Steven L. Taylor has the report of another house that burned down while the local fire department watched because the owners had not paid their $75 fee. That’s how the free market works in Tennessee.
Over in India, a horrible hospital fire at a private hospital in Kolkata where safety procedures weren’t updated and the staff left patients to die, fire detection and suppression systems didn’t function, and firefighters struggled to break the thick windows that sealed the building and turned it into a “giant chimney for a searing, smoky fire” killing 94 patients. That’s how the free market works in India.
One of the reasons we don’t have stories like the latter in the US is Medicare. Any hospital that receives Medicare (meaning all of them) has to meet life safety code requirements, they’re tough, and they’re enforced. As Medicare was rolled out in the 60’s and 70’s, hospitals and nursing homes were retrofitted with things we take for granted today, like auto-closing fire resistant doors, sprinkler systems, and smoke detectors. Many, especially nursing “homes” that were remodeled old houses, were closed altogether because they couldn’t meet those standards. They have a Code Red plan, and the staff is trained. And the hospital is accessible to fire equipment (the Kolkata hospital was on streets too narrow for firetrucks and the fire brigade had to batter through a locked front gate to get to the entrance).
In other words, we’re not a third-world country — yet.
Benjamin Franklin
But all those things are pricey. Why hamper Bizness? Let the patient choose the hospital concerned about safety. The Free Market Prevails !!!
cathyx
Once the republicans gut Medicare, we will all be Indians.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Don’t worry though, the GOP is fast bringing us there. Once they’ve gotten rid of all that pesky money-stealing regulation, we’ll finally be there and then Freedumbs for everyone.
Yutsano
A hundred years ago we had horror stories like the India fire in this country too. We decided that was an unacceptable state of affairs. Of course the hospitals make less MONEY…but at least they’re shit tons safer. The Invisible Hand should fix this up.
kdaug
“Forget what you know, forget what you’ve learned, leave it behind and trust the loving hands of the free market”.
-GOP
Brachiator
What in the hell does the tragic fire India have to do with the free market? The article clearly points out that safety requirements had been violated, and orders to upgrade firefighting equipment ignored.
Punchy
Mix, are you drunk? Having a real hard time squaring any connection between a house fire in TN and Medicare hospitals. Are you just trolling for comments?
PIGL
@Brachiator: Did you miss the part that it was a private hospital, and the contrast to public or publicly funded hostpitals in the US, where the funding comes with stringent safety requitements that are enforced?
Get rid of the funding ties, as the Ruplicans seem to want, and the safety rules will loose their teeth.
TBogg
Every time I hear about a house in Tennessee burning down because of an essentially privatized fire dept, I kind of hope it’s the ole perfessers.
Then I feel bad about it.
Then I get over it.
Corina Rodriguez
I am so tired of this story … the reality is that the firefighters deserve to be paid same as anyone else … they even hav e unions, imagine that. Everyone needs to pay the fire fighters. Several years ago in Fort worth Texas we had a case of a firefighter who went to an unincorporated area and helped with a fire … as a volunteer becasue the place did not have any fire department and he got fatally hurt. Becasue he was volunteering, not working, there was no insurance for him or his family … no pension, no nothing except social security.
It is not the firefighter who should be talked about but the people who want to save a few bucks by not paying taxes but crying for the services when they want them.
El Cid
If more sick and old people died in fires, we’d save money on health care.
gbear
@TBogg: But would you feel bad about it if it was the ole perfesser’s house?
AMD
@Brachiator: Uhh, maybe because the safety requirements basically amounted to suggestions since there clearly was no real means of enforcement. Which is precisely what the free marketeers want. Would love to hear Ron Paul’s analysis of this situation. It would probably be something long the lines of: I’m sure had the poor put-upon hospital administrators not been pestered about those burdensome regulations in the first place they would have been free to make it safe because it’s good for business. You know, since consumers will stop choosing hospitals that leave their patients to burn to a crisp in a fire. It just takes good business sense.
Brachiator
@PIGL:
I don’t see what the hospital being private has to do with the fact that it had ignored weakly enforced orders to upgrade its equipment.
Did you miss the part, or not bother to look at stories that note that there have been a number of fires in Calcutta involving high rises since 2008? Most of them are related to electrical code violations, and one of the most recent involved a public building, a court house, in which over 40 people died?
The comparison to public or publically funded hospitals in the US is mind numbingly stupid. Do you think that private hospitals here are immune to health and safety rules?
Villago Delenda Est
Not to worry. The Koch brothers are working on that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
There are times when you can be unbearably stupid, Brach.
This is one of them. You’re being Rand Paul stupid here.
The Other Chuck
The community as a whole refuses to pay for its own fire department, then asks instead that a neighboring one provide fire protection in exchange for a voluntary payment. The owners of the house refused to pay for a basic service, so they suffered the consequences.
Is that a fucked up slice of society in general? Of course. Do I have a shred of sympathy for the Galtian/Norquistian homeowner who refused to pay? Not one bit.
El Cid
In response to Roubini et al’s call for desperately needed but overwhelmingly unlikely government aid in the West to leave stagnation and avoid another (formal) recession, Bruce Bartlett, former adviser to His Maginficent Majesty Ronaldus Reaganicus, Sol Invictus (and also to Bush the Greater), had this to say about modern conservativism’s policy triumphs in the legislature (via TPM):
And to think he used to be considered a serious analyst and scholar, and now he’s a Muslim-loving terrorist soshullisticizer.
Social outcast
When you’re at the point where you want to see someone lose everything they have in a fire just to prove a point about someone paying a fee, don’t you ever stand back and say, “Man, how did I get to be such a douche?”
The Other Chuck
I think Brach’s point is that a public institution in India isn’t going to automatically fare any better. Someone still builds the place, someone still runs the place, and either there aren’t enough inspectors for hospitals regardless of their public/private status, or someone bribes a government official to look the other way and pockets the maintenance funds.
cathyx
@El Cid: Yes, it would really pay off if hospitals go up in flames.
Benjamin Franklin
He’s right, of course, but he fails to mention we still have Obama.
Nellie in NZ
OT – anyone in the States want to investigate this? Conservative former Repub candidate for Alabama gov. is down in NZ, impregnating women, some lesbian, as sperm donor. Campaigned against gay marriage. Story is confusing – http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10772398. (I just woke and nothing is making sense.)
Nellie in NZ
OT – anyone in the States want to investigate this? Conservative former Repub candidate for Alabama gov. is down in NZ, impregnating women, some lesbian, as sperm donor. Campaigned against gay marriage. Story is confusing – http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10772398. (I just woke and nothing is making sense.)
Benjamin Franklin
@Benjamin Franklin:
…and Ben Nelson.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Other Chuck:
The point the others are making is that their are regulations and inspections for a reason. The regulations need to be enforced, and they’re not put in place just to annoy glibertarian types, as much as they seem to think all those regulations are pretty much the liberals’ version of their demand that the approval of an environmentally questionable pipeline be tied to a payroll tax cut bill as a means to piss off liberals.
In India, the electrical codes are not rigidly enforced, probably because it “costs too much” to the vaunted entrepreneurial class to comply with them, so the people who pay the price for this are those who die in fires. But, then again, human life is very cheap in India, isn’t it?
