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Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

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Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#221

Post by interroboink »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #204
pdonis wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are egregiously misinformed about the US.

How so? Do they have a public healthcare system? Nope. What sort of society doesn't look after it's own? Do they have police who have a duty to save you? Nope. That alone is just an absolute shit show. What sort of country says the police have no obligation to protect you? Only to show up and solve the crime once it's happened? What sort of society doesn't look after it's own? I could carry on but it's a bit pointles…

I don't mean to apologize for some of the awful things that go on in the United States, but your comment seems to come from the point of view of someone whose understanding of the country is built on popular media and clickbait headlines, rather than first-hand experience, if I may be so bold.

Keep in mind that what gets reported on and popularized is what sells clicks/views/etc, and is not very representative of "normal life."

It's true that services and norms vary widely across the different states, and in that sense perhaps there is not a "society" so much as "a patchwork of societies, not always working together." But I don't think it's quite the black-and-white either/or question that seems to be argued in this thread.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#222

Post by greedo »

LarryMullins wrote: post #201
vlovich123 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I’m not sure where this certainty is coming from considering how youngsters couldn’t be part of the crusades considering they’ve historically always been involved in conflict: > In 1814, for example, Napoleon conscripted many teenagers for his armies.[28] Thousands of children participated on all sides of the First World War and the Second World War.[29][30][31][32] Children continued to be used throughout the…

Yeah, I think the above comment is also underselling the strength of pre-teen children, or greatly overestimating the weight of arms, armor, and the strength needed to do things with horses. Children have worked on farms around horses ever since horses were domesticated. A sword or breastplate only weighs a few pounds, a knight could easily employ a pre-teen child to polish his armor, oil his sword, wax his boots, ma…

Swords and breastplate weigh far more than a "few pounds." Breastplate is close to 20lbs, a two-handed sword up to 10lbs. And that's just a small amount of the armor a knight would have (ignoring the fact that most warriors of the era wore chainmail, not plate).

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#223

Post by stevesimmons »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #211
that_guy_iain wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Not saying this is right, but many Americans disagree with the very concept, and want to maintain their freedom to opt-out of everything that goes along with "society". Gault's Gulch and all that. And I think it was that famous British voice of reason Maggie Thatcher that said "there's no such thing as society".

This is so frequently misquoted. Or rather, quoted away from its context and taken to mean the exact opposite. Thatcher actually argued there should be a social safety net, but it can't solve every problem and it shouldn't be used as an excuse for not working.

In full, she said [1]:

  I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

  [It] is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate … [t]hat was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system … when people come and say: ‘But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!’
[1] 1987 interview in "Women's Own"

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#224

Post by stickfigure »

turtledragonfly wrote: post #154
stickfigure wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a significant percentage of people (even here on HN) that believes "Facebook sold personal information to Cambridge Analytica and they used this information to win the election for Trump". My prior is that people repeat good stories somewhat independently of their truth value. Older stories that are hard to verify are more suspect. I think we should default to skepticism.

I'll bite — so what did happen with Cambridge Analytica? As far as I can tell[1], the only thing wrong with what you said is "Facebook sold...", where in reality, the data was surreptitiously gathered. Or are you referring to something else? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

* Cambridge Analytica created an insipid quiz and got many people to install it.

* The quiz used public Facebook APIs to gather data; users accepted a "share this data with the app" permission request.

* Cambridge Analytica conned Republicans into paying them for services using this "superweapon".

* There's no evidence (other than self-serving press releases from Cambridge Analytica) that this had any material effect on the election.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#225

Post by mushbino »

yardie wrote: post #7
leetrout wrote: post #6

And here we are in modern times where we do, indeed, let buildings burn. > No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn > Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna39516346

This story still makes the rounds, and the result is still the same. The family chose to live in unincorporated land. They turned down fire protection when the county offered it to them. They turned down fire protection when their insurer offered it to them. The fire department did what was required to save lives. Insurance can take care of the rest...oh, that's right.

Considering the location, I imagine they couldn't afford it.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#226

Post by that_guy_iain »

Aunche wrote: post #210
that_guy_iain wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This isn't a thing in the US. Hospitals will stabilize anyone, regardless of ability to pay. First responders- police, ambulance, fire fighters- will save any life they are able to. Preventative health care is a different story, and even that is complicated. The US has the highest preventable death rate in the developed world. People die because they don't get to see a doctor. First responders will save you. However…

> The US has the highest preventable death rate in the developed world. They also have by far the highest obesity rate in the developed world. > Have diabetes and no insurance? That's pretty much a death sentence and they'll watch you die. Need surgery? No insurance? No surgery and death because of complications caused by the lack of surgery. I'm supportive of universal healthcare, but this is a huge exaggeration. If…

No post body was provided.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#227

Post by rqtwteye »

zdragnar wrote: post #156
that_guy_iain wrote: post #143

Even with this information included. I think the moral of the story is America has some very serious third-world problems. The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die." Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys. Not only that, t…

> "They didn't pay, so they die." This isn't a thing in the US. Hospitals will stabilize anyone, regardless of ability to pay. First responders- police, ambulance, fire fighters- will save any life they are able to. Preventative health care is a different story, and even that is complicated. Unincorporated land holds a very tiny percentage of the population of the US; trying to use this as an analogy for the rest of…

“Hospitals will stabilize anyone, regardless of ability to pay.”

They will stabilize you and then kick you out to the curb quickly. And depending how they felt that day they will send you an outrageous bill.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#228

Post by adolph »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #143

Even with this information included. I think the moral of the story is America has some very serious third-world problems. The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die." Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys. Not only that, t…

> firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys

Please reconsider your apparent lack of appreciation for the work and risks of others. Firefighting is not "playing with toys."

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#229

Post by that_guy_iain »

pdonis wrote: post #219
that_guy_iain wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Do they have a public healthcare system? Nope. What sort of society doesn't look after it's own? Do they have police who have a duty to save you? Nope. That alone is just an absolute shit show. What sort of country says the police have no obligation to protect you? Only to show up and solve the crime once it's happened? What sort of society doesn't look after it's own? I could carry on but it's a bit pointles…

You don't get to declare by fiat what constitutes a society, or what counts as "taking care of its own". Nor do you get to just help yourself to the assumption that other countries, which claim to have things like "a public healthcare system" and "police who have a duty to save you", actually have those things. As for "well documented", if you believe what the media tells you about anything, let alone the US, you are…

>As for "well documented", if you believe what the media tells you about anything, let alone the US, you are in no position to judge anyone else.

They show video footage... Jesus christ, you've bought into the Trump propaganda of fake news so much you're just saying believing the media is foolish. This whole the media is lying wasn't such a thing before Trump.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#230

Post by Bouncingsoul1 »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #141
legitster wrote: post #75

This reminds me of when I learned there was no such thing as "The Children's Crusade". As my history professor put it, "going to the Holy Land was an incredibly expensive endeavour reserved for a very few. There's no way anyone was going to waste it on young, inexperienced children". Nearly every source we had saying that the crusade involved children came much later, after a few writers referred to the same source w…

? The whole of medieval europe swarms with stories of surplus children send to fend for themselves as servants and workers abroad. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabenkinder Whole areas exported there population as soldiers, mercenaries and mining people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard Most of them were like the taliban in afghanistan, interlocked in eternal holy wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirt…

wow. almost all of your sources (except the last one, which is quite broad) misses the timeframe of "medival europe".
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