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When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

nytimes.com

11–20 of 133 posts

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#11
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good question, but many of these rural southern towns are very poor, and governed by conservative ideologues that have privatized all non-mandatory services. These towns are required by federal law to provide school service to children within them, however, anything else like police, fire, and ambulance services are not required. I think it's truly a shame that this has led to predatory practices by private co…

> this is not normal practice in most civilized parts of the US (pretty much anywhere on the east and west coasts) Much of the interior of the US could be described as civilized...

Sexism, racism, homophobia, jingoism, etc are all considered unacceptable and politically-incorrect, but for some reason condescension and unjustified attacks are A-okay when it comes to certain regions of the US.

I don't really understand this, although my hunch is it has roots in feelings of intellectual superiority.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#12
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good question, but many of these rural southern towns are very poor, and governed by conservative ideologues that have privatized all non-mandatory services. These towns are required by federal law to provide school service to children within them, however, anything else like police, fire, and ambulance services are not required. I think it's truly a shame that this has led to predatory practices by private co…

> this is not normal practice in most civilized parts of the US (pretty much anywhere on the east and west coasts) Much of the interior of the US could be described as civilized...

It could be, but get deep into the poor rural south, and prepare to go back in time to a place where electricity is optional, people live in trailers, and poverty is rampant.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#13
post #6

Privatization sounds great when you can afford your own private services. Otherwise, tough luck, pull on those bootstraps harder.

The only alternatives to privatization I can see are:

1) force the population to collectively pay for these services or 2) force specific individuals to provide these services for free

Option 1 is morally questionable and option 2 is a type of slavery, so it seems privatization isnt quite as bad as the alternatives. At least with a privatized service those who wish to opt out, can.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#14
post #4
post #2

> A man in the suburban South watched a chimney fire burn his house to the ground as he waited for the fire department, which billed him anyway and then sued him for $15,000 when he did not pay. Is one typically billed when you have the fire department arrive? I thought it was a public good.

It's a good question, but many of these rural southern towns are very poor, and governed by conservative ideologues that have privatized all non-mandatory services. These towns are required by federal law to provide school service to children within them, however, anything else like police, fire, and ambulance services are not required. I think it's truly a shame that this has led to predatory practices by private co…

> predatory practices by private companies

It does sound awful not to have access to fire service to someone like me who is used to it,* but then again, have the company done anything wrong by offering the service? Starting no company at all and offering no service at all would have been acceptable, right? I mean, that's what most of us do. Then, is there really anything wrong with offering people a service, even at a high price, if you don't take away any alternative they already had (which in this case would be to let the house burn)?

* I haven't actually ever used the service, but I count on that they will come if I call. I count on the fire department coming more than I do the police, because if there's a fire, other people's stuff and lives are on the line. When it's just about me, I'm not as sure that I am considered worth the cost. For the record, I'm in Europe.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#15
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is not normal practice in most civilized parts of the US (pretty much anywhere on the east and west coasts) Much of the interior of the US could be described as civilized...

Sexism, racism, homophobia, jingoism, etc are all considered unacceptable and politically-incorrect, but for some reason condescension and unjustified attacks are A-okay when it comes to certain regions of the US. I don't really understand this, although my hunch is it has roots in feelings of intellectual superiority.

> my hunch is it has roots in feelings of intellectual superiority

As well as good old fashioned, 'fear of people with different values and culture than your own'

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#16
In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you.

I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today.

I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not at all, even when they say they will come.

We pay fees for E911 service which includes location of cellular phones. But if you call 911 in Manhattan and tell them you are on 4th Street they will ask you if it's East or West 4th. They will even ask you this if you say you're on 3rd Avenue--an absurd question for a local resident but not for 911 dispatchers who are not locals and do not know local vernacular much less geography.

A few days ago the car I was in was robbed while we were driving in Chicago. I immediately called 911. They said they'd send someone so I told them where to find the driver. They called me back 20 minutes later and said they were not coming and that such a crime could be reported by phone only. The driver's phone had been stolen.

A fire alarm went off in a commercial building. I called 911. They didn't show up. Forty minutes later I called again. They sent the FD to my house. Not the fire.

911 is broken. Be prepared to take care of yourself.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#17
post #9

Free market enterprise requires, AFAIK, 'creative destruction' (business failure, freeing resources for new enterprises) and distribution of goods to those who can pay more. Therefore, I don't think it's a good solution when the specifications are that the institution cannot fail (e.g., you can't have the police department go out of business or otherwise fail to provide services), and when its good should be distribu…

So why not fix the problem at the demand side and not the supply side. If people can't afford essential-to-life services, isn't that the problem?

While I'm on the subject, centrally planning and allocating the services doesn't really solve the problem of whether it's worth the cost to have one ambulance to serve a town of five people who live in the middle of nowhere. Someone still has to make the decision. We can contrast the ways to make the decision.

In one proposal, the consumers of the services pay free market suppliers for emergency services. Various suppliers compete on features and price for servicing Buford, Wyoming (population 1). It turns out the resident of Buford, Wyoming needs to pay six figures per year to pay for his services. Either he's a Walton and it's not a big deal or he's a normal person and has to move somewhere that normal people can afford to live. Or maybe he signs a waiver stating he understands his home is outside the normal emergency services areas.

In another proposal, everyone gets emergency services no matter what. If a town can't afford it, they lobby up (county, state, nation) to a bureaucracy to get the subsidies they need. Eventually the money gets allocated as a line item in a pork barrel rider on the Save Kids with Cancer Act. From then on it's political suicide and a huge waste of political capital to cut the Buford, Wyoming Fire Department from the budget since, relatively speaking, there's not much to gain by being sensible at this level of detail. The guy in Buford, Wyoming gets a permanent six-figure-a-year subsidy for having absolutely no neighbors.

Hold on, you say, in proposal B you can have qualified bureaucrats (sorry, experts) picking which towns get services and which don't. In this case, we get to blame 'heartless republicans/democrats/whatever' instead of 'creative destruction'. People still have to decide some towns aren't worth it. But it's no longer people paying for what they use. It's someone you need to hire lobbyists to talk to.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#18
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good question, but many of these rural southern towns are very poor, and governed by conservative ideologues that have privatized all non-mandatory services. These towns are required by federal law to provide school service to children within them, however, anything else like police, fire, and ambulance services are not required. I think it's truly a shame that this has led to predatory practices by private co…

> predatory practices by private companies It does sound awful not to have access to fire service to someone like me who is used to it,* but then again, have the company done anything wrong by offering the service? Starting no company at all and offering no service at all would have been acceptable, right? I mean, that's what most of us do. Then, is there really anything wrong with offering people a service, even at…

That's a very simplistic way to do things. If there were no private firefighters then it wouldn't take long for there to be enough public pressure for a firefighting force to be financed by the state. Because these predatory companies are already in place, the government won't bother and will just shrug. So the alternative to private firefighters isn't no firefighters.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#19
post #16

In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…

This must be heavily dependent on where you live. I've called 911 three times in California. All three times the fire trucks showed up in less than five minutes.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#20
post #6

Privatization sounds great when you can afford your own private services. Otherwise, tough luck, pull on those bootstraps harder.

The only alternatives to privatization I can see are: 1) force the population to collectively pay for these services or 2) force specific individuals to provide these services for free Option 1 is morally questionable and option 2 is a type of slavery, so it seems privatization isnt quite as bad as the alternatives. At least with a privatized service those who wish to opt out, can.

Wait, why is it morally questionable that a society comes together to, uh, pool resources and do social things?

We are a social species. It makes sense that a social species pools resources together for the good of their collective whole.

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