The Other Chuck
@Social outcast:
How about a bigger point in fees is made when bridges collapse or uninsured people die by the thousands because some people have decided they don’t want to pay for the society they live in?
Class warfare has real and actual casualties, and one of them is my conscience. Fuck them.
fubar
@Social outcast:
Right on!
Brachiator
@AMD:
You are making shit up. And the hospital administrators have been arrested and charged with being responsible for the deaths.
And problems with lack of enforcement of health rules arises because of government inefficiencies, not because Calcutta or India is some kind of free market haven.
Murakami
Sometimes it’s amazing how thorough and detailed the Medicare regulations get. As one example, I’m the care partner of someone doing home hemo dialysis. One of the things we were taught to do was put tape over the connector where the tube from the machine joins the tube / needle in the patient’s arm. The training nurse explained that once, around 10 years ago, a patient’s arterial connection came open in a way which eluded detection (the blood flowed into the chair and out the back) and the patient bled to death.
This was the only such fatality the nurse knew about but it was enough to create a new regulation. So I tape the connectors even though they’re tough enough I can’t ever imagine them unexpectedly popping open, but that toughness is probably due to yet another set of regulations.
Villago Delenda Est
@Social outcast:
The point is, and the woman admitted it, that she never thought she’d need fire protection, so why fork over the $75 to insure she’d have it?
Too bad lady. You made a choice. Live with it. The fire department can’t function without funding.
cmorenc
@Brachiator:
More accurately, it reflects a pervasive ethos in India of contemptuous lack of respect for government institutions and regulations, which is in large part earned by a government which is too massively inept and corrupt to have effective laws or enforcement of laws. True, the fire is not the result of unimpeded “free market” dynamics, but it is precisely the result of the sort of limited effective governmental reach that GOP ideologues maintain is necessary for the free market to work efficiently. Making this observation is NOT agreeing or implying that an unfettered free market would be effective in inhibiting hospital fires like this (or similar disasters); rather it’s simply a more accurate analysis about how this incident fits within the GOP ideological framework of “less regulation”, “ineffective, overreaching government” and the “free market”.
malraux
@Social outcast: I don’t see any other way to make the system work though. The alternative, which the community voted against, is a tax based system. What you can’t have is an insurance type system that lets you free ride. It has to get paid for some way or other, through fees or through taxes. Its a shitty way to run things, but until the community decides to pull its head out of its collective butt, there’s no other alternative.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
Vengeance is easier than prevention, I guess. Pretty much the glibertarian argument that sure, you can sue someone if they do you a wrong, but taking action to prevent the wrong in the first place (through the vile soshulist mechanism of regulation) is stepping all over my liberty! What they don’t say is “my liberty to fuck you over, sucker!”
cathyx
@Villago Delenda Est: I wonder how they will sort out the insurance for this. If she had fire insurance, but didn’t pay the $75 for fire protection, will the insurance company pay up? I see a long drawn out court battle in her future.
handy
@Brachiator:
And I think the OP’s basic point is that those government inefficiencies are the kind bred by Randian GOP policy, though with its relatively cheap exploitable labor and trickle-up caste society I’m not sure I wouldn’t characterize India as some kind of free market haven either.
The Other Chuck
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m far from a glibertarian, but come on. It’s not vengeance, it’s enforcement. The enforcement regime was in place — what wasn’t was the inspection regime. And the corruption in India is such that it does actually lend credence to the mindset that “government can’t function so why bother with it”? Not saying that nihilism produces good outcomes either, but you can see where it comes from.
handy
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes the glibertarians love to appeal to “well you could just sue someone” while at the same time scream about tort reform. Think about that.
Benjamin Franklin
Just ask Marie Antoinette.
Amir Khalid
@mistermix:
I agree with Brachiator. It’s kind of glib to say that AMRI Hospital’s failure to update safety procedures as ordered by the authorities was a reflection on the free market in India. Because safety code violations happen in America, too. Remember that coal mine in Virginia where 28 men died? The mine owners have had to pay compensation to the miners’ families, but they’re not being prosecuted and the mine is still operating. Whereas, as a result of the AMRI Hospital fire, the state of West Bengal has revoked its license, and police have charged six of its directors with culpable homicide. Safety regulation and enforcement do need to be improved in India, but that has more to do with India still being a mostly third-world country. What excuse does America have for that Virginia mine’s owners, or for the massive post-Katrina cock-up in New Orleans?
The Other Chuck
@cathyx:
If she had fire insurance and the insurance company didn’t assess the fee for her or demand she pay it, then I really want to know what insurance company this is so I can avoid it or anything that invests in it. Seriously, it’d be like a health insurance company giving a preferred rate to a three-pack-a-day smoker.
cathyx
@The Other Chuck: What the insurance companies should do is make the fee part of the insurance premium. Then it’s paid for when you pay your insurance.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
This is pretty vile stuff. It doesn’t work as snark, or as much of anything else. It is full of ignorance that I expect from some conservatives, but not from Balloon Juicers, who apparently are full of faux concern for brown people, but who cannot be bothered with anything that gets in the way of their ideological hobby horses.
Care to walk this shit back?
Gin & Tonic
@cathyx: Do you really think that someone who doesn’t (more probably can’t, as in doesn’t have the money for) pay the local fire assessment has paid for property insurance? I’d bet my next month’s pay that she was uninsured as well.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Other Chuck:
Brach said “well, the hospital administrators got arrested for letting the fires happen by not paying attention to the safety codes”.
So, that’s the vengeance part.
If nothing bad happens (yet) no one is terribly concerned. Then something bad happens, and people ask how this can happen? Sure, we punish the administrators after the fact, but the dead are the dead. They can’t be reanimated by punishing those responsible for their deaths.
So, you have a GOP style non-enforcement of rules and regulations going on in India because, as we all know from listening to the shitty grade Z movie star 30 years ago, government simply does not work. Ever. Except to close the barn door after the horse has left. Then it needs to close that barn door with the greatest alacrity possible.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
When you walk back your obtuse stupidity, I”ll walk mine back. Because let’s be brutally honest here: it’s very obvious that the cost of actually complying with the code is traded off to the risk of having a fire kill everyone in the fucking building. Might happen, might not, we can’t afford to assume that it will, so we’ll just assume that it wont.
Trakker
@malraux:
I don’t know anything about the community or why they are so set against taxing themselves to provide fire protection for all, so it’s hard to criticize. Chances are, if everyone paid – thru taxes – it would cost everyone less than $75 per person per year, but what if that extra fee pushes too many homeowners over the the edge where they can’t pay their taxes and they end up losing their homes? I don’t like to think the people in question are just too stupid or stubborn or anti-taxes that they would prefer to see neighbors’ houses burn down.
If I was poor and I had to choose between keeping the heat on this winter or paying $75 for fire protection on the small chance my house caught fire, I know what my decision would be.
Whatever. It just makes me realize how damn lucky I am to not have to make that decision, and I have nothing but compassion for those who gamble and lose their homes.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
The same excuse that is used in India: they who have the gold make the rules.
