfreude”. It’s “ironic appreciation”.

ii, It’s not a tragic situation.  Except for the dog.  If it had been a person at risk, the fire department would have gone in, but all we have here is a property loss.  He essentially gambled with his house on the line, and lost.

iii, I’m not appreciating it because it “strengthens the rationale” for any argument.  I’m appreciating it because it demonstrates what the consequences of wingnut (or wingnut-like) short-sightedness actually are.

Oh, and

(iv) I’m not a “compassionate progressive”.  I vacillate between an “angry progressive” and “malicious clown”, and my back is playing up today.

@Murrow Fan and purpleshoes

Damn straight, I’d hate to a neighbor to some of the people on this thread, it disgusts me that so many people are not only arguing that his not paying the fee means that he deserves to have his house burnt down, but that they’re taking pleasure in it.

And more to the point, what if he were a TP supporter? That would not justify letting his house burn down or being gleeful about it.

Has anyone noticed how this fire would never have happened if they weren’t burning their trash for lack of trash service.

That’s right - burning their trash.  The EPA lists this as a huge source of toxic exposure to homeowners and the environment.  It happens because of the breakdown of society in places like Obion County, not because these people are particularly isolated.

Burning their trash and paying picky fees for everything.  The wonderful right wing way!

Not quite relevant to the final direction this thread ended up going, but it’s worth noting that one of the wealthiest men in the history of ever made a chunk of his change <a > with his very own privatized fire service</a>.  Now granted today it would be hard to make a pure-profit slave-based fire fighting company, but that’s the general direction a privatized fire fighting service would probably end up going.  And since every community could probably support just one or two - well, imagine if they sucked as hard as most of our cable providers do?

As for Cranick - were there no discounts for being poor or elderly?  The nice thing that people forget about government services are the generous discounts that the elderly, poor or disabled people are frequently offered.  Maybe his community is harsher than mine.  He was the principle homeowner and carried most of the the blame here, but if he’s too feeble to remember to pay the fire bill then what the hell is his grandson hanging around for?  Decoration?  Obviously he has family to help him (for whatever that’s worth; it’s his misfortune that his grandson is not the sharpest tool in the shed), none of them asked Dad if he’d opted into the fire services when tax time came around?

Damn straight, I’d hate to a neighbor to some of the people on this thread

Yes, in a choice between Mr. Burns-down-his-house-with-puppies-in-it and Ms. Not-all-that-sad-about-Mr’s-house, I definitely want the trash-torching dude as my neighbor. :p

“I’m not appreciating it because it “strengthens the rationale” for any argument.  I’m appreciating it because it demonstrates what the consequences of wingnut (or wingnut-like) short-sightedness actually are.”

Pretty much.  The consequences are inherent in situations where social services have been cut to the point where you have to pay subscriptions for things like fire protection.  The question is whether or not the general populace can be convinced that those consequences are there, real, and not something that can be hand-waved away until after they’ve voted to gut the government and paved the way for an epidemic of such incidents.  The communities which have voted for taxes so low that they make public services unaffordable do tend to make excellent demonstrations of what-all fucking happens in communities with no public services, because it’s a pretty forgone conclusion that this sort of shit will happen at that point.

You all can argue to the cows come home about this issue, but the fact remains that in this particular instance, the decision to not fight Mr. Craddick’s fire stemmed from stipulations made by the company that insured the fire company.  In other words, had a fireman been injured or killed while fighting the fire, they wouldn’t be eligible for compensation.  I don’t know how one can argue that the fire fighters had an obligation to put themselves at risk when Mr. Craddick was so cavalier about his responsibilities for his property and the social contract he holds with his neighbors.

2) not providing services raises the risk that something happens to a non-freerider. Illness spreads, fire spreads, crime spreads, forclosures spread; we live in a community and everything is catching.

Back when I worked for a fancy company, we had a special lunch once at the Century Club in NYC.  Big fancy midtown building, membership noblesse oblige Quite Old Money types. The room we ate in was dedicated to one of their 19th-century members who had died quite young of consumption. He had taken a bet that he could walk from Times Square or suchlike to the Battery in 45 minutes, which meant inhaling deeply and repeatedly as he walked through what is now the village, soho and little italy. All then teeming with poor sick people.

@Emmetropia

That is precisely the reason the I can’t feel much sympathy for the guy and his family.  The fire fighters (because of their training) had AT MOST the same moral imperative to help Craddick that he and his family had to help themselves.  If someone is unwilling to blame Mr. Craddick for not running in and saving the pets and their property (or for taking adequate safety measures in the first place), then I cannot understand how they can place any blame at all on the fire department that only protected those they had previously agreed to protect.  (I don’t blame either the family or the firefighters for the way they acted.  IMO neither did anything wrong and it is an unfortunate situation that can only be blamed on the majority of voters in Obion who chose lower taxes over the well-being of their neighbors and their neighbors’ pets and property.)

I think Craddick and his grandson were dumbasses, but being a dumbass in no way means that you deserve to lose your house, let alone a pet.

@132: I’m not saying that living in Tennessee makes it his fault, I’m saying that living in a place where burning one’s trash/not automatically paying for fire protection are really normal and then still not taking any steps to protect himself make it his fault. If you live in a place where you know that you are obligated to pay a fee for fire-fighting, and then fail multiple times to do so, your house burning down is a very natural consequence.

If he were living somewhere where it were part of his taxes, where there were no fees, then not paying a fee wouldn’t be a problem (I don’t live in Tennessee, and have not paid a fire fee in my life.) If he lived within the city limits, still in Tennessee, not paying a fee would again not make it his fault ‘cause he would automatically be covered.

When you specifically live in a place that requires you to opt-in to services, and then you choose not to opt-in to those services, the nature of the place you choose to live is part of what makes it your “fault” when you don’t get those services.

(That all sounds super lecture-y—I think having a cold is making me wordy somehow—but hopefully you can be forgiving and get my point? ^^;)

Um, I guess to tie it back to the social contract idea; it sounds like that part of Tennessee has a slightly different social contract than other parts of the country. They pay fewer taxes and get fewer services. By living in that area he was agreeing to that (rather shabby) contract—the fact that he chose a crappy social-contract-living-area was his fault, along with the fact that he didn’t compensate for the gaps in that contract like he was supposed to.

but the other is vicious and is abrogating a social contract.

What social contract?  They voted it away.

Aaron,
“They’re cash-strapped, not inhuman. But you’re advocating that the neighbors sue somebody who just watched his house burn to the ground, because it disturbed their beauty sleep—so I suppose I’m not too surprised that you should need this made explicit”

I’m not saying the neighbors should sue, but that the fire department should for the $75. I’m saying perhaps the neighbors should sue the city/town they live in. They dont make exceptions to the rules but a quick solution like that, one in which it makes the homeowner pay (which during the fire he pleaded that he would) could save the animals and their belongings. I think the guy wouldve liked that better as well, rather than have his pets/belongings go up in flames while beaurocracy looks away.

....and aaron much like this comment elaborates on, “If you can be sure that everything that connects the guy’s house to the infrastructure is up to code—electric, sewage, natural gas… any one of these could cause greater damage to the community than setting The neighbor’s house on fire” it’s more than beauty sleep I was referring to. Would you be in your room while a blazing fire went on next door? What about your kids or pets? You have to act like it’s on your house even when it’s not and be severely disrupted due to the fire department not putting the fire out. The neighbors also frantically tried to put the flames out with hoses which werent enough.

You suggest the Fire Department perform thousands of dollars of unmandated and uninsured services and they file a completely baseless lawsuit for $75? You’re not understanding what that $75 represented. I’m sure the guy would have rather spent $75 when his house was on fire. He did the last time this happened. That’s not how insurance works, and THAT is what the fire protection essentially is.

This case IS an example, but not for why people should fork over $75. Its why they shouldn’t get to decide if they want to pay for fire protection. But until the laws are changed to make it manditory, it just can’t be provided essentially for free. Nor can we really expect fire departments to be set-up to immediately quote and invoice their services. This case should show us why fire protection should never be an option. Because the truth is, when your house is on fire, you will ALWAYS want someone to put it out. No one is willing to deal with the consequences of refusing fire protection.

But until we correct those mistakes, we have to all live with the consequences of them. And people who don’t care about protecting their homes from fire should have to watch their homes burn. The homeowner here made a choice. He shouldn’t be allowed to make that choice, but as long as he is, he needs to live with it. We need to change this system. Not remove all reason to change it.

Many of the commenters cannot picture country living.  In the country, trash service consists of you loading your pickup and taking it to the dump. Out in the sticks,, burning (some of) your trash may be more environmentally sound than burying it for eternity. I have personal experience burning trash as a tot, in those old prerecycling days. We used a 55 gallon drum with an old BBQ grill on top to keep embers from floating away. My job was to watch the fire till it burned completely out.

The best part about it was stomping on the burned steel cans when the fire was out. They made a satisfying crunch. We never burned any synthetic material, fearing toxic gases they might produce.

Utilities don’t exist in the country the way they do in suburbia, either. Houses are connected to electricity and telephone. Water comes from wells; septic tanks and fields take the place of sewer systems,  and gas is propane that is stored in a tank.

I’m going to walk in on this coming from fighting fires and doing emergency medical response in volunteer departments for 25 years at this point (which, as I’m only turning 40 next year, should indicate how much of my life it has involved).

First, the department was entirely justified in not fighting a fire when they had explicitly been told that they were not authorized to fight a fire in such a situation when no human life was at risk, and as such they had no insurance coverage.  This isn’t about damage to equipment, it’s about health and welfare.  Firefighting is inherently dangerous even if it doesn’t look like you’re doing anything strenuous; wearing 30-50 pounds of gear while exposed to heat in clothing designed not to breathe is hard on a body even if you’re just standing around.  There’s a reason heart attacks are the leading cause of firefighter deaths.

So if you’re are somewhere doing something you’ve been specifically informed not to do, and therefore don’t have insurance coverage (or even run the risk you won’t be covered), you and possibly your family can get seriously screwed over if something happens.  Or did you guys magically fix your health care system down in the States when I wasn’t looking?

