Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn? • Hacker News Board

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#311

Post by autoexec » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #280

autoexec wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Adults know that making sensible collective agreements where necessary is not the same thing as government. Governments never limit themselves to that. Certainly the US government doesn't--even though that's exactly what it's supposed to do under the Constitution. Also, allowing people to suffer bad consequences from their own choices does not mean being indifferent. It just means refusing to adopt a "cure" that is w…

> Adults also know that collective agreements to provide the means to help those who are in trouble through no fault of their own are called "charity", and are best done by private institutions

While your other arguments are subjective, this one is just plain factually wrong. It will always be far less efficient to depend on a few individuals to shoulder large expenses or for disparate organizations (each with their own overhead expenses) to find and collect smaller contributions than it is for everyone to pay just a small amount automatically to collectively cover an expense through a single origination.

In addition to the massive inefficiencies of charity, and the fact that many charities are really little more than scams, there are still several other problems with them. See for example:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/against_1.shtml

https://harvardpolitics.com/charity-band-aid/

Some of these problems are even seen by some people as benefits. For example, federal or state aid to victims of a natural disaster would go to help everyone impacted, but a charity to help them can allow someone to only support certain people while discriminating against others. Some people actually find it extremely preferable to restrict all their charitable giving to only people with a certain religion, or skin color, or political alignment, but the freedom that gives a person to leave "the wrong kind of people" to suffer is still a massive problem when your goal is to help everyone impacted.

Charity is great, when it's not a total scam, and it's equitable, and the origination is lucky enough to find enough people willing to take the time to research them and give them enough donations to accomplish what needs to be done, but it's still no substitute for government programs.

Government programs can have their problems too certainly. They can be run poorly, they can not do enough to help people, and the help they provide can be less than equitable, but you're entitled to a much higher level of control and transparency over government programs and you always have the ability to vote for improvements and hold the government accountable when they fail to deliver.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#312

Post by tshaddox » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #245

that_guy_iain wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> "They didn't pay, so they die". The problem with these emotionally charged characterizations is that they can be used against you. Conservatives will use the rationing caused by large cancer backlog in the UK as evidence for "death panels."

The fact that it's possible for someone to repeat what you say back to you is not a strong argument. Which of those two countries you mentioned has better health outcomes?

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#313

Post by lmm » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

RC_ITR wrote: post #270

Animatronio wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"America is HUUUGE" comes up everytime someone says anything at all. Too many guns? America is huge. Urban sprawl? America is huge. No trains? America is huge. The US is #4 in terms of total area, behind russia, canada and china, and closely followed by brazil and australia. If the others manage at least some of this stuff, one would imagine that the US can do it at least as well.

Do you have any familiarity with those countries and where people live? Do you really think that metrics on quality of life in Krasnoyarsk Krai or Northwest Territories are drastically better than Wyoming? I wont even get started on what life is like in Xinjiang. EDIT: Also, you're saying that Australia, Canada, Russia and Brazil have good train infrastructure? And getting even more pedantic, you're a fan of the trai…

The trains in Xinjiang compare very favourably with those in the US. The media paints a very one-sided picture of what life is like there; not to defend the CCP's awful actions, but if the way certain communities in St Louis get treated were reported the same way...

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#314

Post by yamtaddle » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #285

yamtaddle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions, and restrictions on which factors can be used to set pricing for policies—both wildly popular—create a free rider problem.

Funny how it's a problem only in the "richest country in the world". It also pales in comparison to the burden and costs of existing system in the US.

Well, right, because most other advanced-economy states require you to carry insurance (more-or-less the solution we were going for, before the penalty for failing to have insurance was eliminated) or cover everyone under a government-provided healthcare scheme of one sort or another.

If your point is just that the US healthcare system is far more-broken than most, and in some unique ways, all for no good reason—sure, yeah, of course that's true.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#315

Post by pdonis » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 10:46 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #311

pdonis wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adults know that making sensible collective agreements where necessary is not the same thing as government. Governments never limit themselves to that. Certainly the US government doesn't--even though that's exactly what it's supposed to do under the Constitution. Also, allowing people to suffer bad consequences from their own choices does not mean being indifferent. It just means refusing to adopt a "cure" that is w…

> Adults also know that collective agreements to provide the means to help those who are in trouble through no fault of their own are called "charity", and are best done by private institutions While your other arguments are subjective, this one is just plain factually wrong. It will always be far less efficient to depend on a few individuals to shoulder large expenses or for disparate organizations (each with their…

>* It will always be far less efficient to depend on a few individuals to shoulder large expenses or for disparate organizations (each with their own overhead expenses) to find and collect smaller contributions than it is for everyone to pay just a small amount and collectively cover an expense through a single origination.*

On the assumption that the single organization will actually do the job, perhaps. But it won't. Ask anyone who has actual experience with such government organizations, as, for example, my wife and I have (she far more than me--she was a social worker for 20 years). They don't actually help the people they're supposed to help.