The mine owner should be tossed in prison, forever, and his family left destitute by confiscation of all assets. Until we start enforcing the morality imposed on the 99% on the 1%, there can be no justice, and no peace.
John X.
Moralists are idiots. Fire spreads, even to houses that did pay the fees. That’s why “for profit” fire departments have been banned in every sane nation.
The same type of morons who grimly nod in agreement to ideas like “they deserved to have their house burn down” are the ones who will go “who could have known?” when one of those deserving house fires ends up spreading and burning down an entire town.
Gin & Tonic
@Villago Delenda Est:
And they are ignored in lots of places. I live in a small white-bread town in New England. Over the summer I was having some electrical work done in connection with some construction at my home. The (licensed) electrician I hired wasn’t necessarily surprised when I insisted he pull an electrical permit from the town, but it was clear from our conversation that for some (many?) of his customers the permitting process was optional red tape. He worked according to code, but the subsequent electrical inspection was pretty much a joke.
But again, I’m sure if next year I had a fire, my property insurance company would investigate the chain of paperwork. Nevertheless, lots of people just can’t be bothered. This in the US.
Donut
@AMD:
Because doesn’t everyone know exactly which hospitals will ignore fire saftey standards, and which will burn down?
Isn’t it obvious?
Doesn’t everyone have such Prescient Free Market Freedom Powers of Prediction?
Nah, not Dhimmicrat Soshulists. Just real ‘Murcan Republicans, I suppose.
Brachiator
@cmorenc:
In short, people are using willful ignorance about the situation India to score points about the GOP and the free market in the US.
Benjamin Franklin
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8592182.stm
Regulations without enforcement, are not regulations.
I blame the Free Market.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
There you go, being obtuse again.
The government getting off your back by NOT making sure you as a construction contractor do your job properly by sending one of those terrible inspectors with a clipboard in his hand is the ideal for the GOP. They only apply “trust but verify” to commies. Never to good capitalist types.
AMD
@Brachiator: Yes, after the fact. But clearly the hospital wasn’t shut down or the administrators didn’t fear any real consequence. The regulations are only as useful as their enforcement, as opposed to ass-covering scrambling after something goes wrong.
But that’s really not the issue. What you conveniently ignore is the real point, which is what the free-market advocates WANT is no/unenforceable regulations.
Gin & Tonic
@Trakker:
The area where the house burned is an unincorporated area outside of the town, in which taxes are levied for the fire dept. If you live in the adjacent unincorporated area, you can be covered by the town FD if you pay the $75. So in some sense this isn’t as clear-cut as people are making it out to be.
khead
I usually bring up this scene:
How many dead hemophiliacs do you need?
pseudonymous in nc
The OTB post has a comment linking to this story, which goes a long way to fill out the details of the jurisdictional issues and the constraints that the city FD is under:
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Villago Delenda Est:
The king of all fuck-alls, is that you can barely get agreement of a jury of 12 peers to convict a captain of industry.
There would be a hue and cry about depriving the Massey(or whomever) family of the ill-gotten gains, because as the refrain goes, “they personally didn’t do anything wrong.” I have been trying to reason with people over this as it pertains to “punishing” penn state. Its just about fucking useless.
Benjamin Franklin
“Acceptable Risk”—-
The Board of that hospital are probably complicit. Administrators are just bureaucrats. Bureaucrats are politicians without a constituency. They generally are, risk averse. Administrators propose, the Board disposes.
When the heat rises to the Board, this crap will stop.
AMD
@handy: Not only that, but even without tort reform you have the Pinto gas tank problem. If a company calculates that total potential damages/costs arising out of lawsuits is cheaper than fixing the problem, people will be hurt. It’s just good for business. Yay free market.
Chris
“We’re not a third world country – yet.”
Day’s young. And it sure isn’t for lack of trying.
Woodrowfan
so put out the fire, save the house then hit the people with the bill
Trakker
@Gin & Tonic:
I would just like to know why the people in that area decline to pay for protection through their taxes. That seems to be the key. If they are just stubborn ol’ anti-gummint types, then they get at they deserve, but I suspect it’s more complicated than that. Maybe the town’s fire chief is an asshole.
Villago Delenda Est
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
Socialize the risk, privatize the profit.
It’s the way of the modern asshole.
We need tumbrels. Soon.
Amir Khalid
If in parts of India electrical codes are not strictly enforced, I doubt it has much to do with the penetration of American right-wing [political thinking into the ruling elite. Not everything in this world is about American politics, and a hospital fire in India certainly isn’t.
As with a lot of third-world countries (which for the most part India still is) safety regulation and enforcement there are under-resourced and not optimally organized. And the culture of compliance with regulation is not as developed as in, say, the US or Europe.
@Villago Delenda Est:
No it isn’t. Human life is never cheap anywhere. if you think people in India, or any part of the third world, somehow don’t value life like people do elsewhere, you are mistaken.
Villago Delenda Est
@Trakker:
Of course he’s an asshole. He insists that they pay for the protection they demand. What an asshole he is!
Donut
@Brachiator:
I agree with Villago on this, and sorry, but if you don’t see the connection between lax enforcement of code and regulation and the kind of country that the GOP desires us to return to (remember, we have already fucking been there, done that in this country), you’re definitely being willfully obtuse. Did we or did we not in the United States and in other countries develop government inspection regimes in response to what the free markets would not do? It’s a simple question, and we were a fucking third world country just a hundred or so years ago. Jebus, it’s not that hard to see the point, unless you wanna just be self righteous, just because you can.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
Amir, I can only go on the consequences of their decisions. It’s pretty obvious that Massey sees the human lives of his employees as expendable, or he wouldn’t skimp on safety requirements.
The sooner we get over this notion that the 1% gives a flying fuck about the lives of the 99%, the better. This is not the military, where you take serious steps to safeguard the lives of your soldiers as much as you can, without regard to monetary cost, because you can’t perform your mission without them. It takes time and more money to replace the soldiers you have…all that combat saavy lost when one is killed or wounded and rendered hors de combat.
Massey just finds more drones to dig up that coal. His miners are utterly expendable.
It’s very obvious that precautions that could be taken, but are not, are just part of the risk assesment mechanism to insure a proper return on investment. If a few peons die in the process, well, that’s just the cost of doing business.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
Damn. You really are insistent on doubling down on your ignorance. Is this how you characterized the nuclear disaster in Japan as well? All problems resulting from non-enforcement of rules are because government officials in foreign countries are stealth Republicans following free market principles?
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
You just doubled down on your obtuseness.
You’re moving into serious fuckhead troll territory now. Is there no crime of omission you will not defend to your last breath?
Donut
@Amir Khalid:
To me the point is not that all or any number of Indians don’t value human life, it’s that pretty much no culture really values human life, ours in the US included. Many human beings do not give two shits about their fellow persons, and it has nothing to do with a specific culture. Government inspection regimes did not develop here and elsewhere until untold number s of people lost life and limb. It’s universal.
Jason
Fire safety is clearly something that can be left to the free market. For example, if you trust your loved one to a hospital, and it subsequently burns up in an intense firey conflagration costing hundreds of lives, well, you’ll know to just avoid that hospital in future.