Second: sad about the pets.  Also, tough.  On my firegrounds, if I find out someone went into a burning house to rescue a cat if they knew there was no people in there, I will personally string them up.  It’s one thing if they’re in there anyone on a search and get a pet out while doing their primary job looking for people, but there’s no goddamn way I send them in to look for Rover.

In fact, if they run across a pet and bring it out before they’ve completed their search for human victims, I will also string them up.

Everyone loves the stories about firefighters who rescue pets, and we do our best because the little things do count for people who are victims of fire, but NOT at the risk of our own people.  You take greater risks to save a human life.  You do not to save property, and in this instance pets count as property.

And one question which I’ve sen asked but never seen answer: suppose they’d accepted his offer to pay for the cost of fighting the fire.  And suppose the place had still been gutted (which, given the timeline was probably inevitable anyway), basically meaning it was gone.  Do you think he’d pay?

Sorry, wrong question.  Is anyone naive enough to think he’d pay?

The whole situation is the reason why I think any sort of voluntary support for fire protection, whether to a fee-based department, or optional fees as is the case here, is fucking stupid.

Incidentally, I also grew up in a rural area, and yes, we burned trash in a 45 gallon drum too.  Just not, you know, next to an old wooden house.  And then leave it unattended.  Because in that rural area with a volunteer fire department we were well aware that it could take thirty minutes or more to get any sort of emergency response just from the problem of getting the firefighters on scene from wherever they happened to be at that moment.

I started on a department there, and on more than one occasion we had to try and save buildings that were ignited because some idiot tried to burn grass in dry conditions on a windy day.  Tragic for the person involved.  That didn’t take away from the fact he was an idiot.

KeithM, thanks for emphasising the dangers to firefighters in even an “ordinary” not-having-to-enter-the-towering-inferno type of fire. We are talking here about a man who believed that firefighters owed him their lives to protect his property, but didn’t think that he owed $75 for the same. I think most of us would hope that if it came to it we might be willing to risk our lives (with a chance of getting away with it, not pointless sacrifice) for a child. But we have no right to demand that other people risk life and limb to save personal property of men who have _repeatedly_ expressed the view that said life and limb is literally worthless to them. I am sorry for Mr Craddick, but I cannot feel that in this case the firefighters had a moral obligation to endanger themselves to protect his property.

On the finance front, I have a feeling that people are underestimating how much it costs to put out even a relatively small property fire. The whole point of pooling risk, either through taxes* or insurance is that you protect individuals who couldn’t cover a cost on their own. I’d be interested to see a good estimate of what the cost of the fire would have been (to include a reasonable some for maintaining the facility so it is available in such circs in the first place).

*Infinitely preferable.

By living in that area he was agreeing to that (rather shabby) contract—the fact that he chose a crappy social-contract-living-area was his fault

The assumption that everyone has the means to live wherever they want is the critical failure of your argument.

You really have no idea whether or not he “chose” to live in that area. Perhaps he was born and raised there, and you might be able to say that it’s his fault that he chose to stay there despite the county’s idiotic ways. But even that assumption depends on whether or not he ever had the economic means to get out.

Would you ever tell a lower income African-American that they shouldn’t complain about having their car repeatedly broken into because they chose to live in a neighborhood notorious for frequent car break-ins?

This is precisely what pisses me off most about progressives joking about letting red states secede, as if the millions of poor people who might be very adversely impacted should be viewed as little more than collateral damage.

Obion County is located in a fairly backwoods area situated between the Appalachian Mountains and the Ozark Mountains, and most of the denizens of this region could be accurately described as “hillbillies”. Cutesy Deliverance jokes aside, if there’s any group of white people who have genuinely been shit on and used by greedy wingnuts, it’s these folks. One of the most effective ways that American oligarchs have maintained power has been by pitting poor black people and poor white people against each other, while they are fleecing everybody behind the scenes.

Mr. Cranick may be a poor and unsophisticated hillbilly who clings to god and his guns, but he isn’t the enemy, and people like him aren’t the enemy. He is an unfortunate pawn in a game that is designed to keep poor people like him in eternal poverty while convincing them that the evil government is why their lives suck so much.

If there’s one thing that irritates me more than anything among many educated, urban progressives it is the fact that some of us think making fun of uneducated poor white hicks is the pathway to a more egalitarian society or an effective way to combat the genuine evil perpetrated by our corporate overlords.

Something that was completely missed by most in President Obama’s 2008 quote about “bitter white people who cling to their guns and their religion” is that he was not making the statement for the purpose of disparaging those people. He was pointing out that for many rural white people who have experienced several generations of poverty, the only thing many of them feel like they have left is god and their guns, because the federal government has been kicking these people to the curb over the past 30 years since Reagan took office.

@Nineveh

I have been googling like crazy to try to find out what an average fire response costs (preferably not in connection with this particular case since it is all politicized).  The city of Orangeburg, SC requires a contract (price based on square footage, minimum cost $90 as of last year).  If you do not have a contract and have a fire:

Please be advised that the City of Orangeburg is not obligated to answer fire calls outside the city limits unless the owner or tenant has a fire contract for coverage with the city for that location.

Recipients of fire protection services, to include a response to a false alarm (where there is no fire), will be charged a fee of $1,565.00 plus the price of a fire contract for that location. All institutions, commercial, or manufacturing calls will be billed for the actual cost (fighting the fire) with a minimum charge of $1,565.00 plus the cost of a fire contract for that location. A fee of $525.00 will be charged for all responses to car fires in the city`s coverage area. Please note that the department will NOT issue a copy of fire reports to individuals or insurance companies until the service is paid in full.

Huntington Beach was planning on charging for car accidents/fires of non-residents to help cover their costs (they expected to raise $100,000).  “A car fire comes with a $750 bill and each fire truck that responds to the scene would cost $405 an hour.[...] A fire chief response has a going rate of $210 an hour if required to respond.”

This pdf from the University of Iowa on “Assessing Fees for Fire and Emergency Response” recommends charging between $300 and $500 for a residential fire (since $500 is the most that insurance companies seem to be willing to pay).  They note this relevant detail (since both here and everywhere else on the internet it seems that many believe they should have put out the fire and billed the guy):

If billing and collection are handled in-house, four administrative and accounting systems must be implemented: procedures, personnel, processing and internal control. As in fee structures and billing currently in practice, it will be found that some bills will be written off as uncollectible. Examples exist particularly in 5 the emergency medical services, which often collect in the range of 80 to 95 % of their fees.

That recommendation is consistent with what a nearby fire department, Union City claims that the South Fulton fire department normally charges for their subscribers.  That fire department notes that they very often do not get paid once the fire is no longer a threat.

Hopefully, a reporter with better researching skills than I possess will look into the actual costs to respond to a fire like this.

Oh, there shouldn’t be that random “5” in the last sentence of the blockquote from the University of Iowa.  That is the page number from the pdf.  Damn.

On the finance front, I have a feeling that people are underestimating how much it costs to put out even a relatively small property fire.

Let’s put it this way: South Fulton instituted the “no pay, no spray” policy (with the exception of human life being in danger) because a few years ago the department had to shut down due to lack of funds.  The vast majority of their calls were going to people outside of the town who were not paying anything to support the department, resulting in wear and tear on equipment that could not be properly maintained with the budget they had.  Which was, I’ve seen reported, $8000 a year.  Which is actually pretty good for a small town of 2500 or so people.

A new fire truck runs you $400,000, a used one in good shape probably $125,000.  A single air cylinder for an SCBA will cost you anywhere from $500 for a metal 30 minute cylinder to $1200 for 60 minute carbon-fibre cylinder, and they have to be replaced after regular use every 10 years or so.  An SCBA itself will run you $600 to $4000 for a refurbished unit from a reputable dealer, while a new one will be $2000-$6000.  A single replacement faceplate for a mask will be $100 or so.  A proper set of bunker gear (pants, jacket) will cost between $700 and $2000, plus $200-$500 for the helmet and $150 or so for the boots, another $50 for the gloves, another $50 for the balaclava.  And then there’s the cost of your tools, and your cascade system for filling your cylinders, and the maintenance on the trucks, and your fuel, and spare parts, and hoses ain’t cheap and you need lots of those, and…

Well, you get the picture.

God, apart from a couple of commenters, this thread is depressingly like one you’d find on a right wing blog talking about some stupid person who didn’t get health insurance but expected to have a right to live without bankrupting themselves when something went wrong healthwise.  Which may or not have been their “fault” for not living right or committing the egregious sin of being stupid.

The system is the problem, not the individuals make stupid decisions that are available to them because of the stupid system and have to live with the devastating consequences.  It screwed over the house, the neighbours, Mr Whats-is-name and the fire department.  Progressive Americans can apparently get this into their heads re. healthcare, but not re. fireservices, or at least not without indulging in a pretty nasty display of pointing and laughing.  Ugh.

@Katherine

I think most posters are in agreement that fire service should be a right like health care, but that means paying for it (through taxes preferably).  There is an important difference between fire service in this case and health care, though, because there weren’t people at risk in the house.  People are at risk with no health care, not buildings (or pets).  I don’t see that many posters pointing and laughing, most are arguing over whether or not the fire fighters did something wrong in not putting out the fire that destroyed the house.  (Some are, of course, pointing and laughing, but even that seems to be divided between pointing and laughing at the guy who lost his house and pointing and laughing at the ideology that led to his house being destroyed.)

@purpleshoes

Turning the fire hoses on the house costs money.  It ties up fire fighters at a location they are not paid to help, not insured to help, etc. which might prevent them from providing the best help possible at a location that actually pays for their services.

It also seems like the difference between those other counties and this one is that there is a system (probably by law?) that allows for/enforces charging those fees.

There are eight fire departments that put out fires in Obion County.  The fire chief of one of those cities described how it works in Obion here.

The first point that needs to be noted is that Obion County Tennessee does not have a county fire department.  Secondly, no county tax revenues are even ear marked for county fire protection.

The county is made up of 8 municipalities which do provide fire protection to its city residents, through city property taxes, which fund their respective fire departments.

Three of theses cities, South Fulton; Kenton and Union City allow their departments to respond outside the city limits by way of a Subscription Service which charges a $75 yearly fee to receive fire protection.  After they respond to a “members” fire, the member is billed $500 for the response.