So your claim is factually wrong, not mine. I did not claim that private charities are perfect. I only claimed that charity is best done by private institutions, i.e., that on net they do better than government programs.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#316

Post by fakedang » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 10:49 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #70

fakedang wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I suspect you would find services limited in the middle of the Arabian desert as well. The United States is enormous and many parts of it are incredibly sparsely populated. For example, Niobrara County in Wyoming has a population of 2,467 and an area of 6,810 km^2, or a population density of 0.36/km^2. For comparison, the Northern Borders province, the least dense province in Saudi Arabia, has as population density o…

Then perhaps the core issue is zoning land properly and making sure people don't spread out too thin.

That being said, the locality in question sounds very much like the low density suburban locale that I'm currently living in. It costs a pretty penny for the government to maintain services here, since there are only about 100 homes in an area at the edge of the desert (which at a rate of 75 per home per month as stated in the article wouldn't be able to cover a basic firefighting service). Of course, that does not bother the government in providing funds for everything from a local police station, hospital (yes, not a clinic), fire station, municipality, garbage collection, etc. The only thing missing (for the local Arabs mostly) is a government school, but then folks with families don't bother with it.

I could draw a similar example of my place in India, which has similar low density characteristics, and to make matters worse, is located in a hilly part of the district, but that doesn't stop the govt. from providing a local police force and fire fighting service complete with a helicopter.

Some amenities are basic needs that if you don't receive, then what the hell are you paying taxes for? Freedoms per second?

And no, I'm not a stranger to America's vast landscape. The fact stands that there should have been better zoning - or don't expect any facility at all, but don't make news out of it.

On a side note, the main link of this thread quotes the example of insurance companies in London in the 1830s, who would compensate each other in case their firefighters took action on fires not in their jurisdiction. If our forebears had such sensible foresight and collective responsibility, then why not America today?

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#317

Post by twblalock » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 10:58 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #302

rayiner wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, the fire department refused to accep…

Quoted post unavailable.

What's wrong on a moral level about this story is that the homeowners refused to pay for the fire department, decided to live on unincorporated land, and then expected the firemen to risk their lives to save property -- not to save lives, just to save property.

We can't have a functioning society if people who opt out of paying for it demand to benefit from it anyway. If people could get away with that, nobody would pay for the fire department and it wouldn't exist. By caving in this situation, the fire department would have signaled to everyone else that it's ok to not pay.

Maybe the tax that supports the fire department ought to be mandatory? Sure, that is how it works almost everywhere in the US. People who live in places where that is not the case are doing so on purpose, and they would vote against changing it.

Want to live in the middle of nowhere and depend on the government for little or nothing? Go for it, but don't complain when you want the government's help. Want to live in a city with a lot of government services? You can do that too. At least people have a choice.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#318

Post by emmelaich » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 11:02 PM UTC

Bouncingsoul1 wrote: post #230

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? 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".

Using times later than medieval reinforces the point though. Hardly irrelevant.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#319

Post by RC_ITR » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 11:03 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #313

RC_ITR wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any familiarity with those countries and where people live? Do you really think that metrics on quality of life in Krasnoyarsk Krai or Northwest Territories are drastically better than Wyoming? I wont even get started on what life is like in Xinjiang. EDIT: Also, you're saying that Australia, Canada, Russia and Brazil have good train infrastructure? And getting even more pedantic, you're a fan of the trai…

The trains in Xinjiang compare very favourably with those in the US. The media paints a very one-sided picture of what life is like there; not to defend the CCP's awful actions, but if the way certain communities in St Louis get treated were reported the same way...

>Xinjiang compare very favourably with those in the US

https://www.chinahighlights.com/china-trains/urumqi-lanzhou-...

LOL, keep spreading that propaganda comrade!

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#320

Post by autoexec » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 11:08 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #315

autoexec wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adults also know that collective agreements to provide the means to help those who are in trouble through no fault of their own are called "charity", and are best done by private institutions While your other arguments are subjective, this one is just plain factually wrong. It will always be far less efficient to depend on a few individuals to shoulder large expenses or for disparate organizations (each with their…

>* It will always be far less efficient to depend on a few individuals to shoulder large expenses or for disparate organizations (each with their own overhead expenses) to find and collect smaller contributions than it is for everyone to pay just a small amount and collectively cover an expense through a single origination.* On the assumption that the single organization will actually do the job, perhaps. But it won'…

Government doesn't always work as well as it should, but you have the power to change that. You can vote for changes and hold your elected officials accountable. That's the strength of government solutions. You and those around you come together to vote on what needs to be done, how it should be done, and who is responsible for overseeing that.

I also have family who worked in social services and they always wished they could do more to help people, but too many of the people around them were preventing that. Too many people voted against plans to increase funding and refused to hold officials responsible perhaps because of the letter next to that official's name, or because they didn't want to help "the wrong kinds of people" at all, or because they thought as you do that charity is enough to fix everything. If charities were the answer they'd have already stepped in to fill all the gaps left over after the government has done what it can, but of course they haven't.

This is the main weakness of government programs. They depend on people working together and holding their elected officials accountable. People vote against government programs, and refuse to hold anyone accountable, and then complain when the programs don't solve their problems and use that as evidence that the whole system can't work, but it's still clearly the most efficient way to solve many problems, and often the only way some people are currently getting any help at all. Improving it just requires us to put in the effort.