PIGL
@cmorenc: thank you.
Benjamin Franklin
No. Not all of them.
trollhattan
@TBogg:
Herr and Frau Ole Perfessor would shoot the fire out.
bin Lurkin'
@Woodrowfan:
Amazingly, thanks to state law, there is no legal means by which the fire department can compel payment. I found this out during the last home burning incident in the same place.
I’ve also heard that the city’s insurance will not cover any injuries to firefighters on unsubscribed fires.
Trakker
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m not sure what your point is here, but let me expand. Of course the fire chief should demand people pay for the protection his department provides, but maybe he’s also contemptuous of the people who live in that poor community outside of town, and they purely resent it. Even though they must pay for protection, I’ll bet, as non-residents, they have no voice in choosing the chief.
Raven
OT Go Army!
wrb
@El Cid:
Dunno. How about the ones who just end up covered with burns?
They could be expensive.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
gaz
@handy:
I’m so glad you said precisely what I was thinking while reading Brach’s post – so I didn’t have to say it myself. =)
handy
Brach I get your call to caution and clarity, that while the conservative narrative is rife with binary morality tales, we in the “reality based community” ought to eschew ham-handed rhetoric and recognize the world is a complex place.
But I don’t think it’s a stretch to see a fable in both these stories about the government’s role in society and the consequences of its abandoning its basic duty to protect persons and property, in the cause of “The Free Market” and “Less Government On My Back.” Unfortunately people DON’T make the connection between the latter and the former, that in the name of the latter the former necessarily happens.
pseudonymous in nc
Since you’re pulling shit out of your rear, go wild! Maybe he fucks their goats as well!
Frankly, if I were running that department and spending half of my time fighting fires in an area that isn’t under its official jurisdiction and only provides a quarter of the budget, I’d be pissed off that this happens again and again while the county government shrugs off its responsibility. But you have no fucking reason to think that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Trakker:
They could have a voice in choosing a chief. If you pay taxes, you get representation. They don’t want to pay the taxes. They’ve repeatedly rejected that. They’ve willfully chosen NOT to participate in the governance of the fire department.
They’ve made their bed. Now they have to sleep in it.
gaz
@Trakker: There’s a near statistical certainty that the people in the position you describe are not homeowners. People that poor don’t own homes.
(Not saying it doesn’t happen – with unemployment being what it is currently – just saying I doubt the example you gave is even statistically significant at all – shit just doesn’t tend to work that way)
Benjamin Franklin
Is the Gibbon a stealth sock-?
seems defensive.
gaz
@John X.: Yep =)
bin Lurkin'
@Trakker:
The average income in the county is somewhat higher than that in the city, not a great deal but it is higher.
S Fulton is not exactly a thriving metropolis.
Svensker
@John X.:
Apparently the way it works is that the fire company will show up and if anyone is in the uninsured building they have a mandate to rescue that person. And they also have a mandate to protect property around the uninsured building. But they have no mandate to put out the fire at the uninsured building and any fireman who tried to do so and was injured would not be covered by workman’s comp or the FD’s liability insurance.
Perhaps I’m wrong, this is just what I’ve heard on the tubes.
ETA: Also, too, this rural area is outside the town. The townspeople pay taxes. The county folks voted down taxes for themselves and then were asked to each pay a fee. Some didn’t.
wrb
In some areas people who are without fire protection would support the chief in this.
What happens is that if the town starts providing coverage for those who live in the country that gets turned into an argument for preventing people from living in the country and forcing them to live in the town.
Even if they pay an equal share those in the town will argue that serving the dispersed population is more expensive.
Better to put in your own water tank, and talk to the neighbors about co-operating come time of fire. Eventually they might go in together on a fire truck and call themselves a volunteer fire department so that they get insurance benefits, but maybe not.
The person whose house actually burned down will complain, but the neighbors might support the chief.
gaz
What I love about the glibertarians is all of the shallow nonsense they spew that serves to justify their own privilege, and their sanctity of self above sanctity of others <- this seems to serve as the core their ideological rot, about which all the nonsense about NAP and liberty revolves. I think they call it objectivism, or something (it's essentially satanism – as Anton LaVey defined it) only with the thin veneer of adult politics to mask the juvenile undercurrent.
And the really hilarious part of all this? I can make a better case for Ron Paul’s beliefs than he can. In like 2 sentences. (even though I think he is full of shit).
here’s the case:
Read Mexico's Constitution. Once finished, ask yourself why most of the labor is untaxed, and there are no enforcable regulations.
(Hint, it’s TOO LIBERAL)
There glibtards. I just handed you your next talking point.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
I’m guessing that the housing market is going to suck in that county in Tennessee because you won’t be able to get a mortgage without insurance. You won’t get insurance without a fire department. It seems that in the cases we’re aware of, these were shit hole shacks that had no mortgage so you will still be able to have a county full of shit hole shacks. That sounds delightful.
Stillwater
@John X.:
This has to be snark, right? Otherwise, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone miss a snarky point on so many levels.
Edit: Oops. I thought you were referring to TBogg’s comment, but that might not be the case!
Brachiator
@Donut:
But the point is that the hospital fire in India had to do with inefficiency, corruption, and other issues, not because a private hospital or the city was following free market principles, or Villago’s new simplistic assertion that it is just another example of the one percent doing its thing.
And if you think that the GOP wants to turn the US into India, you have a very odd conception of what India is really like.
gaz
@Svensker: And we see how well it’s working out for them. Your point?
Gin & Tonic
@Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937: The almighty Wikipedia reports that median household income in the city there is $27,462, so I doubt the housing market is booming.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
It doesn’t really matter if the hospital were public or private. The point is, regulations were not being complied with, and the means of enforcing the regulations has been crippled.
The modern GOP not only wails about the enforcement of the regulations, they wail about the regulations themselves, without the slightest thought to why they may have been brought forward in the first place. Because they assume, by projecting, that the regulations were imposed by liberals to piss them off. They have no notion that there are practical reasons for the regulations and the enforcement of them. That the regulations were imposed after disasters in which human life was lost. But then again, as has been pointed out, if we have to chose between profit and human life, well, profit comes first. Always.
Gin & Tonic
@gaz: I’m not Svensker, but I think the point (or *a* point, here) is that some commenters are imputing on the South Fulton FD a moral responsibility to have put out that fire, but absent a legal responsibility there doesn’t seem to be a moral one either (to me, anyway.) Say you choose to live in East Podunk, because taxes are low, partly due to there being no fire department. When your house catches fire, the West Podunk fire dept doesn’t have any legal duty to respond. At some point in the past they took on some areas of East Podunk on a fee basis to try to help, but not everyone there wants to pay the fee. I still fail to see how this is the fault of the taxpayers or employees of West Podunk.
gaz
@Villago Delenda Est: True dat. See BP. heh. (speaks to John X.s “whodda thunkit” comment too)
Mike G
Until they fuck up so massively that they can’t possibly cover all their legal liabilities, and being “too big to fail”, intensely lobby the Japanese government for legislation restricting lawsuits and legal damages against them. Deregulated profits, regulated losses.
gaz
Fault? I don’t care about fault – I’m not party to a lawsuit in this situation – so I have no dog in this fight.