Why the $75 and a charge of $500?  This can be compared to any insurance.  You have a premium; the $75 and then you have a deductable; the $500.  The policy, of these cities is that if the fee isn’t paid, then the fire department does not respond.  The only exception being; life endangerment. (A report that someone may be inside the home.)

These fees help offset the cost of equipment and manpower, paid for by the city tax payers to help fight fires in the county.

The remaining 5 city fire departments have for years responded into the county without a subscription service, banking on collecting fees for their services, “after the fact.”  The problem has been, that once those people have been provided the service; they often seem to choose not to reimburse.  Attempting to charge on a per call basis does not generate the needed funds nor does it give county residents an incentive to support the cities, if they can wait until they actually have a fire to pay anything.

Another local fire chief spoke to a news station here:

The chief of the Hornbeak Volunteer Fire Department spoke on behalf of a few cities within Obion County on Wednesday, stating frustration over the subscription fee system, under which one house to burn last week while fire personnel watched.

Obion County does not have a fire department. The eight municipalities within Obion County have individually owned and operated departments.

They have been fighting county fires, without receiving county funding. The Hornbeak Fire Chief, Bob Reavis, said that 85 percent of their calls are county fires.

I don’t see that many posters pointing and laughing, most are arguing over whether or not the fire fighters did something wrong in not putting out the fire that destroyed the house.

Athiest, A Feminist, we must be reading different threads because I’ve seen a lot of the following, in addition to criticism of the system:

- he “chose” to live in a place without a fully-fledged fire system, so no sympathy

- his grandson burned rubbish stupidly, so no sympathy

- the place he lived voted not to have a fully-fledged fire system (but no evidence as to his views on the matter), so no sympathy

- he is a homeowner, therefore has enough money to pay $75 (with no evidence as to this) and if he ddn’t have enough money then he shouldn’t be a home owner (because poor people can’t have paid off a mortgage years ago, can’t have inherited a house, or generally ust shouldn’t own their ow home full stop), so no sympathy

It’s pretty ugly from where I’m standing.  I’m not claiming you have said any of these things by the way, but the tenor of the whole thread has me wondering whether I’m reading a progressive blog, for all the judgmental vitriol being flung around .

@Katherine

I think many of the points are from the same small group of posters.  Not saying it makes the thread more pleasant to read, but… I do think that their comments might overshadow the IMO more interesting (and calm?) discussion.

On the homeowner issue, I think that I may agree with that if he cannot afford to pay for the really basic services necessary to maintain it that maybe he shouldn’t own a home.  Everyone has a right to a place to live (or should), but I disagree that it means everyone should be able to own a home.  If the fire services necessary were paid by tax dollars (as they should be), then even if he didn’t pay he would still get the service, but could lose the house.

I’m not sure that it really matters in this particular case because he did offer to pay the fire department once his house caught on fire.  I assume that he actually had that money to give them and wasn’t planning on more purposefully freeloading off of his subscribing neighbors and the city.

By more interesting, I mean that I really would like to know an approximate amount for putting out a fire like this.  It is nice to have real figures for how much things cost individually when arguing with Republicans/Libertarians.

This is a case of de-facto libertarian policy failure—just not at the level of the cities whose fire departments are on the hook to either collect for their services or watch houses outside but near their borders burn.  The jurisdiction taking the de facto libertarian approach (and I say de facto because I don’t know that libertarian ideology actually drives their policy, but the effect is the same) is at the county level —because even though the Craddicks’ (and others’) house(s) aren’t in a municipality’s taxing jurisdiction, they are of course within the county’s.  Not to deal with these extra-municipal county residents’s fire protection needs is an act of laissez-faire governance by Obion County, if not out of ideology, then out of neglect.  This is a case where there should be an enforced county policy whereby those like Mr. Craddick, if not being taxed so as to establish a county fire dept. (but more likely simply to establish an automatic protocol for the existing Municipal FDs to protect all county properties in exchange for being reimbursed via the tax), then at least be mandated to subscribe with a municipal FD in such a way that the subscription be added to county payroll deduction or added to the property tax (making it functionally if not technically the same as a tax).

It’s fair to say that this is probably not an ideologically driven policy, so in that sense not a libertarian test case, but it is a completely legitimate example of the problem with laissez-faire governance.

It seems like rural areas manage to have the worst of all problems.  No infrastructure puts people at risk for fires and floods; while at the same time they are driving considerably more so the are probably at risk for more car accidents.  and as the areas get more crowded the risk of well and septic commingling probably becomes greater.

It is interesting that the Tea Party movement and before that the small government crowd have probably exacerbated these problems, even though the majority of their supporters probably come from these areas.

I think, therefore, that what people are missing is that this is the first time this has, to any public notice, happened; this guy was being made an example of to teach the county a lesson, mafioso-style.

KeithM’s comment at #143 seems to be the more plausible reason. This is backed up by the comments of some of the firefighters, who genuinely regretted not being able to do their jobs and save the house.

It makes me really sad when I see progressives actually being prejudiced against poor rural people for being poor and rural - we spill so much ink insisting that’s the other guy.

My prejudice is based on the fact that (again) he displays the same stupid sense of entitlement and magical thinking that brings us such fee-based systems in the first place. That holds true whether you’re talking about a poor person in TN, a middle-class person in an exurb, or a useful idiot in NYC. Point that out, though, and the focus immediately moves to the poor person, and you’re a “coastal elitist.”

Obama’s “Guns and God” comment may have been made out of sympathy, but the people he was talking about trashed him for it—uppity elitist!  Thomas Frank wondered why people act against their own political self-interest, asking “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”—to which they replied “nothing, you east coast snob!” Point out how (based on his quotes and history) a profoundly stupid, ignorant and entitled man falls victim to a wretched system that his profoundly stupid, ignorant and entitled neighbours (and perhaps himself) allowed to remain in place, and it’s classism.

I don’t buy any of that, whether it emerges from cynicism, delusion, or compassion for the underdog. Anyone who knows how confidence artists work understands that they invariably depend on the stupidity and delusional greed (AKA sense of unearned entitlement) of the mark, victim though he is. But apparently we’re prohibited from applying the same analysis to conservative grifters and their suckers. That’s no way to stop the real villains.

This issue isn’t about class or political affiliation.  It’s about policy.  On the day in question, the fire chief was the one calling the shots, and his actions were shaped by departmental policy. 

Let’s say you were the fire chief on duty the day of Mr. Craddick’s fire, and you felt morally compelled to send your fire fighters in to fight the blaze.  Something unforeseen happened—maybe there were combustible materials in the house—an explosion happened, and a couple of your fire fighters are killed.  Worker’s comp after an investigation, determines that the fire fighters were acting outside of the scope of their duties in fighting a fire they were not contractually bound to respond to.  Who is responsible for compensating the families?  The fire dept., which will be bankrupted by a multi-million-dollar award?  The fire chief who made the decision, but who is now likely jobless?  Mr. Craddick?  Or do you think the families aren’t entitled to make a claim for compensation? 

I guarantee you that some of the same people who are now arguing that the fire men had a moral obligation to fight the fire, would be singing a different tune, if the fire chief had put them in a position where they lost their lives to save a house, while knowing full well that they were acting outside the scope of their duties.

Interesting this thread is still going; Emmetophia lays out what I was about to say. I know tradesmen who suffer from non kinetic work injuries, ruptured disks etc, they can no longer work. Can’t walk a 100 yards, can’t sit at a desk for more than an hour. WC and medicaid keep them alive, but they and their families are never the same, slow motion tragedies. OLbion county doesn’t have office jobs,if you can’t work with your hands, you’re screwed.

Just signing in to second purpleshoes and Murrowfan and Katherine and others.

He shouldn’t own a home? How do we know that he and his family could afford to move? How do we know it wouldn’t have cost them more to be somewhere else?

Is there any potential given to the possibility that there’s disability going on? One or more members of the household *could* be seriously unable to manage problems, either because of physical or mental diseases. Everyone could just as easily be able bodied (or at least able bodied enough), but are we comfortable letting someone’s home burn down (a tragedy in itself) because he has severe PTSD, or the beginnings of dementia, or emphezema that makes it hard to walk across a room without seeing stars?

There are freeloaders on welfare, as Republicans remind us whenever it’s brought up, and I seem to recall it being brought up here that Americans spend more paying to ferret them out than we pay on their actual services. There are drug-seekers who try to get pain medications, and there are people with chronic pain who pay the price for them because doctors are so afraid to feed an addiction that people with genuine conditions have trouble receiving adequate dosage, and are always afraid of being cut off entirely. We—as humans? as Americans? I don’t know—are obsessed with the idea of ferreting out and punishing people who break their social obligations, and I’ve certainly read attempts to essentialize that to the human condition by underlining that it’s a group behavior mandated by our social instinct. But while it may be a good instinct to apply in some circumstances, we can be terribly irrational about it. We can apply it when it costs us more (as in the welfare situation), or when it deprives genuinely hurting people of care (as in the pain medication situation). We recognize when Republicans do it. Let’s recognize it here.

When we talk about class and poverty on threads like this, people often make the (correct!) point that poor people shouldn’t be shamed for needing or wanting things other than basic necessities. Cell phones, lobsters, TVs, all those things that the right wing wants to weep and gnash their teeth over “welfare queens” possessing. Well, a life isn’t just bread and water. Life needs other things, like recreation. And much more basically—shelter! Losing your house, especially if the people aren’t well off enough to rebuild, IS a disaster.

I’m not criticizing the fire department or the man who made the decision, necessarily. Risking your own men without coverage? Hard, maybe impossible. I recognize he was a man choosing between two bad things.

