quote:Originally posted by Lisa: I don't see the problem. And the guy chose not to pay. He received reminders and ignored them. You make bad choices, there are often bad results.
This, for me, is the fundamental problem with Libertarianism. It requires all of us to become people who don't see the problem with this. People who aren't bothered by a family losing their home and everything they own when it could have been saved. It requires us to be the kind of people who can, if we bother to think about it at all, shrug and say that he- and his wife and kids and pets - got what they deserved so who cares.
And yes, this was a failure of Libertarianism. Why, since there was no county fire department, didn't private industry step in to fill the gap? That's how it is supposed to work, right?
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Exactly. And we as human beings are bothered by that. Or at least some of us are.
Agreed. Because when it comes to things like fire, as somebody mentioned, a person's house catching fire is *my* business as it can endanger me, my family, and our property.
The government needs to provide this service because it can prevent needless destruction and death.
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quote:The government needs to provide this service because it can prevent needless destruction and death.
This is pretty much my thinking as well. To me it's a shade on your (general 'you') fist ending at my face. I'm fine with people being compelled to pay for fire service because of the danger that its lack poses to me and mine.
ETA: And truthfully, I don't put a whole lot of stock in those who claim they want the choice and are unhappy they don't have it, because they're protected right now and have never experienced its lack. It's an easy thing to claim.
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posted
It is my business because I am not the kind of person who "doesn't see the problem" with this regardless of whether my home was in danger.
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And then there are people like me who sees a problem with situations like this, but also worries about the larger implications of making it the government's job to save people from their bad decisions. On a individual case to case basis, nanny state policies sound like great ideas, but they carry costs that often aren't acknowledged and are only really visible in a much longer term view.
I'm not knowledgeable about this and I think the answer would be pretty unknowable anyway, but it is possible that in this situation letting the specific houses of people who aren't paying from fire protection burn down may end up preventing more destruction and deaths in the whole. I'm obviously not saying that this is true or even that it can be known, but supposing that it is and we could know this, I'd have to say that allowing people to suffer from the consequences of their decisions would be the right call.
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quote:Agreed. Because when it comes to things like fire, as somebody mentioned, a person's house catching fire is *my* business as it can endanger me, my family, and our property.
But its also my business in a way that goes even beyond that... One of the fundamental problems of libertarianism in its most extreme form is the notion that a man's problem is his alone if it doesn't affect other people. But morality dictates that that notion isn't true. Your problems are to some degree my problems, simply because it is wrong of me to stand by and do absolutely nothing if I can help you. People have a fundamental ethical responsibility towards their neighbors. Even if this fire impacts nobody but the person who failed to pay his fee to the city, and even if he has done nothing to deserve it, we still have a responsibility to help him. In order to be workable, libertarianism must accept and factor in that responsibility.
This doesn't preclude the possibility of "tough love" - allowing people to experience the consequences of their mistakes so as to prevent mistakes from happening more often. However, I'm not sure this particular case would have that effect; I don't see people abandoning their fire insurance if the fire department cut this guy some slack.
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quote:I don't see people abandoning their fire insurance if the fire department cut this guy some slack.
The one time, maybe not. But if it becomes understood that they will put out your fire whether or not you paid, they yes, I definitely see people choosing not to pay. And then everybody loses.
Everybody wants to be the exception.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: I don't see the problem. And the guy chose not to pay. He received reminders and ignored them. You make bad choices, there are often bad results.
This, for me, is the fundamental problem with Libertarianism. It requires all of us to become people who don't see the problem with this. People who aren't bothered by a family losing their home and everything they own when it could have been saved. It requires us to be the kind of people who can, if we bother to think about it at all, shrug and say that he- and his wife and kids and pets - got what they deserved so who cares.