Failure? Yes – a lack of vision – I think it’s safe to say there was a lack of foresight on the part of these folks.
In the end, if there *is* a lesson here – it’s that maybe some services are better rendered through taxes.
Or do you want the same kind of situation in your community?
Over a lousy $75 a year too – sheesh. (probably less if it was a tax, as another commenter suggested)
FWIW, I’m a total NIMBY in that regard. No fucking way would I lie down and let our FD get privatized where I live. And I can add this story to my list of examples as to why it’s a Bad Idea(tm)
PeakVT
If you don’t want to read the paper El Cid mentioned above, this interview with one of the authors explains the current macroeconomic situation pretty well, along with summarizing the paper.
Canuckistani Tom
My question regarding this whole thing is what’ll happen when someone has paid their fee, but there’s been a snafu in the paperwork and the fire dept thinks the homeowner hasn’t? The homeowner’s records will have literally gone up in smoke, and it’ll be in the town’s/fire dept’s best interest to destroy all records that they possess
gaz
@Canuckistani Tom: That depends. Has “tort reform” come to their community yet? ;)
Adding, if your hypothetical actually happened – any decent attorney would nail the FD to the wall for not being able to produce any documentation.
AMD
Brachinator, is there any real significant difference between regulations not being followed due to corruption/inefficiency vs. regulations not being followed because they don’t actually exist such that you actually have a point and are not just being a pedantic ass? Are the victims of the latter less dead than the victims of the former? Do you really not see that mistermix was arguing if the libertarians ever achieved their deregulated paradise it would lead to similar tragedies?
Gin & Tonic
@gaz: But the FD wasn’t privatized. The facts have been posted several times upthread. The city of South Fulton has a normal taxpayer-funded fire department. The surrounding county, outside the city limits of South Fulton, has *no* fire department, as the taxpayers seem to have decided it was too expensive. The city of South Fulton FD some years ago decided to try to cover some of the area outside its jurisdiction, but obviously needed money to do that, so they decided to assess a fee. About 75% of the people in the surrounding area paid.
Now there are decisions that were made here that I don’t agree with, and wouldn’t choose to live in that area, but I still see no privatization anywhere. It’s not like Acme Fire Protection, Inc. set up an office there.
The Bad Idea, as far as I’m concerned, is deciding not to fund a fire department.
Yutsano
@Canuckistani Tom: There are, fortunately, other methods of proof of payment, especially if the homeowner wrote a check. Then the bank will have that record.
EDIT: And other records of deposit and withdrawal. But the check would be the smoking gun.
suzanne
As someone who earns her living designing and upgrading health care facilities to be code-compliant (among other things), I am SO SO SO thankful that we have a decent building code.
suzanne
To be precise, though, all health care facilities (hospitals, medical offices, hospices, nursing homes, outpatient clinics, etc.) have to meet the AIA Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities (the edition depends on the jurisdiction), whether or not they receive Medicare.
gaz
@Gin & Tonic: my bad, about the privatization situation – I’ve committed the cardinal sin of not following the entire thread.
And I agree – that in essence, not funding the fire department was a bad idea.
But how about a local levy to support the outside fire department that is helping them out….
Seems a rather basic solution to the problem, it’s not a wacko idea either. And it beats the hell out of what they’ve got going now.
aimai
The fire in india was the result of multiple failures of organization, cleanliness, regulation, common sense and common decency within the hospital itself. It was built with windows that were too tough to be broken, and not enough working exits. They were storing massive amounts of flammable materials (presumably so they could continue to run their high tech stuff off of generators when the city’s power supply failed) and they hadn’t stored that properly. They had never rehearsed a fire drill, nor prepared their workers with an evacuation plan. The patients apparently suffocated because the hospital filled with smoke and the firefighters couldn’t get into the building.
The problem was a lack of co-ordination and regulation between building codes, fire codes, fire fighters, and etc… And everyone is complicit in that in a country like India because its cheaper and faster to bribe people to ignore whatever regulations there are, or to not have regulations about space/location/organization in an old city with small streets.
If you want to institute a kind of Code Napoleon style uniform system you need also to be prepared to knock down and rehabilitate and rebuild huge swathes of your older cities in order to make modern safety standards possible. The problem India’s elites are having is that they are doing this only within a creaky old power structure, and within creaky old cities, just for themselves. They are precisely in the same boat as the rural people who wn’t pay the fee for the fire coverage. The patients and their families at this hospital were willing to pay top dollar for a private good (medicine) but nothing at all for the public good (wide, safe roadways and a modern fire department with regulatory oversight over hospitals and other large buildings).
aimai
suzanne
@The Other Chuck:
I wish I’d written that. That just went on my Facebook page. Attributed to you.
wrb
The Leaning Towers of Alexandria
cool looking, I’ll give ’em that.
Alexandria is somewhere near Tennessee isn’t it? Never been there. Weird part of the country, I gather.
Be sure to click on the “click to see caption” link.
JPL
Decades ago, I lived in an unincorporated area outside Springfield, IL. The city fire department would respond to save lives only. I knew this when I purchased the home and informed the insurance company. The premium wasn’t that much higher because most fires are total losses anyways.
It sounds like an odd situation but it happens all over the country.
Snowball
@gaz:
I have no sympathy for the homeowner who lost his home (although it is just awful that his pets got killed). He chose not to pay the fee.
And I have no sympathy for the town. Elections have consequences and they chose this type of policy. What makes this so incredibly insane is that if there was a tax the $75 would end being less as there would be more people to split the tax with.
I would not want to live in that of community where they run their town so inefficiently. And who in their right mind decides to not have fire protection?
JPL
@Raven: Go Navy!
wrb
@Snowball:
The town doesn’t have the right to tax those who are not covered in this case, because they live outside the town.
ET
The sad fact is that hard core GOPers and libertarians don’t get that the US is “great” because we have developed institutions (i.e. government agencies and regulations) that give some confidence to a majority of people, in the U.S. and abroad, that there is some sort of minimum standard, someone watching, whatever you may call it. If you deliberately start doing things to undermine that trust by cutting budges to the degree that agencies can’t do their job or that business has too much influence in the regulatory process, that confidence goes away. When that confidence that has been built over decades goes away it may be impossible to get it back. The book The Pentagon’s New Map by Thomas P.M. Barnett is devoted to just that.
They fundamentally will not acknowledge that government can do necessary and good things therefore they won’t pay for it – leaving it all up to the market and all up to the individual. It is a good thing that most people feel that paying taxes for fire departments are a good thing because if not we can go back to the days when the crews that showed up only fought fires when the person whose house it was payed them their fee. Of course it may have been too late by then but hey, that’s capitalism. It is also the reason why cities started professional fire departments whose money came from taxes.
handy
@gaz:
When you say “levy” are you talking about a post-fire bill of service? Because if so my understanding is that they originally went that route and ran into a small problem of people not (being able to afford?) paying it.
If you’re talking about a pre-disaster fee, well that of course was already an option.
Villago Delenda Est
@wrb:
The people outside the town have repeatedly been asked to pay, through taxes, for rural fire coverage.