But the gloating is not good. Even if this man was everything that we initially assume him to be—a whiny, entitled tea partier who believes he’s too good to pay fees, a dullard who doesn’t understand that burning trash is dangerous and who has piles of extra cash lying around his wealthy retiree’s home, or who at least could tighten his belt and afford fees and taxes by buying less tobacco or ammunition or whateverthefuck is in people’s minds—EVEN IF ALL THAT IS TRUE IN THIS CASE, nothing’s stopping this man from being the third generation to own this depreciated house, with no extra cash, mentally and/or physically impaired, limited in opportunity, exhausted, and the author of a number of mistakes, including letting his grandson burn the trash outside that night, even though the kid sometimes forgets to finish the job completely like teenagers sometimes do, because he’s just so tired from the day and his fibromyalgia is making it hard to walk and frankly it was hard to get out of bed this morning because of the slow march of ongoing depression, so yeah, he let the kid do it this once, and the kid was reckless, only instead of totaling the convertible like he might have done if they were some other kind of people, he burned down the old tinder box of a farmhouse that had gone up before…

Even if Crannick is completely, provably, manifestly, a grade A asshole who ALSO possessed all the resources to avoid this problem (and those don’t necessarily go together—he could be a tea partier who’s also got a history of untreated paranoia and delusions, which feed his politics and create long, gusty, horrible lectures about the evil of possessed black communists… he could be an undeserving asshole and also have mitigating circumstances)... even if Crannick is those things, are we REALLY comfortable ignoring the other scenarios? Saying that the example is ironically amusant, when next time it COULD be the worthy octogenarian with emphezema and no one around to help her collect the bills from the mailbox a mile down the road?

The system is definitely fucked. I think we can all agree on that. But let’s not let schadenfreude at an imagined asshole’s suffering prevent us from seeing harm.

I flat out don’t believe that there is no insurance comverage for firefighters injured in the course of putting out a fire for a nonsubscriber.  I don’t see how whether the person whose house is on fire has paid his fees is material to the risk assumed by the insurer in issuing the policy.  If the policy really reads that wass, the fire department must have negotiated those provisions specially—you won’t find them in a standard policy.  And, it’s rather lifting yourself by your own bootstraps to argue that the policy terms you insisted upon preclude you from doing soemthing that supposedly, you would otherwise be willing to do.

I am mystified by the claim that after-the-fact recovery of the cost of putting out the fire is impractical.  After all, the guy had a house that wasn’t burned down—they could levy against that.

@rea

I wonder if part of the problem here is that many people on this thread haven’t been business owners or managers responsible for securing insurance or drafting personnel policies, and aren’t familiar with principles of risk management.

In all likelihood this fire department bought their workers comp coverage through a large firm that offered a specific (and discounted ) rate to all firefighters in a state or region, and that rate was based on a particular set of work duties set forth in their job descriptions.  Activities that are performed outside the range defined would not be insurable, regardless of how noble they may be.  Maybe the department could opt out and purchase a more expensive policy on their own, but I kind of doubt that any workers comp policy would cover activities that are “volunteer” in nature, especially for first responders.  General business liability policies can be purchased that cover volunteers, but even then you have to carefully spell out in writing, what activities volunteers will perform and where and when and for whom, those activities will be performed.

I flat out don’t believe that there is no insurance comverage for firefighters injured in the course of putting out a fire for a nonsubscriber.  I don’t see how whether the person whose house is on fire has paid his fees is material to the risk assumed by the insurer in issuing the policy.  If the policy really reads that wass, the fire department must have negotiated those provisions specially—you won’t find them in a standard policy.

And you’ve looked at how many fire department policies?

In my volunteer department, a firefighter is only eligible for the insurance coverage, both for themselves and third party, if the incident occurs on an approved (by the chief) training exercise or on an actual incident response where the department has responded (and thus, by definition, where they have jurisdiction to respond).

If I am outside my jurisdiction, I am not covered.  If I’m in another community and I rush into a burning building to get someone, very heroic of me but my departmental coverage does squat if I’m injured, even if I do exactly the same sort of thing I would be doing in my home community.  If I decide to take out an axe and practice breaching a door on an old abandoned without having gotten approval for that from the chief and end up injuring myself, I am not covered because it was not an approved training exercise.  If I decide to take the truck out to practice my driving and strike someone or another vehicle by accident and did not receive permission to do so for whatever reason, I am on my own when it comes to liability.

Meanwhile, in my home community, there’s a policy in place that we do NOT go into a situation on a medical response where there’s a a serious risk of physical violence being directed at us.  If I chose to ignore that and play hero again and get injured, there’s every reason for the insurance coverage to be denied to me because I acted against departmental policy.

I am mystified by the claim that after-the-fact recovery of the cost of putting out the fire is impractical.  After all, the guy had a house that wasn’t burned down—they could levy against that.

Yeah, right. 

Given the response time, the type of structure and the approximate situation, even if they had responded immediately there are good odds the place would have been gutted or at least structurally compromised.

Incidentally, before this suggestion comes up (as it seems to, inevitably), no, they couldn’t have made a difference just standing outside and spraying water at it without sending people into the fire.  For two reason: first, even holding a hose is potentially dangerous (and we’re back to the liability issue).  And two, if you see firefighters outside a burning house spraying water at it, and no one is inside fighting the fire, it means they’ve given up on trying to save the house.  They’re fighting defensively to prevent the spread to the surrounding area.

He didn’t pay the fee, and apparently didn’t pay it beforehand when he had a fire as well.  That pretty much covers “getting what you asked for”.
Comment #111: Phoenician in a time of Romans on 10/14 at 06:13 PM

I hate to go all “what about the childrunnnn” here, but I have to.

In situations like this, the head of the family makes decisions that impact everyone in the house, and as Thealogian aptly pointed out, impact people not even in the house.  It is part of the social contract *not* to make every child dependent solely on their family as if it were an insular tribe. 

Or as Murrow Fan wrote:

This is precisely what pisses me off most about progressives joking about letting red states secede, as if the millions of poor people who might be very adversely impacted should be viewed as little more than collateral damage.
Comment #146: Murrow Fan on 10/15 at 04:22 AM

My prejudice is based on the fact that (again) he displays the same stupid sense of entitlement and magical thinking that brings us such fee-based systems in the first place.
Comment #159: Gracchus on 10/15 at 09:35 AM

But when this happened before, they put out the fire.  They “taught” him this is what happens.  He’s not using magical thinking, he’s basing his actions on experience.

I also have to wonder—if it’s okay not to put out his fire in this contract situation, is it okay not to put out a fire when the property in question is in arrears in taxes in a tax-funded situation?

But when this happened before, they put out the fire.  They “taught” him this is what happens.  He’s not using magical thinking, he’s basing his actions on experience.

His experience was that they explicitly cut him a break, also known as making an exception. Magical thinkers (and sequential thinkers) believe that exceptions are the norm.

They cut him a break because, at the time, the insurance company rules apparently allowed some wiggle room. Magical thinkers (and sequential thinkers) believe that regulations never change.

Most of us, myself included, have made stupid and potentially life-altering mistakes and were lucky enough to catch a break. But not all of us are capable of learning from those mistakes. Unfortunately, it would seem that Cranick is one of those people. He certainly didn’t deserve to lose his home, but it’s clear he didn’t do much to prevent the loss, either.

I also have to wonder—if it’s okay not to put out his fire in this contract situation, is it okay not to put out a fire when the property in question is in arrears in taxes in a tax-funded situation?

Look, no-one’s happy with the fact that they didn’t put out the fire. As I and others noted above, if the fee regs had been better written and implemented, when they arrived they would have told him that it’ll cost him, say, $1500 an hour and had him sign off on a document to that effect containing a lien on his property if he didn’t pay later. Even that’s not a great solution, because cities and counties really don’t like taking over distressed properties.

In the case of tax-funding, it’s explicitly not OK—that’s how tax funding (as opposed to fee-based) works, and why it’s the superior option morally, legally and in terms of public safety. All residents get use of the service or infrastructure, no questions asked (except on April 15th). In that case, it’s the tax department that enforces collections of arrears and makes exceptions, and the fire department that puts out and contains the fires without worrying about who paid and who didn’t.

Cranick’s fellow citizens, and perhaps Cranick himself, didn’t understand that particular benefit of big bad government, and voted against such a system (or didn’t bother to vote at all).

Right, purpleshoes.  And that’s actually the kind of thinking that exacerbates crime in low-income neighborhoods.  “You don’t pay enough taxes to be worth being protected.”

I should add that I don’t mean to blame the fire chief who faced a terrible dilemma, but the policy that shaped that dilemma.  As others noted, if he put out the fire and one of his firefighters got hurt, or killed, as a result, he’d be responsible.

Re way up there when someone was talking about insurance salesmen saying insurance is something you sell, not something you buy?  Were these life insurance salesmen?  Because that’s what I think of when I think of ripoff insurance; not that all of it is, but it’s the kind of insurance people tend to buy weirdly wrong because its purpose is sort of obscured from the buyer.

oldfeminist, or people who are unemployed and didn’t file a tax return last year. Or people who live in low-income housing, on which county property tax is usually waived. None of us paid for the fire department. Does this void our coverage, morally or legally?

Not at all, because there’s the assumption that you’d pay your share if you could.  If you assume that paying your (fair) share is a universal obligation, then in the event of an emergency you don’t worry about the specific details of any particular person because the odds are that person has contributed to the common good.  If it turns out they had a legitimate reason not to contribute, well, that’s not a problem.  If they’ve chosen not to contribute, well, you can work that out later (and it’s not the fire department’s problem, it’s the tax people anyway), and typically that will be a very small portion of the population so not really worth worrying about.

But the key is that it has to be a universal obligation.  If it’s voluntary thing, then you do have to take into account how much the free riders are impacting the system.  It’s one thing if a city of 19,000 has a fire department that responds to 90% of its calls within the city limits and 10% to the 2300 people who live outside, a portion of whom do not pay anything at all for fire service.  If, say, 50% of the people don’t pay, that’s maybe only 5% of your calls that you’re providing a freebie for and you can probably absorb the cost.

It’s quite another if your town of 2300 has a fire department where 90% of your calls are to the 19,000 people who aren’t directly supporting the department.  If 50% of them aren’t providing the voluntary payment, then 45% of your calls might be freebies, and that has a significant impact on your cost-benefit analysis.  That simply isn’t sustainable, and it certainly isn’t fair to the people who are obligated to provide the service (the people of the town who are taxed), and those who do pay their voluntary bit.