Wrong. Of course libertarians care. When someone loses their house, that's bad. When someone is killed because they didn't have their seatbelt on, that's bad. The point is that everything is a tradeoff. It's not a choice between one obviously-good option and one obviously-bad one; it's a choice between different evils, of which one is obvious and visible and the other is subtle, hard to see, and much bigger. Libertarians choose the lesser evil even though it is more visible. When fire departments don't get paid beforehand, then they end up having to charge through the nose every time they are called out, and then everyone loses. That's worse than a single guy losing his house.
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quote:The point is that everything is a tradeoff. It's not a choice between one obviously-good option and one obviously-bad one; it's a choice between different evils, of which one is obvious and visible and the other is subtle, hard to see, and much bigger. Libertarians choose the lesser evil even though it is more visible.
While I'm not entirely convinced that this is actually true, that seems a pretty good description of the situation from the libertarian POV.
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posted
When government collects taxes to pay the fire departments, they are paid beforehand.
I am not saying that the fire department should have acted differently in this situation. I am saying that this libertarian - government isn't providing it so we can chose to pay the fee or not - situation should not have existed.
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posted
Just wanted to comment on the blog post quoted father above...
quote:They’d get all the pets and the people out of the building...
At least in the State of Florida, I believe pets are considered property, so there is not the same level of eagerness to save their lives compared to human life.
I haven't read the details of the story, but if there were pets in the building but no humans, it wouldn't have changed the outcome; they would have been essentially forced to let the animals burn.
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quote:The one time, maybe not. But if it becomes understood that they will put out your fire whether or not you paid, they yes, I definitely see people choosing not to pay. And then everybody loses.
How often in this county does the fire department show up to a fire and just watch the house burn? The fact that this became national news suggests, to me, that it probably is pretty rare. If this is an extremely rare occurance, then making an exception in this case, and allowing the guy to pay his fee after the fact, probably would not lead to any widespread assumption that its okay to skip the payment.
Conversely, if this happens all the time, then the city should threaten to withdraw individual fire coverage and demand the county pay for county-wide coverage. If such fires happen that frequently, the county government will likely comply. By offering an individual fire protection plan, the fire department is allowing the county officials to get away with not funding something that it is their responsibility to fund - which in turn ends up putting the city in a situation where they are morally compelled to help county individuals who don't pay. If the city says they simply can't do it this way, the county will face more pressure to figure out a legitimate fire plan.
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posted
Boots -- like saying that liberatarians aren't bothered by a family losing their home.
quote: if this happens all the time, then the city should threaten to withdraw individual fire coverage and demand the county pay for county-wide coverage.
How exactly would a city "demand" that from the county?
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: If this is an extremely rare occurance, then making an exception in this case, and allowing the guy to pay his fee after the fact, probably would not lead to any widespread assumption that its okay to skip the payment.
Joe Fireman is not qualified to make that exception on the spot. He has to look at the immediate repercussions for disobeying an order and "misusing" government property.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Boots -- like saying that liberatarians aren't bothered by a family losing their home.
quote: if this happens all the time, then the city should threaten to withdraw individual fire coverage and demand the county pay for county-wide coverage.
How exactly would a city "demand" that from the county?
You didn't notice the particular libertarian I was quoting? If we, as a society want to do nothing about such situations, we have to get pretty callous in a hurry.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: You didn't notice the particular libertarian I was quoting? If we, as a society want to do nothing about such situations, we have to get pretty callous in a hurry.
I noticed which Libertarian you were quoting. I also noticed that you immediately extrapolated her attitude to a problem with Libertarianism as a whole.
It's not a matter of wanting to do nothing about such situations. It's a matter of cost-benefit analysis, and nuanced opinions. Coming to what one believes is the best possible solution to a complex problem leaves plenty of room to feel bad for the people it adversely effects.
It's like watching the end of Star Trek II. You can understand the logic behind Spock's "good of the many" speech, and still cry when he dies. Anyone who thinks Libertarinism necessarily involves dancing on the graves of the less fortunate hasn't put much effort into understanding them.