They have repeatedly elected not to do so.
Therefore, the town offers them fire coverage for $75 a year.
Some elect not to pay the $75 a year. They figure they won’t have a fire, so why pay?
Then they have a fire, and wonder why the town’s fire department won’t put it out.
They created this situation through their own actions. They need to learn how to deal with the consequences of their actions.
Snowball
@wrb:
You are correct. I didn’t word it correctly. What I meant was the people in the area outside the city should have handled it differently, ie set up a levy or something like that. They chose not to.
Yutsano
@JPL: GO DAWGS!!
(Midshipmen sure. But they all go USMC I swear.)
carpeduum
This is what happens when you prevent teens from getting over-the-counter birth control. Damn you Obama.
Villago Delenda Est
I might add that in last year’s instance, it was revealed that the guy whose house burned down had previously had a fire, the FD put it out even though he hadn’t paid the fee but swore up and down he would pay it if they only put out the fire, then they put out the fire, then he didn’t pay the fee.
So, they got rigid on the fee thing. No pay in advance, no fire put out. So sorry, but doofus fucked it up for all the rest of you.
Raven
@Yutsano: The fullback will try to become a SEAL.
Villago Delenda Est
@Raven:
I wish him luck.
SEALs are badass, their officers even moreso.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@TBogg:
What’s “essentially privatized about it? The people inside the city limits pay taxes to support the department, those living outside of the city limits do not. Those outside of the city limits have, as I see it, four options:
1)They can form their own fire department and tax themselves to support it.
2)They can ask to be incorporated into the city, subjecting themselves to the existing tax codes of that city.
3)Pay the goddam fee!
4)Roast some marshmallows.
gaz
@handy: When I say “levy” I am using it as it is described in miriam webster
the imposition or collection of an assessment
A community voted for TAX – once in place it mandates payment through collection of taxes – how specifically it is collected often depends on the area – school levys in my state tend to be funded through local property taxes.
The implication here, is that this would have been paid in advance – I’m advocating a tax **mandate** over a volunteer-pay system here.
I have no problem with the residents being allowed to vote for it – except to say the ones who would have voted it down are incredibly short sighted.
Bill in Section 147
@Brachiator:
I have to disagree with the first two points, inefficiency and corruption, are not the cause. The hospital fire in India had to do with the owners of the hospital choosing not to adhere to regulations and industry best practices. They chose to risk the chance of disaster. That inefficiency and corruption in the government allowed them to make that choice may be true. I do not know the ownership well enough to determine if their choices were made for the purpose of maximizing profit.
dead existentialist
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well for the time being. This is India.
Reincarnation, y’know.
AMD
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Yes, but from the vantage point of people outside the city limits, it’s essentially privatized. For them, it functions exactly as a privatized fire department would. Once again the bottom line being that if the libertarian paradise came to fruition, these kind of tragedies would be commonplace.
gaz
@Villago Delenda Est: Nah, that dufus just made the case against most libertarians ideas about rational self-interest.
shecky
It’s not clear to me anyone in the TN story is even asking for any kind of sympathy. This is the way they want things to be, who am I way out here on the West coast to say they should do things my way?
In fact, with this particular case, it may have been pretty rational for the homeowners to not pay the yearly fee. The house in this case was a trailer. It’s likely once a fire started, it would be a total loss by the time the FD gets there anyway.
This is not to say that the homeowners were, in fact, rational about their choice to opt out of the system. Just that this ability to opt out might even truly be the preferable system for the outlying areas beyond easy reach of the city’s FD.
gaz
@Snowball: On that point, you and I are in agreement.
They might consider proposing a levy one more time?
EDIT: by above I assume they had considered it before…
aimai
@Bill in Section 147:
I think that’s a misunderstanding of how much has to go right for a modern building to be able to have its fires put out successfully with no loss of life. Its more than merely following regulations about materials, storage of flammables, electricals etc… If the city can’t afford to build wide enough roads for the fire trucks to get there and does not have the power to mandate the size and frequency of gates to get the fire trucks through the building, if it burns, is going to burn without hindrance. I guess what I’m saying is that there is a lot more to overall public health and safety than just the actions of any individual corporation or building manager. You could do everything right and according to code and still lose the building and all the inhabitants if other public safety features are scanted–no cherry pickers? no trained firefighters? no cleared roads? no night lights? no working water pressure?
Any time people live crowded together in cities public safety demands a complex and interlocking web of relationships and rules that can’t be reduced to compliance from a single set of actors–though compliance is necessary.
aimai
gaz
@shecky: Next up, the police protection!
And here’s where I fess that I’d be a libertarian or an anarchist, rather than a liberal, if I wasn’t utterly convinced that people are too stupid to self-govern – in general, and that the consequences of stupid don’t happen in a vacuum
wrb
@shecky:
In this case it sounds like it was not, since the fire department was there when they were still hauling stuff out of the place, but in a lot of the country it is quite possible to live far enough from town that the only thing left for the fire department to do by the time they arrive is sprinkle the ashes. The opting out can be rational.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@AMD:
Sorry, but that ain’t privatized. Privatization requires a prior public institution whose management is handed over to a private entity.
Yutsano
If anyone is curious, Army/Navy is a barnburner right now!
gaz
@aimai:
Sounds like a job for moar regulationz!
Sounds like a job for infrastructure spending!
Sounds like a job for liberal policy and urban planning.
And if you can’t afford it?
Sounds like a job for modern Keynsian deficit spending for the aforementioned investment. Especially for a rapidly growing emerging economy like India’s.
China has been reaping the bennies of their industrial revolution and pumping the returns back into infrastructure. (it’s still fuxored, but it’s certainly investing in itself right now)
The more india does the same:
A) the more of an economic player on the global stage they will be in the decades to come.
B) the less shit like the above (at that hospital) will happen. (imagine how decent roads, and all that other newfangled stuff would have changed the outcome here)
Honestly, I wish mistermix would have left that incident out. It’s not that I don’t get where he’s coming from – it’s that so many people dont (and it’s not a strong point) that it hardly seems worth distracting the thread with it
Villago Delenda Est
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Ah, but AMD is pointing out that the situation created mirrors that of a privatized, fee seeking entity, even though it’s a public entity, providing service (for a fee) outside of its own jurisdiction where it has a tax base to support it.
Outside the tax base, they require payment. This is no different than a private outfit putting fires out if you pay them in advance.
BattleCat
BattleCat isn’t sure why these people are living without fire insurance.
BattleCat thinks they should stop eating BigMacs once a week and put that money towards the $75/yr fee.
pete
Holy cr*p I just read through this entire thread (admittedly skimming some of it because I am human and not a Googlebot), and where’s the empathy, people? I just read a bunch of comments by people with varying takes who admit that they don’t know much about what they are discussing, and who are using a pair of tragedies to pull generalizations out of practically thin air. (There are exceptions to this, aimai being one.)
When bad things happen to bad people, it’s still bad for them, and I still feel bad for them. I’ll snark at public figures (if Cheney shot Rumsfeld, I admit I’d laugh) but the various victims here, both in Tennessee and in West Bengal, deserve sympathy — even if they are stupid.
