The firefighting fee was $75. Wouldn't it have been more "economical" to accept what he offered to pay, on the spot, and save the man's house? Instead of teaching him a lesson? He was willing to pay thousands.
I mean, I am all for free market, but libertarians are pushing the limits of common sense just to maintain intellectual consistency. Isn't there a room for "late fee", or "environmental damage", or just good ole "bad PR" in their model?
No the insurance was $75. See the difference? Everyone's small fee upfront is what purchased all the equipment. If you wait 'til after, then you've got nothing when you need it.
And a man who won't pay up $75, will he pay thousands once you've already put the fire out?
An excellent question, as a practical manner. Mind, there are ways people can be compelled to pay, within various limits.
Some search-and-rescue services (I believe in Norway, for one set of examples) have a nominal, voluntary fee that hikers and skiers can opt to pay or not. If payers need rescue, they don't have to pay anything beyond that original fee. If non-payers get rescued, they get a big bill for search helicopter fuel, labor, etc. spent in looking for them.
Something like that seems sensible to me - if the guy had said, "Yes, please put out my house, I'm aware you'll bill me,", maybe signing a waiver or whatever to prevent problems with the firefighters' insurance company, then the firefighters could try to save his house and then the city could bill him, then sue him or garnish his wages, etc. if he refused to pay.
It's not just about a single non-paying member. It's unfair to the paying houses around him to have a charred building next to theirs. It would depreciate their property values worse than anything. Not to mention the unsightly view, odors and mess.
Since they're able to constitute these drastic "watch it burn" policies by fiat, why not have a policy entitling the fire department to your car, luxury items, a portion of your income or some of your property if and only if they save your house when you're without policy?
If you have seen drunks and problem gamblers, you would know that not all people are equally responsible. It would be better for society, as a whole, if fees were taken from them in small portions, and put to service when and where they're needed.
The law might have been on paper, but the public reaction there, and that of the media, has been one of shock. I have looked into the subject when it arose a few days ago, and this particular policy was one made without public involvement. The entire leadership, every seat in that town was held by GOP members; they cooked up this policy in an attempt to live up to their own idealized expectation of a tax-less government.
Serves the American public right though. They're well versed in toy, divisive issues of "morality", but they're ignorant of laws that affect their lives everyday.
So, clear this up for me - is this a secret plan made without public involvement, or is this due to public ignorance and disinterest in the subject, despite the people outside the city being offered the fee every year and the guy in question knowing that he hadn't paid the fee?
And what responsibility do the 300 million members of the "American public" have to know the firefighting policies of some county in Tennessee?
Realistically, a legal measure can be considered a popular choice, even democratic, if it was put forth in a ballot, or if the law makers and politicians that proposed it have argued for it in public fora.
What we have here is a crew of GOP politicians who came to power on biblical and national issues; having been financed and propped up by their regional and state offices. The people there, like most everywhere else in the U.S., vote in lock step with their "traditional" parties, for/against issues than don't relate to them on a daily basis.
People will happily vote against their own self-interest because they're under-informed, and held emotionally captive by politicians who invoke moral and religious argument to further their agenda.
Did these people choose to have a dysfunctional fire department? No. They chose less taxes, and smaller government. The GOP, instead of thinking of what's best for the people, decided to stick by their philosophical guns and deprived people of functioning infrastructure.
I will grant you that specific house was outside their taxed jurisdiction. But then comes the next argument: why hasn't the state stepped forward to help its remote citizens? Why hasn't the state of Tennessee dictated a policy of full, state-wide coverage for fire and rescue services for people in remote areas? What's philosophically unacceptable about a state dictating to its cities and towns that they need to support those satellite households? If not, why hasn't the state collected fees from those households to insure them?
Get my drift?
When a gang of politicians has free reign to act out its wildest political fantasies and govern by its most idealized rules, well, shit tends to happen. This is what I meant by "maintaining intellectual consistency". It wouldn't harm ONE TN politician to tax people in remote areas, not ONE. But they chose not to.
Did these people choose to have a dysfunctional fire department?
Yes. The people of that county have allowed multiple attempts to set up county-wide firefighting services to fail. They've preferred fee-based out-of-area services from a city that has never had any authority to tax them.
There's no "smaller government" aspect here, there's no conspiratorial back-room change by the GOP. There's just bizarre, partisan axe-grinding by people seizing on a lurid story.