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posted
I must confess, I'm nonplussed that so many people here look at this story from such an ideological bent -- but not too nonplussed to throw out a few random thoughts!
a) I love my pets as much as anyone, but I'd never expect any person to risk his or her life to rescue one of them.
b)Firefighters can and often do risk injury and death fighting a structure fire. If I supervised a crew and we were at a structure that was being destroyed, and we didn't have a legal or contractual obligation to save it, I wouldn't risk someone else's safety to save property. Property can be replaced, people can't.
c)I'd really like to know just how "involved" the house was when they arrived. How good a chance did they have to save it?
d)I've traveled through a lot of counties in Tenn, VA, and WV. Some of these places are so rural that they don't have 911 systems. They don't have house numbers. GPS just shows long stretchs of green fields and two-lane state roads with numbers, no names. A lot of the residents know and will tell you there is no way an ambulance or a firetruck is going to get there in time to do any good.
e)Look at a place like Pocahontas County WV. Approx 800 households, fewer than 600 families, located on over 900 square miles. More than 15% of the households consist of one adult over 65, living alone. (I assume a retired person). Median household income is about 27,000$.
What if you went to a county like that and said, "We need a fire department. It's going to cost $900,000 a year, and every household has to pony up $1,100 a year to run it. Depending on where we put it, it may be a one-hour drive from your house. Okay, let's vote."
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FF -- people aren't just looking at a story from an ideological bent, they're responding to a question about ideology ("Is this what libertarian government would be like?").
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: I don't see the problem. And the guy chose not to pay. He received reminders and ignored them. You make bad choices, there are often bad results.
This, for me, is the fundamental problem with Libertarianism. It requires all of us to become people who don't see the problem with this. People who aren't bothered by a family losing their home and everything they own when it could have been saved. It requires us to be the kind of people who can, if we bother to think about it at all, shrug and say that he- and his wife and kids and pets - got what they deserved so who cares.
You fail to see where that leads. If someone has a heart attack and dies because he chose to eat unhealthily, does that mean that society should have been there to force him to eat healthily? I mean, losing his life is a bigger deal than this guy losing his house, right?
And yes, I'm perfectly aware that there are already people out there who are trying to do just that; force others to eat in a way they view as healthy. Do you approve of that? If not, I'd like to know what distinction you make between that and what you just wrote. If you do approve of it, well, there isn't a lot that can be said to totalitarian types who think they know better than everyone else how others should live their lives.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: And yes, this was a failure of Libertarianism. Why, since there was no county fire department, didn't private industry step in to fill the gap? That's how it is supposed to work, right?
That's how it generally works. That's how it can work. If it doesn't work that way, it's because people chose not to bother. In which case, again, that's a bad choice. And bad choices often lead to bad results.
Freedom doesn't guarantee success. It guarantees the freedom to seek success.
Kate, do you have kids? I have a 10 year old daughter who makes mistakes. But if I prevent every mistake, she'll never learn. Clearly, I'd prevent her from making dangerous mistakes, but the citizenry of the United States is not made up of children who have to be protected in that way. And what you're talking about leads to more than just protecting people from threats to their lives or homes. It leads to "protecting" them from themselves.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Boots -- like saying that liberatarians aren't bothered by a family losing their home.
quote: if this happens all the time, then the city should threaten to withdraw individual fire coverage and demand the county pay for county-wide coverage.
How exactly would a city "demand" that from the county?
You didn't notice the particular libertarian I was quoting? If we, as a society want to do nothing about such situations, we have to get pretty callous in a hurry.
I can feel bad for his wife (if he has one) and children (if he has them). I can't feel bad for someone who knew that everyone else was paying for fire protection, refused to pay even after being reminded, and lost out the hard way. That's a learning experience.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: I can feel bad for his wife (if he has one) and children (if he has them). I can't feel bad for someone who knew that everyone else was paying for fire protection, refused to pay even after being reminded, and lost out the hard way. That's a learning experience.
