Fire Fighters Refuse to Fight Fire, Homeowners Forgot to Pay Fee

Glad you are not opposed, but the solution for (subjectively) bad laws then becomes (i) local residents should speak out for laws you like better, (ii) if that fails and the law is sufficiently bad, move and (iii) under no circumstances "sue" when that law winds up disadvantaging you. The solution is not to say that this guy should receive a huge cash award, since were that the law, a libertarian subscription based fire service would not be able to exist.

It's especially obvious here, since it seems this homeowner really just opted not to pay...it's not that he couldn't afford it. He, in effect, elected his way into a libertarian system, until it became advantageous to argue that the libertarian system should be abolished.

 

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Agreed, this instance really shows what a libertarian government would be like. If carried to its extreme, all government services would be fee based.

But the fee based solution/model falls apart when it comes to the criminal justice system and some other government functions. Most criminals don't have the cash nor the ability to pay for the costs government incurs in capturing, incarceration and trial expenses. And what if the accused individuals are found not guilty? Who pays the cost then? It seems to me the system would have a strong financial incentive to find accused folks guilty.

In a pure libertarian society, the poor would be left on the streets and/or solely reliant on whatever charity will provide for them.

 

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And that's why no one proposes that a solution be "carried to the extreme".

Not Capitalists, not Socialists and not Libertarians.

Arthur

 

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why am i not surprised by the attitudes in this thread? as sad as it is the story itself doesnt surprise me. Even the privatly funded ambulance services in Australia dont go that far, and would be slaughtered in court if they did. They are an emergency service and have a goverment endorced monopoly on that service, therefor there are certain requirements which come with that fact. If there is a bill that is the lowest priority, that can be sorted out latter. The safety of lives and property come first and this story shows exactly WHY that is the case. Not only did it leave this family in danger (BTW would love to see the animal cruelty charges which came out of the fact they left pets to burn without any attempt to help them) but that put the nabor in danger too. If they had delt with the fire to start with the nabor's property wouldnt have been in danger.

 

and they got screwed bells, this is not australia remember, this isnt the civilised world where we know that sociaty has a certain responcability to its citizans, this is middle ages eroupe where the feudal lords do what they like and the slaves pay for it. ops sorry this is the US where the RITCH do what they like and the POOR pay for it

 

I agree that not everyone would want to live in that society (I would not), but I have no objection to there being more or less libertarian communities out there that enjoy living their lives in ways that I would hate. There are fundamental liberties that I think we need to safeguard, even over local preferences for something different...but people having the right to have a fee based for service is not violative of those fundamentals.

 

Except this was a Fire Deptartment funded by the CITY.
The County around the CITY has not funded a fire department for 20 years.
Not one penny of County funds pays for this fire service.
The County was offered full coverage by the City's fire department for the measly cost of $3 per house and the County told them to go pound sand.
It was the County residents themselves who decided that they wanted to pay for fire service on a subscription basis. This resident DID NOT SUBSCRIBE. Indeed the fire dept had been to his house before even though he hadn't paid and put out a fire, he was quoted as saying "I thought they'd come even if I didn't pay".

Indeed, less than half the residents subscribe to the fire service and since there is no contract with these citizens of the County, when the City funded fire department goes on a call, and 3/4s of their call outs are for County residents, they have no way to collect the $500 per callout charge and indeed less than half pay it. So the City residents have been footing the bill for the County residents fire protection for 20 years.

The homeowners had plenty of time to get the pets out before the fire got to the house.

No one was in danger.

Arthur

 

So? Standee operating procidure in those sorts of cases is to render aid and then bill the person for the full cost of the services tended. If this isn't paid they take person to court. This is the hardest line aproch that an Emergency service should be able to take
As bells said what if they were trapped in the house? Do you think the fire fighters, ambos, and police asked people had they paid before helping them out of the trade center?

 

They didn't have to, the WTC was in the area of responsability of the NYFD, and the property taxes would have entitled them to service..

 

Since not everyone will pay when billed, simply billing them at cost is a recipe for the City to lose money. They'd be taking on the credit risk of county residents without compensation.

In any event on what basis are we to say that the City needed to operate that way? Suppose the city simply said "Hey County, we held a vote and we are not providing you with a fire service at all any more." Clearly the State of New Jersey doesn't have to provide fire service to Manhattan, so clearly the "least" that can be done under standard operating procedure for one's neighbors is "no service at all."

Since the City had the option of not providing any service at all to its neighbors, they should be praised for offering some coverage. Instead they are vilified because people want the city to give even more and (much like with your plan) to even lose money providing this service.

The result of criticizing the good deeds of others, however, is usually not to improve the quality of the deeds in the future. If you tell a friend who has just given you a gift, "This sucks! I want more!" the likely effect is not more and better quality gifts in the future...more likely you will never get a gift from that friend again. I do not see that the result is any different when a City gets sued because its fire service isn't "good enough" for the neighboring counties. The result in the City won't be for voters there to demand improvements paid for with their tax dollars, they will demand that all service to the ingrates be stopped.