And a man who won't pay up $75, will he pay thousands once you've already put the fire out?
Even the american healthcare system people lets people pay for treatment if they don't have insurance. After the fact. This is what the courts exist for.
Not allowing someone to pay because there's a possibility they might default is completely ridiculous. Should we close all the restaurants now, too?
It's not "not allowing someone to pay". It's "not providing service to someone out of a hurried promise of later payment". What restaurant will kindly let you pay them next Tuesday for a hamburger today?
And sadly, no - if you're a homeless person and walk into most hospitals with cancer, you'll get some painkillers if you need them (before being sent on your way), not a walk to the oncology ward.
Yes, so when his house catches on fire and you can put it out, you hand him a bill for $5000 or whatever the cost of a fire crew for several hours is. And if he doesn't pay, you sue him.
You get the cost of providing the service back, he still has a house. Allowing the dwelling to burn to the ground just results in a destruction of wealth for zero gain.
> Yes, so when his house catches on fire and you can put it out, you hand him a bill for $5000 or whatever the cost of a fire crew for several hours is.
That policy means that you can't afford to have a fire crew. The marginal cost associated with putting out fires is a small fraction of the cost of having a fire department.
> And if he doesn't pay, you sue him.
And you lose because contracts under duress are unenforceable.
Well, obviously I can afford it because it's a small marginal cost; waiting for him to cough up the required sum is quite bearable.
And you lose because contracts under duress are unenforceable.
It's not so simple. Duress is where someone forces another into a bad position, eg by setting the house on fire first. A contract made under necessity (where the house is already on fire) will probably stand, unless it's for some wildly disproportional amount.
But in any case, a contract is not always required. In cases where one party knowingly accepts the beneficial services of another, they can be billed for it as if a contract existed.
Duress is where someone forces another into a bad position, eg by setting the house on fire first.
Duress only implies impaired judgment of the contract signer as due to immediate fear; it doesn’t imply the other party created the situation. Any lawyer would easily argue that the fire department charged an irrationally high cost for fire fighting that the home owner wouldn’t have agreed to had they had time to fully weight the cost and benefits of fire fighting services. In the worst case, one only need say they planned to demolish the house in the near future and therefore paying to have the fire extinguished was irrational.
A contract for non-insurance, pay-for-use fire fighting would only be enforceable if signed before the fact.
This is the heart of the matter. The firefighters were within their rights to refuse to let him buy their services, but it would have been better for everyone involved if they had put out the fire, then billed him for the cost.
No, because the fire department in question had nothing to do with the government that represented these homeowners, just as the fire department of Rockford, IL has nothing to do with Oak Park.
How does that make false the fact that the municipal fire department is run by a city? Government agencies at local and state levels make arrangements like this all the time without somehow ceasing to be run by the relevant government.
How are "libertarians" and the "free market" involved?
They aren't involved, except to the extent that the South Fulton PD made the mistake of offering market-based coverage to residents of surrounding areas when they should have just kept to their own city.
What, exactly, does the "free market" or "intellectual consistency" have to do with the firefighting policy of the governments of that city or the Alaskan city?
This thinking would only work in places where fire can't jump very far AND a very high percentage of people have paid. Living in Southern California with Santa Ana winds (warm, dry, and often over 50 mph) this would never work. The fire fighters can't just spray down the neighbor's houses because sparks can jump too far. A similar problem would occur if only 50% of people paid. Too many houses would burn for a reasonably sized fire department to protect the homes of the people who had paid.
To be fair, in big chunks of SoCal, it barely helps to aggressively fight every burning house. The pains of building houses on hills in an ecosystem centered around regular forest fires. :/
Fair enough. Still, fires do occasionally make it into the cities (I'm pretty sure I remember seeing one eat a neighborhood in San Bernardino a few years ago).
Even stone and brick houses have flammable components. Even a completely non-flammable concrete bunker would have survivability issues with ventilation and temperature if surrounded by a forest fire for any significant length of time.
A difference in detail here is that that fire was outside the city. Residents of that city don't opt-in, they just pay taxes to support firefighting services. There's no county-wide firefighting service in that area, so the city provides optional service to county residents whom the city can't levy taxes on - if they pay that fee.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/04/county-firefighters-subs...