I'm curious as to why you keep saying he was reminded to pay - the article linked by the OP makes no mention of that(and in fact implies that he just forgot to pay, not make a conscious decision not to pay). Where are you getting the info indicating that he was both reminded and decided not to pay?
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: There are several serious divergences here that are directly caused by government interference and not the market. For example, not accepting some ludicrously high on-the-spot payment from the victim.
From a pragmatic perspective, I personally wouldn't take a promise to pay from this particular guy on the spot, at least not in the context of expecting it to be followed through on. I wouldn't even take a check and expect it to clear without trouble.
He strikes me as someone whose logic and and interpretations of his own responsibility are heavily flavoured by convenience. Once the fire was put out, I'd be spending a lot more money to get paid, I bet.
----- Edited to add:
quote:"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick , from one of multiple news sources
and this:
Mind you, if I had the means to help and were there, I don't think I would have been able to stand by without doing anything. I just would be hauling a grain of salt around while carrying the "I'll pay whatever it takes!" claim.
Lives are messy. People do forget, even if reminded. Sometimes people are relieved to forget, because life is just too much, at times. Which is why in matters of import, there has to be a better system than this.
posted
Mucus, I'm missing something. That report says 528 households in Obion county. 13 cents per household per year nets less than 70$ per year. That doesn't get you a lot of fire fighting equipment.
I suspect they mean 13 cents per household per unit of assessed property value. I can't find that in the report.
A different question: once that report was presented, was a vote or referendum conducted? If so, what did the county residents decide they wanted?
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Flying Fish, I understand your point about rural areas.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure that's analogous to this situation. The county population is in excess of 32,000, and according to one source I read (can't find, not enough time), there are 8 municipal fire departments in the county.
Sure, the cities are densely populated and probably skew the population density pretty badly.
The county I live in has only a third of that, for population, and covers more area. This situation wouldn't happen. The government of Olbion County, including the city government of South Fulton, dropped the ball on fire protection.
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posted
Flying Fish: Sorry, I deleted the report after reading it since it did seem inconsistent. The numbers do seem messed up (which I guess is one symptom of a dysfunctional government). I think the census-based calculation is a better estimate and came out to $116 per household. (But they weren't necessarily comparable with each other because there were calculations having to do with property tax assessments on commercial buildings)
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posted
Mucus, thanks. I think another point might have to do with the affluence of the county.
I once had to explain to an elderly woman in Southwest Virginia that she had to pay a 911 fee on her phone bill which was going to total about $6 per year. She was almost in tears: she lived on about $4000 per year in government aid, so 6$ was worth arguing over. Furthermore, she lived (by choice) in a cabin on a mountain that had belonged to her family for generations. She HAD called 911 before, a couple of times -- and they had never showed up.
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posted
I consider myself someone with an above average sense of empathy. However, this story did not seem to evoke the emotional response from me as it did to others like Strider. I wasn't sure what caused the incongruity, so was not responding to this discussion (and its analog on the other forum).
I think I finally figured it out: It's just property. His house burned down, which is sad, but all he lost were things. He didn't pay the 75 bucks, probably so that he could buy other things with it. He gambled and lost. That's all.
Does he have insurance? If not, again he gambled and lost.
If he did have insurance, then he'll get his home back, and have learned a valuable lesson to boot.
To me its like if a tornado wipes out a particular neighborhood and an insurance company only pays out to folks who paid their premiums. Well duh. It's the same exact result. Those who paid extra to get their property protected get that protection, those that don't, tough luck.
You wouldn't say that the insurance company was doing a disservice to their fellow man, would you?
Edit: My empathy increases quite a bit if you take the "I just forgot" at face value. Certainly I've been know to forget things like that myself.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: I can feel bad for his wife (if he has one) and children (if he has them). I can't feel bad for someone who knew that everyone else was paying for fire protection, refused to pay even after being reminded, and lost out the hard way. That's a learning experience.