It's also been stated clearly that if lives were in danger, the fire department procedures are different, so worrying about the effect this has in terms of lives lost is counterfactual (as no lives were in any danger), but it's also irrelevant to this particular community (because had lives been in danger, the firefighters would have helped). It's fair to discuss it, but you should bear in mind that it is doubly hypothetical in this context.

 

Been there, done that.

As detailed in the plan the city presented to the County for universal coverage, the Fire Dept also bills someone $500 if they have to come out for a fire (and yes, that's less than the actual cost), but less than half the people pay the bill and the Fire Dept does not have the legal authority to collect the bill.

Arthur

 

Could you imagine the Chilean Government refusing to assist one of the trapped miners because some of them owed back taxes? That's the type of lunacy we have to endore with the extrememists in American politics.

 

Nope, because LIVES were at risk.

But I can imagine the Chilean Government not spending money to reopen the mine if no miners were in it, particularly if the Mine wasn't in Chile.

Try to make valid comparisons.

No lives were at risk here, if there were the City would have come.
It was a piece of County property on fire and there is no County Fire Department.
The City offers Fire service to put out PROPERTY fires to County residents who pay a fee IN ADVANCE.

Arthur

 

Oh, and where do you get this piece of nonsense?

 

Are you merely hoping he's just lying? Twenty seconds on Google and a minute reading found this (and struck gold, as it's fascinating):

Obion County Fire Department Report

To be clear: That is from Obion County's own fire department. Not the city's self-serving statements. It turns out that Obion County, where this fire happened, established its own county-wide fire department in 1987. It just never funded them, bought the needed millions of dollars in equipment, paid hundreds of thousands to train firefighters, etc. It preferred to lay the burden on the local municipal fire departments, paid for by local municipal taxes.

So should the city's fire department be sued for saying "no", or should the county be sued for not *even* being in a position to say "no"? How many homes have burned between 1987 and 2010 that they should be sued for?

The issue of the legality of collecting the $500 charge is pretty clear (thiough question whether it applies in the current case)...

First, if I come to your home and paint it, and then charge you $500 for my work, you don't have to pay *unless* you agreed to my work in advance. A contract requires an offer by mme followed by an acceptance by you. My merely providing you something of value is not a contract and is not enforceable, without a valid prior acceptance (and there is no notion of "implied acceptance" of a bargain you knew nothing about). (There is something called "promissory estoppel", but that would take us far afield.)

A fee-based fire department would be in the same boat. They can't put out the fire and then demand payment from me.

Second, and relevant to the present "I'll pay anything" case, if I am screaming for their help and the fire department helps me, there may still be no enforceable contract, since the contract would have been struck under obvious duress. The duress, from a contract law standpoint, would be "economic" (and not "physical" which has slightly different rules) since the homeowner would have had no reasonable alternative but to accept the fire department's terms...and likely could not even have haggled given the imminent economic harm. A contract that the fire department strikes with me under duress is typically "voidable" at my option. I have a sneaking suspicion that judges would find a way to try to enforce this...but you'd be paying $2000 in attorney's fees (minimum...and a shockingly low estimate, if I do say so) to collect $500.

 

Miners that don't pay their union dues, don't even get into the mine.

 

I was hoping people learned from the first time.

Firefighters let home burn over $75 fee -- again

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/07/9272989-firefighters-let-home-burn-over-75-fee-again

 

once again as I said before, you let people die because they cant pay the costs of health insurance everyday, why does this shock you?

Secondly (AGAIN) this is what you WANT isn't it? a user pay system, the ultimate user pay system, shouldn't you be PROUD of this? this is what your culture is all about (and its what sickens the rest of the world about your culture)

 

I don't remember what part of the world your from, can you refresh my memory? Yes we do have some problems and I don't like a lot of the bullshit we have to put up with. But the bottom line is, that these people knew what was at stake and they had an example of what would happen if they didn't pay a relatively small yearly fee.

I personally think there's something wrong with any system that could allow a house to burn down because of a stupid home owner. But then that's just me.

 

If you're a heartless bastard

You know, like so many other things wrong in the United States, maybe I should adopt a position my more conservative neighbors prefer, and suggest that the problem is personal accountability.

People just shouldn't live in places like Tennessee.

See, if we adopt that outlook, it's a lot easier to tolerate this sort of madness, because then we can just be apathetic toward all sorts of stupidity. Poor people can't complain about crime, because they're dumb enough to live in a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood. Unemployed people can't complain about the jobs situation, because they're too stupid to be CEOs of international conglomerates. And so on. I mean, why complain about health care if you're so doltish as to require life-saving treatment?

I mean, in this latest case in Tennessee, these folks were pathetic enough to have a fire in their home.

It's more satisfying, I guess. After all, life is a lot easier to cope with if you're a heartless bastard.