In my part of the world, we’re looking at search and rescues hard for that reason.  It costs huge amounts to perform a rescue in the Canadian Arctic, whether to look for someone lost or to send a Coast Guard icebreaker to rescue a stranded vessel, and over the last few years having them have to run to the rescue of a foreign ship has become a routine occurrence.  Many of us who pay for that service through our taxes are irritated when some idiot non-Canadian has to have an icebreaker come to their rescue because they though they’d play at being Amundsen and do the Northwest Passage in their sailboat.  Again and again and again.

It’s a reason why certain things should not be part of a free market.  One of the aspects of a free market is that you can chose not to participate, but for some things you cannot not chose to participate without endangering others.  As far as I’m concerned law enforcement, national defense, health care, education, emergency fire and medical response, some transportation infrastructure, and some kinds of communication infrastructure are not and should not be part of a free market simply because the choice of not participating isn’t there.

@purpleshoes

I don’t care one whit whether Craddick is a demon or a saint, lives in the country or the city, lives in a mansion or in a decaying trailer, or whether he inherited his property or won it at a turkey shoot.  And neither did (I must assume) the fire chief.  None of those issues were relevant at the point the fire chief made his decision.  He was following policy.  And that policy was shaped by principles of risk management.  Now I wasn’t privvy to any of the earlier conversations that shaped his decision-making, but I’ve worked with a lot of emergency responders and medical professionals who deal with similar issues on a daily basis.  I guarantee you that some point in the department’s history, that a crack team of lawyers went over their insurance and personnel policies with a fine tooth comb.  At some point they defined in exhausting detail, the exact scope of duties for fire fighters, paramedics and haz mat responders.  At some point they made a decision that individuals who had not paid the fee IN ADVANCE, could not receive fire services.  They were not “customers” of the fire department, and so the fire fighters COULD NOT serve them AND continue to be covered in the case that they were injured or killed. 

The fact that workers comp coverage is available at all, is a direct result of the progressive labor movement.  Ironic, that so many people here would ask the fire fighters to forego this protection, for the sake of saving a burning structure.

As I and others noted above, if the fee regs had been better written and implemented, when they arrived they would have told him that it’ll cost him, say, $1500 an hour and had him sign off on a document to that effect containing a lien on his property if he didn’t pay later. Even that’s not a great solution, because cities and counties really don’t like taking over distressed properties.

As someone else pointed out, it’s even questionable whether such would be legally valid.  Courts often take a dim view of contracts signed under duress.  And speaking as a firefighter, the last thing I want to be doing at a response is a bloody contract negotiation.

And yet again I ask the question: who thinks that he would have really paid up without a fuss if, as is likely, the residence was destroyed or rendered uninhabitable anyway, which was likely despite the best efforts of the firefighters?

@purpleshoes

And to answer your question about volunteer fire fighters, I suspect that insurance policies for volunteer departments are bundled separately from full-time professional departments.  Volunteers and professional firefighting agencies are each going to carry different levels of risk, in terms of the number of hours of training the different departments receive, the types of fires they respond to, and the numbers of hours they are on duty, equipment they have access to.  These factors will all have an impact on premium costs.

Would you ever tell a lower income African-American that they shouldn’t complain about having their car repeatedly broken into because they chose to live in a neighborhood notorious for frequent car break-ins?

Seriously? You think that a land-owning white man who refused twice to pay for fire protection is in the exact same situation as a lower-income POC stuck in a bad neighborhood who can’t help his car being broken into? Frankly, I’m giving him about as much sympathy as I’d give a guy (of any color) who repeatedly parked his car in a notorious neighborhood ‘cause he was too cheap to pay for parking elsewhere.

Unlike Mandolin’s sweet story of a veteran, wracked with PTSD and fibromyalgia, burdened with a no-good teenager who does his best blesshisheart, I’m not trying to lionize or demonize this guy; I’m just treating him like an adult. From the little bit I know about him he seems like a fairly coherent and competent guy, right? (He’s not an imaginary enfeebled octogenarian lady who can’t toddle down her driveway far enough to pay her bills.) He knew that he had to pay for fire protection, and he was reminded of that really thoroughly the first time his house almost burned down. And then he blithely continued not giving a shit. And now his house burned down. And I’m not losing a lot of sleep over it, because that is almost the definition of a natural—not punitive—consequence.

That’s not gloating or “classism,” that’s expecting a guy who has managed to survive 60+ years in Tennessee to know how to survive in Tennessee (or at least, it’s expecting him not to whine when cutting corners he knew shouldn’t be cut landed him in trouble.) Like, are we still trying to teach a property owning adult that fire is hot? That’s patronizing as hell. He’s not helpless. He’s not even crying about this half as much as some of the people on this thread.

Obama’s “Guns and God” comment may have been made out of sympathy, but the people he was talking about trashed him for it—uppity elitist!

Really?

Could you provide me with a link showing a lot of the people he was talking about trashing him for it?

I know that Sean Hannity trashed him as an elitist over it. I know Rush Limbaugh did as well. I’m sure I could probably find more than a dozen wingnut media personalities who trashed Obama as an uppity elitist for saying poor, rural white people cling to god and guns.

The problem with that is that Hannity, Limbaugh, et al are not poor rural white people, so you can’t really say that they are “the people he was talking about”.

I’m sure if you dig around a little bit, you can find several videos of poor rural white people bashing Obama for his “God and guns” comment. Even if you could find 100 such people, is it fair to say that they represent all of the people he was talking about? Or even most of them? We’re talking about several million people here… are you sure you want to base your beliefs about what “they” think on some pretty ugly stereotypes?

I remember shortly after the election some wingnut douchebag named Ziegler produced a crappy, fact-free “documentary” called How Obama Got Elected. In this stunningly bigoted film, Ziegler went and found 12 of the most uneducated African-American Obama voters that he could find, and he asked them various questions about why they voted for Obama, and their answers indicated that they really had no idea how our federal government works. I remember the day after the election, an African-American woman was interviewed saying that since Obama was going to be president she wouldn’t have to pay for gas or her mortgage anymore.

I was disgusted by all of that, because while it is true that the specific African-Americans who were interviewed were woefully uneducated, the relatively tiny group was being presented as a representative cross-section of all African-Americans who voted for Obama.

So I ask again… could you please show me where all (or even most) of the people he was talking about - specifically poor, uneducated rural white people, not Fox News pundits - trashed him for his God and guns comment?

Because if you can’t, perhaps you shouldn’t be painting several million Americans who have also suffered under GOP governance with such a broad brush…

Gracchus, maybe Cranick didn’t have the $75 to spend.  You think $75 is chump change, perhaps, but that’s food for a month or more if you are poor. 

I’m also not seeing where one could solidly “diagnose” Cranick as a sequential thinker.  Forgetting to pay (as he said in the Olbermann interview) would be more likely for a visual thinker, for whom there could be 100 things brighter in the mental picture of what you have to do than that one payment.  Sequential thinkers are way more likely to blame people who forget, because they usually don’t, walking sequentially through each action each day.

If he doesn’t present himself as particularly intelligent verbally, that could simply mean he fits the nonverbal visual thinker mold. 

Or maybe he’s just still in shock over losing his house and pets and becoming the poster child for hick stupidity.

Could you provide me with a link showing a lot of the people he was talking about trashing him for it?

Are you bloody kidding me? That’s the only public reaction conservatives of any income level had to that comment.

Before you cite me for not providing videos and articles, keep in mind that you’ve set me an impossible task:

I’m sure if you dig around a little bit, you can find several videos of poor rural white people bashing Obama for his “God and guns” comment. Even if you could find 100 such people, is it fair to say that they represent all of the people he was talking about?

Oh, I see, so I was talking about all rural white people, of all political persuasions, was I?

If not, let’s be fair: for every one soundbite or quote you can provide from a poor rural white conservative who reacted positively, I’m confident I can deliver 100 negative reactions in return. Sorry to give you the more burdensome task.

perhaps you shouldn’t be painting several million Americans who have also suffered under GOP governance with such a broad brush…

This is exactly the point we’re discussing: people who vote and act against their own self-interests because they’ve been conned by right-wing grifters. And what sort of people are so easily gulled?

I’m also not seeing where one could solidly “diagnose” Cranick as a sequential thinker.

It has nothing to do with verbal or visual thinking. Here’s a definition of sequential cognition:

Sequential thinkers reason “by tracking the world,” recognize regularities in sequences of events, but have no abstract understanding of cause and effect.  The world they perceive is a world of appearances that has very little organization to it beyond the recurrence of sequences.

In other words, these are people who are constantly “living in the moment.” Life is a series of disconnected events where nothing much changes. If you forget to pay the $75 and they give you a break put out the fire anyhow, of course that’s how it’ll happen the next time you forget to pay and the house catches fire. Lots of people think that way, and they’re not all “inarticulate hicks.”

Sequential thinkers are way more likely to blame people who forget, because they usually don’t, walking sequentially through each action each day.

It’s not that they don’t forget, it’s that they often remember the wrong things based on an earlier experience, and don’t remember the right things until it’s too late. This is why 3-Card Monte dealers employ shills and let the mark win the first bet.

Gracchus, maybe Cranick didn’t have the $75 to spend.  You think $75 is chump change, perhaps, but that’s food for a month or more if you are poor

First of all, it’s $75 a year. That’s $6.25 a month, or less than 10% of the food budget you mention. Just to make sure we’re comparing apples to apples. If you’re forced to miss out on 3 days a month of food, it’s kind of wise to assess your financial situation and see how you can change that.

Which leads us to point 2: he’s a homeowner. If he owns the place free and clear and can’t afford $75 a year as part of the maintenance cost, he can take out a second mortgage—better than risking losing the house to fire, no?

As someone said above, everyone’s entitled to a roof over their head, but no-one’s entitled to own a home—many people choose not to.

You’re right, Bagelsan. A I knew a single mother on welfare once, and she was a bitch—no genuinely, she really was—so when she lost welfare benefits, I didn’t think “oh, that’s not good, I bet it could happen to people who aren’t bitches,” I thought “you know, she really should have known to keep her legs closed instead of pushing out a litter to suck on the government teat, and to suggest that the government has a social obligation to take care of children by making sure they have food and shelter is to deny the fact that this bitch is an adult who made an adult choice to have kids when she knew she couldn’t support them.”

But please. Don’t call me classist.