I'm curious as to why you keep saying he was reminded to pay - the article linked by the OP makes no mention of that(and in fact implies that he just forgot to pay, not make a conscious decision not to pay). Where are you getting the info indicating that he was both reminded and decided not to pay?
quote:Vowell said people always think they will never be in a situation where they will need rural fire protection, but he said City of South Fulton personnel actually go above and beyond in trying to offer the service. He said the city mails out notices to customers in the specified rural coverage area, with coverage running from July 1 of one year to July 1 the next year.
At the end of the enrollment month of July, the city goes a step further and makes phone calls to rural residents who have not responded to the mail-out.
"These folks were called and notified," Vowell said. "I want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to get it and be aware it's available. It's been there for 20 years, but it’s very important to follow up."
Mayor Crocker added, "It's my understanding with talking with the firefighters that these folks had received their bill and they had also contacted them by phone."
(Vowell is South Fulton city manager Jeff Vowell.)
quote:"Gene Cranick Farms....big time farmer in the area....just got a call from a friend in the area....seems all those government farms subsidies wasn't enough cash to pay for the Fire Protection Fee...10 months late by the way....they are due in Jan of every year and many notices are mailed out and notice in the newspaper too...
Buddy Jones Road...this guy owned most of the land around the Country Club....not some poor guy at all."
posted
You can think that the guy made a bad choice and still "see a problem" with him losing his home. If we couldn't, we wouldn't be having the conversation. You can think that there are some things that society - all of us collectively - can and should address because catastrophes do happen. And you can think that without believing that society should address everything.
You want pure libertarianism, get used to watching homes burn when we could have saved them. And get used to what getting used to that makes us.
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posted
If you want pure libertarianism, get used to watching entire cities burn and/or free riders having their house fires put out because fire coverage in populated areas absolutely requires the response.
Failing that, good luck telling fire that the 'right' to swing its arm ends at your house.
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On the radio the other day, there was a story about some controversey because the aid to New Orleans were not rebuilding homes that had been leveled by wind instead of by flood.
The deal with the federal aid is that it 1) picks up what insurance doesn't cover (no insurance? You should have. It would have covered it.), and 2) does not spend more to rebuild a house than the house was originally worth.
Even the most basic of homeowners' insurance covers wind damage. Homeowners that did not have homeowner insurance are not being covered, after the crisis, as if they had.
Often it was people who had had the house in the family for generations and owned it outright. If there's a mortgage, there's homeowners' insurance, but when there isn't, it is on the owner to decide if they are willing to risk a disaster and lose everything. Often, the owners have land assets but no cash flow, which means the house is often not well taken care of and is worth less than the homes of people who spend to maintain them.
It's the same situation, amplified by millions of dollars, because that's how many people went without homeowners' insurance.
Is it right that taxes go to rebuild homes when the owners didn't even bother with basic homeowners' insurance? Is it only right because this is from Katrina? But what about other storms? If it is right, why even bother with homeowners' insurance at all?
What about paying more to rebuild than the home was worth, on top of all the aid that has already been handed out? Is it right that taxes go to build someone a house? Several someones? Thousands of houses? Because that's how many are affected here.
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posted
Property replacement and damage coverage is and should be a different issue. Firefighters will put out all fires and maybe even save your property; they're not there (and neither is their funding) to rebuild what couldn't be saved.
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The people who don't have insurance are often very poor, and they see one neighborhood over the government rebuilding those homes, but not their homes.
It's all solved by money - money to rebuild, money to fund the fire department, it all comes from taxes.
Choosing to NOT pay into the Fire Department fund and expecting to be covered as if you had is exactly the same as choosing to not buy homeowners' insurance and expecting to be covered as if you had.
quote:Firefighters will put out all fires
Clearly not. Not when the local laws state that if you refuse to pay for coverage, you aren't covered.
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posted
I think that comparing this to repayment insurance is the wrong to look at it. It's more akin to medical insurance as a prerequisite to medical care.
We've made the decision that we don't deny people medical care because they don't have insurance. I think this is the right decision, given our circumstances. But this decision comes with very heavy costs.