And, yes, I’d have told the fire department to put out the wretched fire. And then fer chrissake tried a community education program. But fix the fire first.
stratplayer
I left the following comment at Outside the Beltway:
Has it ever occurred to these numbskulls that house fires should be put out for reasons other than saving the homeowners’ property? A house fire can release all sorts of nasty toxins and particulates into the atmosphere. As just one example, vinyl siding releases a variety of toxic fumes when it burns, including dioxins. Lord know what might be released by the burning of stored paints, fuels and sundry household chemicals. How about lead paint? A heating oil tank might burst and contaminate nearby wells. A house fire could trigger a fatal asthma attack miles away. It is irresponsibility of the first rank to let houses burn over a lousy $75. We all ultimately pay for such idiocy.
gaz
@Villago Delenda Est: I agree with you there. If it quacks like a duck…
I was looking for a similar incident I recalled from earlier this year – and I guess the same thing has happened here before
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Mises-Economics/2010/1017/Home-uninsured.-Firemen-let-it-burn.-Crazy-capitalism
(hey, I dig the CS monitor – they actually break important stuff)
Liberty60
@suzanne: @Brachiator:
There is a direct link between fire departments and building codes.
Both were developed in the late 19th century, and both were in response to the common occurrence of devastating fires in congested cities that would often obliterate entire blocks of downtown.
Both were the invention of, and promulgated by, Galtian business interests who were smart enough to recognize that fire is a common threat and it was in their best long term interests to ensure that the building stock was composed of fire resistant, well built structures that could be relied upon to serve their function to house businesses and factories.
The county in Obion TN, is not just being callous to the point of sociopathy; they are being blindingly stupid and shortsighted.
Aside from the personal devastation caused by that fire, the county has now lost a source of taxable real estate value; the local workforce has lost an employees who now has to rebuild their life; local businesses have lost a customer.
Every single person who lives in that county was harmed by that fire, even if they are too stupid to recognize it.
Veritas
So it looks like the Global Warming Cult is in its death throes.
There will be now “new” Kyoto like protocol. No curbs on emissions, nothing. The world will continue to pump tons and tons and ever-increasing tons of glorious carbon right up into the atmosphere, and there’s nothing you losers can do to stop it. India and China have seen the future–and the future is COAL.
RealityCheck
gaz
@pete: I’m sorry I didn’t preface each of my comments with an obligatory “sorry about the house”
You can unclench your pearls now.
Villago Delenda Est
@pete:
Pete, they are WILLFULLY stupid. They put short term personal gain ahead of their own long term interest. Furthermore, they refuse to learn from experience. It’s not like this didn’t happen before, ya know.
Sorry, I have no sympathy for them, and it’s by their own standards that I have no sympathy. They conciously made a very bad choice, and now they have to live with that very bad choice. This isn’t a matter of bad luck. This is a matter of willful stupidity.
gaz
@Villago Delenda Est: I have a little sympathy for them. It was a confluence of both willful stupidity AND bad luck. Usually that’s all it takes. Such is life.
Hopefully, they’ll pay the fee next time. Unlike that one guy (linked to above a few times)
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Villago Delenda Est:
And inside the city they require payment, too: It’s called taxes.
The difference between a public fire department and one that’s private is that one operates with public safety at the bottom line while the other operates for profit.
Hell, South Fulton should just force the issue by contracting its services back to within the border.
Bill in Section 147
@aimai: I agree with all of your points. Personally I think that the entire community shares the blame, business, government, etc. My reply was in disagreeing with the claim that the cause was inefficiency and corruption.
The hospital could have been built elsewhere or not at all. Government, inefficiency, corruption, etc. did not force the private hospital to be built where it was. Lack of enforcement did not prevent the hospital from creating the means to prevent or fight the fire with their own resources.
I don’t doubt that the cost to create such a hospital would have been ridiculous. But bad government or lack of government did not cause the tragedy.
pete
@Villago Delenda Est: Even the stupid deserve protection. Especially the stupid.
I’m not clutching pearls here, I am committed to moving toward a society in which people care about each other, and I do get angry at fckin Trots who essentially say, it’s gotta get worse before it gets better. I’m not going to live by what you dismissively, uncharitably, call “their standards” — I try to be better than that. Why don’t you?
Benjamin Franklin
@Veritas:
You forgot Nukuler….
gaz
@pete: Actually, it was I who accused you of pearl clutching.
And FTR, I’d agree with you, if it weren’t for the hyperbole.
For starters I can feel a little sympathy for someone and think they deserved to reap what they had sown as well. I’m sure I’m sure I’m not the only one.
But tragedy? They lost a house. I’m too much of a buddhist I guess, but losing material possession (however much) does not quite elevate to the level I’d consider tragedy. (And yes, it’s happened to me)..
Getting a call at 4 in the morning from a crying friend who broke the news that several of your good friends were just killed by a random psycho is a tragedy (also happened to me)
So maybe our lived experiences are different.
But I think you were being hyperbolic and clutching your pearls.
If the worst thing that happens to you in life is that you lose your house in a fire, you are a very lucky person.
Villago Delenda Est
@pete:
Because I can only bang my head against the wall so many times before I stop.
The futility of trying to get these idiots to see fucking reason, and their own long term self interest, has worn me down.
More often than not, they’re the people on some form of public assistance who bitch endlessly about others on public assistance, particularly if those they bitch about have a higher melanin concentration than they do.
I’ll treat them exactly as they treat others. I’ll save my major efforts on those who are not so heartless.
Woodrowfan
@bin Lurkin’:
Ah, OK, that makes a difference. The last part especially….
shecky
@gaz:
Truthfully, many folks in rural areas have no expectation of speedy police response, and are prepared for a certain degree of self protection.
@pete:
Am I really suppose to empathize with people who willingly live in a place where fire protection is optional, and still refuse to opt into the system? My empathy over their loss of property would be more than they could muster for their own stuff. This isn’t even a matter of gloating over comeuppance. This is the situation they could foresee and they freely chose to take the risk. This is like someone asking to empathize with a gambler over his losses.
Maybe it would be better if the city just said fuck all to those ungrateful assholes, and discontinued opt-in coverage for everyone outside city limits? Who needs this kind of grief for setting out a perfectly reasonable policy, and sticking to it?
gaz
@shecky:
game.
set.
match.
=)
pete
@gaz: Lost mine in an earthquake. Not the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Look, I did not call you out personally (I did, later, call Villago out) and I wasn’t all that hyperbolic. I see “pearl clutching” as more what you are doing than what I did! You are apparently objecting to my language, I was objecting to what I saw as a communal — not just personal — lack of empathy. Not that politeness in our fckin discourse will solve our problems.
I do note that you, personally, later admitted to some minor sympathy, and I do not insist that every post carry that disclaimer. But the overall tone of the thread got up my nose. And I said so. What else are comments for?
pete
@Villago Delenda Est: Frustration is understandable, I often feel frustrated. Had you merely posted once or twice, I would not have been moved to complain. Overall, I think I agree with you, politically. I just wanted to remind everyone, not just you, that political theory involves individual humans.
