What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily • Hacker News Board

Re: What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily

#71

Post by AlexC04 » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:53 PM UTC

There is another option.

Cost Per Fire = Fire Department Budget / Number of Fires per year

Looking here: http://www.ci.bloomington.mn.us/cityhall/dept/fire/budget/bu...

They've got about 1200 fires a year and a $3M budget

Which actually works out to $2500 per fire.

So actually, they could charge $2500 to put out the fire and end up at the same place.

So why not a tiered system. 1) $75 per year - no charge for fire extinguishing 2) $5000 - per incident cost to extinguish the fire. This can be taken out as a lien against the property for those without the cash to settle up. Perhaps a property owner does not legally have the right to refuse this service.

The "original spawn" for this post was an article where a fire department allowed a man's house to burn to the ground. Which killed three dogs and a cat.

Allowing three dogs and a cat to die for $2500 doesn't site right with me. In fact it feels downright evil.

I'm sure it doesn't sit right with the firefighters. I'd imagine that they actually have quite a bit of "psychic turmoil" and possibly even "POTS" (post traumatic stress) symptoms because of their being forced to allow animals to die.

What if it were people?

Hopefully hindsight will fix this for the future.

Compared to the actual cost of the fire, the actual numbers paid out by the insurance company, and the actual losses, even $10K would be a deal.

Maybe if you have fire insurance you shouldn't ALSO have to pay the fire department. Maybe your insurance premiums should cover that (from the article, he does have coverage).

What is the price of life?

In short: this is a major Eff up by a bean counter. It makes me angry.

Re: What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily

#72

Post by eru » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:53 PM UTC

Semiapies wrote: post #60

Nogwater wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reason…

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. :/

How about building houses made of stone?

Re: What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily

#73

Post by Semiapies » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:54 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #64

tptacek wrote: post #56

This is coming up because of the Tennessee "firefighters watched it burn over $75" story. But there's backstory to that story. The fire department in question served a nearby town, and had no responsibility for the area where the fire occurred. As a service to people living outside their area, you could pay $75/year to get "out of area" coverage. The people who lost their house did two things to keep them from being…

Yes. (And it's funny how the American's have bent the word liberal to mean something closer to social democrat.)

If only "liberal" meant anything that specific, in practice. "Conservative" and "liberal" are both ridiculously bent terms in the US, reduced to meaning nothing more than "What Republicans want" and "What Democrats want". In practice, these aren't really all that different sets of demands - it's simply the propaganda of the Democrats to construe Republicans as militaristic psuedo-libertarians and the propaganda of the Republicans to construe Democrats as pacifistic psuedo-socialists.

Re: What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily

#74

Post by Semiapies » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:56 PM UTC

GiraffeNecktie wrote: post #66

cullenking wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I promise that if you don't pay your taxes and refuse any additional fines, people with guns will knock on your door.

Maybe where you live.

Where outside the US do you live?

Re: What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily

#75

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:56 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #56

This is coming up because of the Tennessee "firefighters watched it burn over $75" story. But there's backstory to that story. The fire department in question served a nearby town, and had no responsibility for the area where the fire occurred. As a service to people living outside their area, you could pay $75/year to get "out of area" coverage. The people who lost their house did two things to keep them from being…

But nobody is suggesting they should have just put the fire out for free. They should have put the fire out and billed him a sum many times higher than what the insurance premium would have been. The idea of insurance is to cap your liability, not to be a precondition for receiving any assistance.

Re: What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily

#76

Post by tptacek » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:56 PM UTC

elbrodeur wrote: post #42

wccrawford wrote: post #3

"But it had to be done. Because if people knew that the firemen would save them free of charge, then nobody would pay. And if people knew that you could avoid paying the firemen up until the moment that first spark hit your curtain, well, again, nobody would pay." Exactly. Nobody wants someone stranger's house to burn down, but part of the rules of living there was that you'd pay your portion if you wanted protection…

>> Insurance doesn't work if you only pay it -after- you have a problem. It's been said in several other places but this sort of intellectual dishonesty can't be left alone. There are a plethora of examples currently in place in society that work well where if an uninsured person requires assistance they pay AT COST. If they can't afford out of pocket they set up a payment schedule.

Wait a minute. No they don't. People who sustain life-threatening injuries when uninsured do not pay "at cost". They don't pay at all. The hospital bankrupts them, and then the rest of society pays nominally increased premiums to cover them. This is a policy failure that has to be allowed to happen when we're talking about human life instead of property.

This is a major flaw with our health system (which should be single payer), and is a framing device for a possible policy flaw in Tennessee (to wit: people in the surrounding communities should have been required to pay a substantially higher fire tax to obligate surrounding communities to cover them).

But none of this has anything to do with what the fire department did. The fire happened outside their service area. They simply weren't obligated to respond to it.

Re: What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily

#77

Post by eru » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:58 PM UTC

Semiapies wrote: post #73

eru wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. (And it's funny how the American's have bent the word liberal to mean something closer to social democrat.)

If only "liberal" meant anything that specific, in practice. "Conservative" and "liberal" are both ridiculously bent terms in the US, reduced to meaning nothing more than "What Republicans want" and "What Democrats want". In practice, these aren't really all that different sets of demands - it's simply the propaganda of the Democrats to construe Republicans as militaristic psuedo-libertarians and the propaganda of th…

Yes. Although Social Democracy isn't a very specific terms in countries where it's in active use, either.

Re: What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily

#78

Post by Semiapies » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:58 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #61

jrmurad wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarians and the free market? Isn't this story about a government-run fire department?

No, it's a story about a municipal fire department that had a business relationship with surrounding unincorporated communities.

Aren't both these points true?

Re: What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily

#79

Post by tptacek » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 5:58 PM UTC

Semiapies wrote: post #73

eru wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. (And it's funny how the American's have bent the word liberal to mean something closer to social democrat.)

If only "liberal" meant anything that specific, in practice. "Conservative" and "liberal" are both ridiculously bent terms in the US, reduced to meaning nothing more than "What Republicans want" and "What Democrats want". In practice, these aren't really all that different sets of demands - it's simply the propaganda of the Democrats to construe Republicans as militaristic psuedo-libertarians and the propaganda of th…

For what it's worth, I want what Democrats want: a strong public school system with centralized governance, national single-payer health care, legal protection for labor unions (I'm a fan of the 8-hour work day), a progressive tax system to pay for it, and the maximum possible business-friendliness obtainable given those constraints.

Re: What life is like in a state where firefighters are paid voluntarily

#80

Post by tomjen3 » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 6:00 PM UTC

GiraffeNecktie wrote: post #66

cullenking wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I promise that if you don't pay your taxes and refuse any additional fines, people with guns will knock on your door.

Maybe where you live.

Hint: the people who will arrive with the guns are police or possibly people who works for the IRS/your tax authorities.