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posted
That is a better analogy for the emergency kind of situation, but that involves human life, and this involves only property. Medical care even without insurance does come with tremendous costs, in terms of money, which we have decided is worth it, because what is saved is life.
Here, life was not at risk; only property. Losing your home is hard and gut-wrenching, but it's just a house and it's only stuff.
This isn't the way I'd set things up, but since this is the way it had been and the home owner decided to take the risk, it's the right outcome for the circumstance.
Maybe the county will change the way they fund the fire department now.
---
The wrinkle in the Katrina rebuilding business: the people who didn't have insurance are overwhelmingly black and poor. It is entirely possible/probable that the house hadn't been insured for a generation, if ever, and the current owners didn't even realize that it should be. Does that change anything in there for you?
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Clearly not. Not when the local laws state that if you refuse to pay for coverage, you aren't covered.
And changing it so that there's complete mandated coverage, covered via taxation, fixes that, and keeps property replacement a separate issue.
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quote:We've made the decision that we don't deny people medical care because they don't have insurance.
In fact, we will. Try getting chemotherapy for your cancer without insurance. What we won't deny is really basic stuff like casts for a broken arm.
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posted
Have any of the people in this thread arguing that it's "only a home and only stuff" ever actually lost their home? Whether through a natural disaster or a fire? I have a very close friend whose house burnt to the ground and it was devastating for him and his wife. Saying "it's all just stuff" is easy to do from our armchairs, and is actually something I agree with 100%. But it doesn't actually make going through the experience any easier when it happens to you (unless you're a Buddhist monk of some sort and are really, truly at peace with whatever happens). That philosophy may not make it any easier when you wake up in the middle of the night regularly from the psychological damage that event inflicted. I'm sure watching the house burn while people with the power to stop it stand around and do nothing is not exactly beneficial for mental well being either. But who knows, maybe tonight when this family is in their motel room wearing their red cross donated clothing they'll be in fine spirits because all the stuff they lost was meaningless anyway.
I acknowledge the complexity of this situation, the precedent that would be set if they put out fires for homeowners who haven't paid and the importance of learning from our mistakes, etc...but the world that says, "well, fair is fair, lesson learned" is not a world I want to live in. Conversely, the argument that says letting his house burn down actually will increase the well being of people in the long run because of the behavior it will promote is certainly a valid argument, but one I disagree with in the end anyway.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I agree that that arrangement makes the most sense to me.
That is not, however, the arrangement that existed in the county in question.
Exactly. The county doesn't have firefighters. Just fire-chasers on loan from an actually covered area.
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posted
try getting chemo with insurance. well, at least that gets better with reform implementation.
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quote:Conversely, the argument that says letting his house burn down actually will increase the well being of people in the long run because of the behavior it will promote is certainly a valid argument, but one I disagree with in the end anyway.
If you disagree with that estimate of the tradeoffs involved, that's a separate matter entirely. But if you genuinely thought the world would in fact be better in the long-run due to this short-term loss for one guy, what would you do then? It seems to me that the tradeoffs are a question for empirical discussion, a point on which reasonable men might differ. But the accusation that libertarians don't care is unjust. (I'll except Lisa. We all know that she doesn't care; but it's not because she's a libertarian. She's just... special that way. If she were a hardcore Stalinist, she would not-care just as much about the fate of twenty million kulaks. Can't make True Socialism without breaking a few reactionary heads.)
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quote:We've made the decision that we don't deny people medical care because they don't have insurance.
In fact, we will. Try getting chemotherapy for your cancer without insurance. What we won't deny is really basic stuff like casts for a broken arm.
And sadly, too many of us "don't see the problem with that."
How do you define "too many?" How many people around here do you think have no problem with people being denied chemo, for any reason?
It's easy to feel comfortable with your point of view when you've convinced yourself that everyone who disagrees with you loves watching poor people die of cancer. But it's a cop-out, and it's not fair to you or your ideological opponents.
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