That’s not gloating or “classism,” that’s expecting a guy who has managed to survive 60+ years in Tennessee to know how to survive in Tennessee (or at least, it’s expecting him not to whine when cutting corners he knew shouldn’t be cut landed him in trouble.) Like, are we still trying to teach a property owning adult that fire is hot? That’s patronizing as hell. He’s not helpless. He’s not even crying about this half as much as some of the people on this thread.
Comment #176: Bagelsan on 10/15 at 02:24 PM

http://www.examiner.com/us-headlines-in-national/firefighters-let-gene-cranick-s-house-burn-pets-die-over-75-00-video-video

He said the fire chief claimed he refused to pay, but he says he told them on the phone he’d pay whatever it cost to put out the fire.  And that he forgot to pay the fee.  5:39 on the video.  “I know people think you don’t forget things like that, but you do.”

You’re assuming at least these two statements he made are lies.  And that he had enough money not to cut this corner. 

Other corners he would cut would be things like not maintaining or fueling his farming vehicles which would not just risk trouble, but guarantee it because if you can’t do that you can’t farm. 

He says at one point, of the insurance payout he will get, “it’s like everything else, I didn’t have enough.”  That’s probably the closest this guy is going to get to saying he’s poor, because people like him don’t generally make announcements about it on TV, it’s part of their culture.

First of all, it’s $75 a year. That’s $6.25 a month, or less than 10% of the food budget you mention. Just to make sure we’re comparing apples to apples. If you’re forced to miss out on 3 days a month of food, it’s kind of wise to assess your financial situation and see how you can change that.
Comment #179: Gracchus on 10/15 at 03:19 PM

Wow.  If you’re poor, the solution is to change it. 

WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?  WHY DON’T ALL THE POOR PEOPLE GO OUT AND JUST CHANGE IT?

He is a farmer, so probably grows some of his own food, maybe hunts or fishes for some of it, too.  But small farmers (the real small farmers) aren’t doing so great in this economy.

Which leads us to point 2: he’s a homeowner. If he owns the place free and clear and can’t afford $75 a year as part of the maintenance cost, he can take out a second mortgage—better than risking losing the house to fire, no?

As someone said above, everyone’s entitled to a roof over their head, but no-one’s entitled to own a home—many people choose not to.

He already has a house he most likely inherited or at least it’s paid for now. 

What, you think he should say to himself, gosh, I’m bad at remembering to pay all my bills, I had better sell my house and land and go live in an apartment.  And still be a farmer.  Very realistic.

Or what if he took out a second mortgage and forgot to pay.  He’d have nowhere to live, not even the trailer. 

You’re second-guessing him without knowing his full situation.  There might be a dozen other things he “should” do that you’d second-guess would be bad if the dice roll the wrong way.  But he probably can’t do all those things.  He has to pick and choose.

FSM help you if you ever forget something important, or make a decision someone else can second-guess.

He said the fire chief claimed he refused to pay, but he says he told them on the phone he’d pay whatever it cost to put out the fire.  And that he forgot to pay the fee.  5:39 on the video.  “I know people think you don’t forget things like that, but you do.”

You’re assuming at least these two statements he made are lies.  And that he had enough money not to cut this corner.

He didn’t have sufficient liquid assets to make a $75 payment.
He’d pay whatever it cost to put out the fire.  Which would be significantly more than $75.

Which is it?

At the end of the day, whatever Cranick’s personal responsibility was, the main problem isn’t him: as one of the other chiefs in the area has stated, given the fucked up way the local government and voters, praying at the altar of low taxes and minimal government, refuse to raise the money and pay for fire protection it was bound to happen to someone sooner or later.  The problem is that the people of the country outside of the towns that raised their own fire departments got exactly the services they were willing to support.  Cranick just happened to be the one everyone sees suffering for it.

Two comments:

1) Why does any homeowner’s insurance company do business in this county or any other place that doesn’t have basic services arranged?

2) In MA, if you don’t have health insurance, you get fined a modest amount equivalent to a year’s premium if you have to go to the ER after, say, a car accident, breaking a bone, etc.  You don’t get left to die with a jeering greek chorus.  Such is the difference between the social contract and that which is NOT the central philosophy of Zen.

Wow.  If you’re poor, the solution is to change it.

If you own a house and land, yes. Even if you’re a farmer. It’s a shame that small farmers have fared so badly over the past 30 years (thanks in no part to supply-siders, crony capitalists, and myopic MBA bankers), but he’d be far from the first to pack it in.

What, you think he should say to himself, gosh, I’m bad at remembering to pay all my bills, I had better sell my house and land and go live in an apartment.  And still be a farmer.  Very realistic.

Well, your assumption was that he couldn’t afford the $75 per year to maintain the house and land, not that he simply couldn’t remember. So again, the answer is yes, with the obvious disclaimer that he couldn’t expect to be a farmer anymore.

Or what if he took out a second mortgage and forgot to pay.  He’d have nowhere to live, not even the trailer.

So don’t mortgage the trailer. This is getting absurd. If the situation is unsustainable and desperate and you have some sort of out (like, say, $150k+ worth of real estate), you take it—preferably before it’s too late.

FSM help you if you ever forget something important, or make a decision someone else can second-guess.

I’ve done both, but if things go bad and it’s my fault I don’t whinge about it being the fault of “the people in charge” or the FSM.

He said the fire chief claimed he refused to pay

Perhaps the fire chief was talking about his “refusal” to pay the orignal $75. Less likely (due to the nature of the regs), perhaps the chief named a figure that he couldn’t afford.

but he says he told them on the phone he’d pay whatever it cost to put out the fire.

Wait, he can’t afford to pay $75 a year but suddenly is desperate enough and (more importantly) able enough to pay “whatever it cost”?

And that he forgot to pay the fee.  5:39 on the video.  “I know people think you don’t forget things like that, but you do.”

He forgot to pay a “thing like that” (i.e. something critical) partially because all he could remember regarding the fee was that he was given a break the last time it came up, so no need to worry. It was a small thing until it suddenly became a large thing.

He says at one point, of the insurance payout he will get, “it’s like everything else, I didn’t have enough.”

Depressingly predictable. Sounds like the house was under-insured, and now he’s bitter that they won’t cover the full cost of re-building.

That’s probably the closest this guy is going to get to saying he’s poor, because people like him don’t generally make announcements about it on TV, it’s part of their culture.

There are plenty of poor people who don’t make such catastrophically bad decisions and mistakes that they end up on national TV. That’s part of the culture, too.

Wow, I’m an asshole for being a libertarian….hmm.

Couple things of note:

1.) Fire districts need to be funded, firefighters don’t.  I’m a resident of Nassau County in NY, one of the richest areas in the U.S. yet we have a 100% volunteer force broken up into districts.

2.)  Playing devil’s advocate, for the same reason you believe libertarians are assholes, I could argue liberals are assholes because they defend and support a huge federal government, which is prone to doing many evil things such as invading other countries for malicious reasons, stomping on personal civil rights, creating rules for how corporations are supposed to operate yet not enforcing them, entitlement systems that do more harm to the people than help, etc.  How much evil would our government create with a very limited budget?  I hate it when my government bombs innocent people, yet I’m the asshole.  But as much as liberals cry about their government’s injustices, they still seem to open their checkbooks willingly when the tax man comes…what a strange set of ideals….

3.) Don’t lump wingnuts and tea parties in with libertarians.  If you took the depth of understanding of what libertarianism means and how it should function, consider the Tea Party and Wingnut ideals as a picture book version of them.

Why does any homeowner’s insurance company do business in this county or any other place that doesn’t have basic services arranged?

That’s a good question. Perhaps it’s why he’s under-insured for fire and would be even if he had paid the $75 fee. Insurers are known for initiating such vicious cycles.

In MA, if you don’t have health insurance, you get fined a modest amount equivalent to a year’s premium if you have to go to the ER after, say, a car accident, breaking a bone, etc.  You don’t get left to die with a jeering greek chorus.

The regulations in this case were poorly written—all (for $75/year) or nothing. If they had to have a crappy fee-based system, they should have at least made provision for the sort of fine you mention.

Yes, Mandolin, claiming that a grown man can be expected to remember to pay his bills (especially when he’s been reminded multiple times to do so) and that the property loss resulting from forgetting is sort of his fault is exactly the same as calling a woman who’s having trouble supporting her kids a “bitch” who “should have known to keep her legs closed instead of pushing out a litter to suck on the government teat.”

Maybe I should just let you write all my comments? You’re awful good at it! I mean, I never would have thought to bring slut-shaming into the mix when talking about a 62-year-old man whose house burned down, but you definitely put in that extra little bit of effort. (Can you bring Hitler into this discussion? If anyone could it would be you!)

He didn’t have sufficient liquid assets to make a $75 payment.
He’d pay whatever it cost to put out the fire.  Which would be significantly more than $75.

Which is it?

He has liquid assets to buy seed, fix his tractor. 

If he has to spend that on the house not burning down, he will.  If he has to sell a tractor or disc to do so, he will. 

And again, you’re assuming his “I forgot” was a lie.

I wouldn’t blame the insurer for not insuring in an area where there is no fire protection!!!!

That said, what happens if you live in an apartment or rental house and your landlord didn’t pay the fee?  And your children die as a result?  This is what makes this “system” so moronic.

@Comment #187: breetai3 on 10/15 at 03:16 PM

Wow, I’m an asshole for being a libertarian….hmm ....

...

2.) Playing devil’s advocate, for the same reason you believe libertarians are assholes, I could argue liberals are assholes because they defend and support a huge federal government, which is prone to doing many evil things ...

3.) Don’t lump wingnuts and tea parties in with libertarians.  If you took the depth of understanding of what libertarianism means ...

If your feelings are hurt, then why don’t you Go Galt? Remove your specialness from this fallen, statist world, and wait for it to burn into ashes. It very well might.

Your argument about liberals being evil is pretty good, and I think you should use it. Lots of people enjoy that sort of thing.

As for the “burning trash is the country way” comment - well, I started out in this life by being brought home to a trailer on a dirt road outside of town and even THAT place had some trash pick up every other week.  It isn’t necessarily the case that areas of this density (look on Google) can’t efficiently arrange for trash collection.