Svensker
@gaz:
I am not making “a point”. I am just pointing out how it works.
What’s your point?
shecky
@pete:
I’m not even going to assume these people are stupid. They took a gamble. And they lost. While it was a gamble, chance is in favor of taking the risk. Losing one’s home to fire is actually a fairly rare occurrence, and I’ll bet most homes, covered or not, never actually need the coverage. While the odds are low, the stakes are high. It appears the owners were aware of the odds, and the stakes.
http://www.wpsdlocal6.com/news/local/Home-burns-while-firefighters-watch-again-135069773.html
gaz
@Svensker: My point is that it *doesn’t* work.
pete
@shecky: Well, as someone once said (I have a sinking feeling it was in a Heinlein novel!), if the worst case is insupportable then even a tiny risk is not worth taking.
gaz
@pete: I don’t have a problem with you commenting.
But I take exception to the notion that people here don’t give a fuck about people, and are just gleefully using the story to make political hay.
Maybe some are.
Others see the larger lesson in the situation, and are pointing it out. Kind of hard to tell the difference between callous douche-baggery, and concern over the big picture problem that the mindset behind pay-to-play fire protection creates, on a comment thread, I’d think.
What got my hackles up, was you coming into the thread, and waving around your extremely broad brush, and essentially painting an unnamed plurality of posters as callous assholes. Even after admitting you haven’t really read everything.
If you don’t want me to respond to you as though you’ve called me out, I won’t – as long as you limit your admonishments to those that have actually done what you say, and be more mindful when you jump into a room and make a broad generalization about the commenters here.
Just because you lacked either the stones, or the motivation to name names, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take your response as though it were directed at me. It was. As it was directed to pretty much everyone here.
The tragedy thing is another point, at where I felt you were wrong, but I think two reasonable people can disagree about what constitutes tragedy. I’ll give you that.
AMD
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): More pedantry. Is there something in the water?
I didn’t say it was privatized, I said for those with the option to buy in for $75 it functions as a privatized one would. Again, the point being in a free market system, these kind of tragedies would be a feature, not a bug.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Just wanted to highlight this because, frankly, I suspect a lot of the 1% in this country don’t have a problem with our infrastructure crumbling because they assume that being rich will protect them. But it’s a false assumption, because that collapsing bridge over the Mississippi doesn’t give a shit if you’re driving a Kia or a Maserati.
Mnemosyne
@pete:
Fire trucks cost money. As do firefighters. As others have pointed out, if a firefighter did decide to try to fight the fire and got hurt, the city’s insurance wouldn’t cover it and he and his family would be left destitute. All because someone decided to gamble that they wouldn’t be the unlucky soul whose house caught fire.
I would be a lot more sympathetic if the voters of the county hadn’t refused to pay for fire protection through a tax levy. They preferred to take their chances and have households pay for fire protection individually, even though it will cost all of them more than a tax levy.
The people of the county chose this. Why am I supposed to pretend they’re the innocent victims in the story?
pete
@gaz: Sheesh. I did not name names because I do not want to focus on a specific post. I commented on the tone of the thread. (I put in a qualifier, even though I had in fact read the vast majority of it, because I was being precise.) I stand by that.
We can indeed agree to disagree about terminological exactitude and about the practical implications of policy. Incidentally, I don’t need the last word, but I figured if I got into an aggravated discussion I’d keep the tab open and reload it occasionally. Happy to keep discussing or drop it, don’t care. But don’t go accusing me of lacking stones (!) or life experience (!!) or other specifics of which you do not know.
pete
@Mnemosyne: It ain’t binary. You can be a victim and not be innocent. It’s a bad problem that needs solving.
Snowball
@pete:
Sorry. They made a choice. They admitted they made a choice not to pay the $75 fee. If they didn’t like the fee arrangement, and their was no levy within their community then what is the complaint?
I do feel very sorry for their pets that had nothing to do with this and were killed. Just appalling!
amk
what a pathetic piece of hackery. Exploiting the tragedy in another country, with nary a concern for the dead (hey, after all they are ‘third world’), to make a point about ‘regulations’. Apparently, BP mess and VA mine deaths happened in another ‘third world’ country.
Mnemosyne
@pete:
It is a problem that needs solving, but it can’t be solved unless we point out that houses are burning down because that’s how the people of the county chose to handle their fire protection.
One can hope that having a few examples in front of them of how inadequate the voluntary fee system is will encourage people to choose something better, but having the fire department give them free fire protection without a tax or fee payment would probably have the opposite effect.
pete
@Mnemosyne: I acknowledge the risk of that, but I do not think letting ’em burn is a really viable path to the end that I think we share. More important, to me personally, I just could not do it.
The key next step has to be in the direction of expanding funding, which fundamentally means education. I think of that person who just came to understand that the ACA, which she opposed, could do her some good, and therefore publicly thanked Obama for it. It would be nice to think that someone who had faced the loss of their home, and been saved from it, would work to improve the system. Might not happen, sure. But, y’know, long prison sentences haven’t helped a bunch of problems, and I’m not sure punitive actions in general do.
gaz
@pete: to be clear, I said you lacked stones or motivation.
And by motivation – well this was the nicest way I could think to say I thought your broad brush may have been due to laziness on your part.
I never meant to accuse you of lack of life experience, but I can see how my post may have come across that way. Specifically, what I meant by the life experience statement was this: My life experiences inform my view of what constitutes a tragedy and what does not. Your life experience may vary – and may have something to do with why we don’t see eye to eye on the use of the word.
I *did* point the finger at you WRT to either being lazy or lacking courage. I admit that. I felt your comment was overly broad, disclaimer not withstanding. Fact is, I was irritated at your post, and that contributed to that. Were I being more charitable, I might have simply chalked up your intentions to being upset yourself.
Still, I won’t jump your case if you don’t drop in on a thread and make your initial statement a broad based call out of a ton of random commenters, which is basically what I feel you did – disclaimer or no. K? Promise.
Look, I’ve devoted more than enough real estate to this. So rather than piss off the rest of the thread (even though we’re well into dead-space here) I’ll beg off any further discussion of this.
Mostly, I just wanted to clear as to exactly what I was saying to you, and not. Hope this clears up what I was saying to you, even if we disagree.
El Cid
@wrb:
If they were that burned, you should probably just let ’em die anyway.
Chuck Butcher
Since I live in OR at 98.4K sq mi with all of 36 Counties we have a real strong tendency to have quite a few volunteer fire depts. My county is 3.5K sq mi cut to pieces by federal lands so any kind of centralized County FD just isn’t happening. As you might be able to guess, things like Sherrifs Dept have their hands full with areas like that.
Our counties are not all the same size and ours is only one of the bigger ones.
Death Panel Truck
@Brachiator:
The city is known as Kolkata today. Try and keep up.
Blogreeder
@Death Panel Truck:
What a zinger! You sure got Brachiator! Brach is down for the count! You let the air out of Brach’s sails! I can’t see Brach coming back after that! What a devastating blow! You sure showed Brach how smart you are! Truly, you have a dizzying intellect!
wrb
@El Cid:
I’d favor splurging on enough drugs to stop them from yowling at least, while they went about doing it.