Fire districts need to be funded, firefighters don’t.  I’m a resident of Nassau County in NY, one of the richest areas in the U.S. so they have the option of a 100% volunteer force broken up into districts.

Fixed that for you. Also, over my life I’ve lived in several of the wealthiest areas of the U.S., and they took the option of a professional firefighting force. Wealth gives a district real options. As opposed to, say, a poor TN county that’s left with the choice of a tax-supported (horrors!) professional firefighting force or a half-arsed fee-based one.

It’s sort of like the difference between being a tenant farmer and a land-owning one on a subsistence farm worth, say $160k (more with trailer). If things get desperate, the latter has more options to escape the untenable situation than the former.

Playing devil’s advocate, for the same reason you believe libertarians are assholes, I could argue liberals are assholes because they defend and support a huge federal government

For the record, we think that Libertarians are arseholes because they’re boobs who believe that their paradise would end up looking like anything other than Somalia.

Don’t lump wingnuts and tea parties in with libertarians. If you took the depth of understanding of what libertarianism means and how it should function, consider the Tea Party and Wingnut ideals as a picture book version of them.

When I mention Mises or Hayek or even Friedman, most of the self-proclaimed libertarians I’ve talked with give me the same blank looks that I’d get if I bothered to mention the same names to wingnuts or Teabaggers. They all know who Ayn Rand is, though.

I wouldn’t blame the insurer for not insuring in an area where there is no fire protection!

That’s why this fee situation is insidious. The insurer can have its cake (homeowners paying premiums because the protection exists) and eat it too (lower payouts because the fire protection is supposedly sub-par or an all-or-nothing opt-in scheme). Generously assuming he remembered to make his payments, Cranick had homeowners’ insurance, but according to him there won’t be enough to re-build.

He has liquid assets to buy seed, fix his tractor.

I’ll bet the town mechanic and feedlot have their own stories about Forgetful Jones. Based on the response to the disaster, the people of the area seem pretty generous in offering help and giving free passes, which is nice if you’re willing to accept that you’ll be doing that a lot for a sequential thinker or someone who goes on “the Lord will provide.”

Oh, and that hit to his cash flow for seed, tractor repairs etc. would ruin him anyhow, within 6 months at the most. Not that it would have come into his mind—sequential thinkers have difficulty seeing that far ahead.

When I mention Mises or Hayek or even Friedman, most of the self-proclaimed libertarians I’ve talked with give me the same blank looks that I’d get if I bothered to mention the same names to wingnuts or Teabaggers. They all know who Ayn Rand is, though

  I’d guess they are teabaggers who find that label “icky.”

I’d guess they are teabaggers who find that label “icky.”

You’d guess wrong. This was years before the Koch brothers laid down the astroturf for those clowns and suckers. Unfortunately for your credibility, it wasn’t before the same Koch brothers were funding Cato and Mercatus and less “icky” versions of the same extreme free market fantasy ideology.

Oh, and that hit to his cash flow for seed, tractor repairs etc. would ruin him anyhow, within 6 months at the most. Not that it would have come into his mind—sequential thinkers have difficulty seeing that far ahead.
Comment #197: Gracchus on 10/15 at 05:22 PM

Maybe the very reason he didn’t pay the $75 and increase the insurance on his house or do six dozen other things he “should have done” based on the six dozen other kinds of ruinous failures he might encounter, is because, as a linear or even systematic thinker, he knew that adding them all up would result in spending more money than he brings in, and spending more money than you make will end badly.  Since he’s apparently made it this far without going broke.

Assuming, again, as you do, that he is lying about having forgotten to pay the $75.

But I’m glad you’ve found a new epithet for people you don’t like, who make decisions you can’t understand.

The other problem with this fee-for-service scheme is that “certain” people may pay but be conveniently left off of the “official list”.  Funny how easy it would be to just forget to add the local atheist or gay couple ... too easy. It also provides the incentive for firefighters to become firelighters, as has happened in many rural communities throughout the nation.

The other problem with this fee-for-service scheme is that “certain” people may pay but be conveniently left off of the “official list”.  Funny how easy it would be to just forget to add the local atheist or gay couple ... too easy. It also provides the incentive for firefighters to become firelighters, as has happened in many rural communities throughout the nation.

That’s unfair in this case, because it isn’t a true fee-based system.  For a fire department operating as a commercial enterprise, then yes, that would be an issue.

Although to be fair there are people who join the fire department and light fires to play hero.  We generally try to get rid of anyone who shows signs of that.

Although to be fair there are people who join the fire department and light fires to play hero.  We generally try to get rid of anyone who shows signs of that.

See the previously made comment about firefighting being inherently dangerous just standing there.

Incidentally, this is also why I have no time for the apologists for fucks who light fires and “But no one was hurt because it was only property and they made sure no one was there!” as a form of protest, whatever they are protesting.

Although to be fair there are people who join the fire department and light fires to play hero.  We generally try to get rid of anyone who shows signs of that.

What’s your experience with firehouse buffs? I’ve known two of them, and both were pretty weird. I wouldn’t have been surprised if either had started a fire or two.

@184, as far as I know all homeowner’s insurance companies take into account your home’s situation when assessing your premiums. That includes what you have, what’s around you, how you’re using the property, what else is there, where you’re located, etc. I would be shocked, SHOCKED, to find that people offering to send you a million dollars if something goes wrong with your house, aren’t pretty careful to scale their premiums to their risks. No fire department = higher premiums, no police department = higher premiums, etc., install a bungee jump over the neighboring permanent tire fire = higher premiums, etc. Sadly, there is an economic reason my kids don’t have a trampoline, and it isn’t that trampolines cost a lot of money to buy.

Insurance companies are bad at honoring their contracts to pay. They’re really good at finding all the things that could cost them money, and making sure to pass that cost along to their customers.

The US really is a Third World country in some ways, isn’t it?

Firefighting, like healthcare and policing, is just one of the things a developed nation provides for all citizens. It’s not something you get to opt out of.

That the US doesn’t do this, and cries poormouth about it, is just… well, Third World.

What’s your experience with firehouse buffs? I’ve known two of them, and both were pretty weird. I wouldn’t have been surprised if either had started a fire or two.

Fortunately, since I’ve worked in small departments it hasn’t really been an issue.  The main problem I have are with (mostly male) applicants who are full of piss and vinegar and are out to be all heroic and then realize to their dawning horror that most of what they do, especially when starting out, is carrying stuff from A to B, cleaning it later, and rolling hoses.  One guy once expressed disbelief when I pointed out that before he was going to get anywhere near the steering wheel of the truck he was going to learn to operate the pump.  Couldn’t figure out by himself that driving to a fire in a spectacular display of lights and sirens and then not knowing what to do with the vehicle after you got there might not be an optimum situation from a firefighting point of view.

The closest thing to what you’re talking about was what used to happen in the first department I was with when I was a teenager.  We had an annual tradition of going to the hall on Halloween because there was an even older tradition in the area of young people doing dumbass things like starting bonfires in the middle of the road or burning down old, abandoned farm sheds.  So we’d get together, throw a movie on the VCR, maybe crack a beer, and call it in around midnight or 1 am (sooner if the weather was bad no no one wa stupid enough to be out trying to start a fire in it).

After a few years when nothing ever happened, it finally dawned on some of the guys that the reason there were no more pranks of such a nature was that the people who’d done that sort of thing graduated high school, settled down with a family and a job…and joined the fire fire department.

Maybe the very reason he didn’t pay the $75 and increase the insurance on his house or do six dozen other things he “should have done” based on the six dozen other kinds of ruinous failures he might encounter

A $5-$10k hit is ruinous for someone in his position. A $75 hit is, at worst, 10 missed meals in a year—miserable, but when you’re a landowner there are ways of working around it in the longer term, assuming one is able to perceive a longer term. Lots of people have trouble with that, and resign themselves to depending on fate or Jeebus or “the people in charge” or whathave you.

as a linear or even systematic thinker, he knew that adding them all up would result in spending more money than he brings in

A linear thinker would have considered the earlier scare and warning at the very least: cause and effect. As in, “hey, if I burn my trash then there’s a chance my old pine farmhouse might burn down like it almost did with that chimney fire—lucky those fireman gave me a break, but that’s just what it was.” Linear thinking gets you a lot farther, and ends with fewer burned down houses.

The systematic thinker is taking other factors into consideration as well.

Assuming, again, as you do, that he is lying about having forgotten to pay the $75.

I’m not making the assumption. In fact, I’m fully willing to believe that he forgot (or remembered an exception and thought it was the rule), in part because he is a sequential thinker. That’s not an epithet, it’s a description of a type of thinker. Unfortunately, that type of person is also prime prey for the systematic thinkers in the GOP and the wingnut leadership.

HAHAHA Another variation of the old “Look at how brillant I am!” You’ll read different versions of this as you wade through their tired arguments and grandiose experiences with conservatives.

If one is interested in a political ideology, I don’t consider it particularly “brilliant” to read up on its big names and their work in anticipation of a good discussion on the topic. Apparently you do.

In fact, I get the distinct impression you’ve been on the other end of the sort of conversations I tried to have with those libertarians, sitting there with a blank look on your face. A couple of them got pissy about it, too. On the other hand, I had a great series of discussions with the one libertarian who did know who those people were, but he was one of those decadent intellectuals you despise.

Note to breetai3—this is the kind of clown you’ll have to straighten out if you ever want Libertarianism to be taken seriously: a self-professed libertarian who also is against reproductive choice, thinks that gay sex should be illegal and (surprise!) thinks that women (amongst others) should be relegated to a position of second-class citizenship. Forget a picture book, “Libertarians” like PAULSALATA are still learning to colour within the lines, and you’ll have to get them out before you can expect serious discussions about tax-based vs fee-based firefighting systems.

A good note on which to close out the thread.

It isn’t necessarily the case that areas of this density (look on Google) can’t efficiently arrange for trash collection.

In a lot of rural areas, the Powers That Be don’t feel that it’s something that the locals need, so it’s not a matter of logistics per se.

Gracchus may be many things, PAULSALATA, but he writes and punctuates far better than you. If you want liberals to take you seriously, you should make a serious effort to communicate correctly.

@Comment #212: PAULSALATA on 10/16 at 12:37 PM

1/10

This corner is soooo obscure that trollboy feels the need to continuously come back…

A $5-$10k hit is ruinous for someone in his position. A $75 hit is, at worst, 10 missed meals in a year—miserable, but when you’re a landowner there are ways of working around it in the longer term, assuming one is able to perceive a longer term. Lots of people have trouble with that, and resign themselves to depending on fate or Jeebus or “the people in charge” or whathave you.
Comment #209: Gracchus on 10/16 at 11:34 AM

Again, you are assuming you know his circumstances and his reasoning.  I’m presenting an alternative you just can’t seem to allow yourself to accept as possible. 

I’m not unwilling to believe he’s stupid, I just don’t assume it.  Why are you unwilling to believe he could be intelligent, just totally strapped?

PaullySalata,
you’re accomplishing two things: 1) making an uninteresting spectacle of yourself and 2) blasting fuel onto the fire of contempt other people here have for you.

oldfeminist re:217
thank you.

PAULASTUPID, grammar isn’t just for liberals, and you haven’t come up with a reason why you hang around here, why don’t you go to FreeRepublic or somewhere else where mouth-breathers like you are welcome?

I think PS is Stick Rule trying to sneak by the ban hammer with a new alias. The spelling error griping is too similar. Either that or all wingnuts are inhabited by spectral insects from Shaggai who are sitting on their language centers.

He’s a reminder of how well John Stuart Mill stated it over a century ago:

* I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

      o John Stuart Mill, in a letter to the Conservative MP, John Pakington (March 1866)

God, apart from a couple of commenters, this thread is depressingly like one you’d find on a right wing blog talking about some stupid person who didn’t get health insurance but expected to have a right to live without bankrupting themselves when something went wrong healthwise.
Comment 150—Katherine

That is kinda dumb. Which is why the ongoing fight for heath insurance reform isn’t about that, it’s about people who can’t afford it. They should be able to pay for it invisibly. I.e., through their taxes. The way many people pay for firefighting.

I, at least, do not feel “this guy’s an idiot, he should have paid the $75.” I think the county—ok, the voters—should have arranged to fund and provide fire protection to all residents. Which is perfectly consistant with my position on healthcare.

if he ddn’t have enough money then he shouldn’t be a home owner (because poor people can’t have paid off a mortgage years ago, can’t have inherited a house, or generally ust shouldn’t own their ow home full stop)
Comment 154—Katherine

If you cannot afford vital maintenance on your home, you cannot afford your home. If you cannot afford water or electricity or garbage collection, you cannot afford your home. If you cannot afford the fire department, you cannot afford your home. those of these costs that are folded into your taxes are more affordable, of course.

There’s nothing inconsistant about a liberal who says “you should’t buy/own somthing you can’t afford.” Even communism is about getting rid of inability to afford things, not letting people having things they can’t afford.

Point out how (based on his quotes and history) a profoundly stupid, ignorant and entitled man falls victim to a wretched system that his profoundly stupid, ignorant and entitled neighbours (and perhaps himself) allowed to remain in place, and it’s classism.
Comment 159—Gracchus

I don’t see him as notably stupid or entitled. The neighbors, certainly; this is the community’s fault. But either he legitimately forget to pay, or he took a risk, which tragically went against him. In another universe the wind went the other way and his house was fine, and not paying wasn’t entitled at all.

OLbion county doesn’t have office jobs,if you can’t work with your hands, you’re screwed.
Comment 161—The Pale Scot

Do you know this or are you, ah, extraploating?

I also have to wonder—if it’s okay not to put out his fire in this contract situation, is it okay not to put out a fire when the property in question is in arrears in taxes in a tax-funded situation?
Comment 168—oldfeminist

The difference if the community’s tax money pays for firefighting for each household in the community, as opposed to the contract system where each household (in theory) pays for its own coverage.

Thanks for demonstrating Mill’s point, PAUL, you may be conservative but you’re here in this obscure corner of the Internets telling us all this because you’re so, so much better than all of us because why?

BTW:  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The system is the problem, not the individuals make stupid decisions that are available to them because of the stupid system and have to live with the devastating consequences.

In this particular case, Katherine, the people of the community made the stupid decisions that led to this system, and the individual in question seems to have gone along with them wholeheartedly.

2.) Playing devil’s advocate, for the same reason you believe libertarians are assholes, I could argue liberals are assholes because they defend and support a huge federal government, which is prone to doing many evil things such as invading other countries for malicious reasons, stomping on personal civil rights, creating rules for how corporations are supposed to operate yet not enforcing them, entitlement systems that do more harm to the people than help, etc.

Your problem is that liberals do not defend and support a huge federal government.

They defend and support the provision of government services where appropriate; a standard which is always under discussion.

PIATOR - I am a liberal, and I have to say I don’t think “for big government” is an unfair critique of my positions. I do want big government.

If we are constantly discussing the standards of big government and trying to size it correctly, then you should have no trouble in pointing me towards lots of links, references, etc. to intra-liberal discussions where one group of liberals is arguing with another group of liberals and saying “oh, we can’t do this, it isn’t an appropriate government service, it’ll make the government too big”, etc.

I don’t think you can. That’s NOT, in fact, what we’re always discussing. Any good posts on Pandagon with one group of libs/progs arguing that something isn’t appropriate for government to do? That something should be left to the civil sector?

Even in this post, there has been about one person with anything good to say about a private fire system, me, and the basic reaction has been “zomg what an idiot idea”. Liberals are HOSTILE to private action in general, not yearning to incorporate it everywhere and keep government at the maximum possible distance.

“Liberals are complicit in the evils of big government”, whatever those evils may be, seems one of the most fair criticisms you can make of our side. We are. That’s our side. It’s like saying Mayor Bloomberg is complicit in the problems of New York City. DUH. It’s his team! Libertarians are complicit every time somebody starves in an alley b/c there was no safety net, aren’t they?

Alkaloid—Libertarians goal is to minimize the size of government regardless of the social costs. For them small government is an end in and of itself. For liberals, the goal is not to maximize the size of government an then call our work done. Liberals have policy ends they wish met and believe that goverment action is the best way to meet those goals. One could argue that liberals see government corruption as a price worth paying for a government safety net, but even a lot of the bad things governments do—war, spying on citizens, invading bedrooms, subsidizing bad things—liberals oppose while “small government” conservatives support.

@Alkaloid

Leaving aside that “big government” is a bit of a meaningless phrase (big compared to what? a theoretical “small government” that is smaller in some respects, but not others? a theocracy that only collects taxes in years ending in 5?), saying liberals are “in favor of big government” is like saying those who are pro-choice are “in favor of abortions.”  It may have some factual truth to it, but it isn’t in any way, shape, or form a “fair critique.”  It is only a critique if you assume that the position being critiqued is (mostly) wrong, and if you assume that the only people qualified to frame issues are conservatives.

I am a liberal and am totally in favor of small government which, as it would in a sane world, means to me that I am in favor of a functioning government that is as small as it can possibly be while still being a functioning government.  Most conservatives and libertarians agree with this and disagree with me on what constitutes a functioning government.  (And that would bring me back around to the point a put aside at the beginning of my comment.)

I want government to be as large as it needs to be, and no larger. “Needs to be” takes into account that I think government should be very proactive about justice, domestic tranquility, and general welfare. However, like alysia (who explicitly said it, I’m not saying others feel differently) I don’t want big government as an end in itself.

@Hershele Ostropoler

I think that what I said:

I am a liberal and am totally in favor of small government which, as it would in a sane world, means to me that I am in favor of a functioning government that is as small as it can possibly be while still being a functioning government.

and what you said:

I want government to be as large as it needs to be, and no larger.

are essentially the same thing aside from how they engage with the conservative frame.

Is that what you meant or am I misreading you?

@Comment #232: Hershele Ostropoler on 10/18 at 09:31 PM

I don’t want big government as an end in itself.

And someone does? That appears to be the unspoken, and incorrect, assumption.

A,AF: I think we’re agreeing, I just like attention.

atheist: I don’t believe I know anyone who does, and I don’t think there’s any organized movement with that as a goal, but I’m the only person whose beliefs I can confidently address in any real detail.

oldfeminist: “I’m not unwilling to believe he’s stupid, I just don’t assume it.  Why are you unwilling to believe he could be intelligent, just totally strapped? “

Because if that were the case, which it wasn’t, he would have TOLD the South Fulton Fire Department that when they called to ask him why he hadn’t paid his fee and reminded him of the dangers of not paying it?  Because he paid homeowner’s insurance?  Because in the first interview with a newspaper he said that he figured they’d put out the fire even if he didn’t pay?

You’re bending over backwards to be sympathetic to him.  Sure, maybe he’s mentally defective and deserves our sympathy for that reason, I can’t argue with that possibility.  In that case he *definitely* shouldn’t own his own home (outside a trust) though, as he’s not competent to manage it.

Now obviously problem #1 is that Obion County has voted repeatedly to secede from civilization by not providing *single-payer*, tax-funded fire service.  It seems that it is a mistake for the S. Fulton Fire Department to provide it out of the kindness of their hearts, because the result is massive, unsustainable freeloading.  The “subscription” system should eliminate freeloading, but when it works the way it’s supposed to, they have to let people’s houses burn down.  Most people seem to think this is bad, not least because of the dangers of fires getting out of control. 

They picked the most unsympathetic jackass I can imagine to ‘make an example’ of—someone who’d already had a fire put out without paying the fire subscription—but it’s still a terrible system.  Unfortunately, the S. Fulton Fire Department has no other options, thanks to the straitjacket of Tennessee law.  They provide “socialized firefighting” within South Fulton, but cannot legally impose taxes outside the city.

Obion County and Tennessee do have other options.  It is embarassing that they do not take them.  Here in NY last I checked there was a tax-funded fire district in *every* part of the state.  In places with volunteer fire departments the taxes are very low; in some places the district uses the taxes to pay a neighboring department.  I have never heard of a subscription-based system; I think we banned that back in the 19th century, though I should check.

Yes, I’m in favor of “Big Fire Department Government”, where taxes levied on everyone who can afford it pay for fire protection.  It works.  I suppose the glibertarians will be all hostile to that.  But then they don’t seem to care whether anything works or not.