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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?

#371

Post by thegrimmest »

bombolo wrote: post #301
thegrimmest wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure - entire revolutions have been had about this, and extensive documents written, for centuries[1]. Not everyone is a negative utilitarian. I value living a society where cooperation is (maximally) voluntary . Involuntary cooperation is indistinguishable from a degree of slavery. 1. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp

Declaration of human rights was about the right to have your house burn down? You always learn some new made up crazy thing on the internet!

No, it's about not being forced into compulsory insurance schemes in various disguises.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#372

Post by RC_ITR »

lmm wrote: post #308
bloppe wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US operates on a fundamentally different scale from most other countries. It's so big and diverse (in terms of both people and biomes) that the only effective way to organize is heavily federated. Fire laws in California are very different from in Tennessee. There are a few ways to accurately paint Americans in broad strokes, but not many. I'd encourage you to travel around America a bit. Foreigners are often sho…

America has the largest amount of recorded donations to their rather stretched legal definition of a "charity". This says a lot more about the American tax code than it does about American generosity. I'd encourage you to travel around the world a bit.

Lmfao. I’d encourage you to really look inward and understand why you’re trying to gatekeeper the definition of charity.

What pray tell makes a legitimate charity and why did you get to decide?

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#373

Post by PakG1 »

qwytw wrote: post #135
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…

> 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". While a Crusade made up primarily of children is not realistic. The 'People's Crusade' was a thing. During the first Crusade 40 thousand or so poor peasants and various religious fanatics including many women and childre…

It is really weird reading this, it makes me realize that motivations and rationalizations of people who joined Jan 6 and similar events are really nothing new under the sun.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#374

Post by HWR_14 »

david422 wrote: post #188
HWR_14 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had not heard that. Reports I saw at the time said he "forgot". At any rate, in response to the story, the county changed it so paying when your house was already ablaze was a punitive but not impossible option. I believe it was $3,500 when they instituted it. Which, frankly, seems like the proper way to handle the moral hazard.

That's still the same problem though. If nobody pays the town is still going to be out money even if it's possible to collect $3500. And the reason they don't put out the blaze and then just charge if someone doesn't have insurance is because they won't be able to collect. How do you deal with freeloaders in society?

The town was paying for a fire department anyway. The additional fee ways for people outside the town.

Meanwhile, governments have excellent was of collecting on low-four figure debts secured by real estate.

And, as I pointed out, the appropriate punishment for freeloading is paying a heavy fine when you opt to use it.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#375

Post by max-ibel »

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…

Watch the bbc documentary “the crusades” by Terry Jones. I think it is pretty well researched.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#376

Post by logicchains »

PakG1 wrote: post #373
qwytw wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". While a Crusade made up primarily of children is not realistic. The 'People's Crusade' was a thing. During the first Crusade 40 thousand or so poor peasants and various religious fanatics including many women and childre…

It is really weird reading this, it makes me realize that motivations and rationalizations of people who joined Jan 6 and similar events are really nothing new under the sun.

The motivations of people who joined Jan 6 are very simple: they thought they had been disenfranchised because of unprecedented anomalies during vote counting on election day, which their opposition made no effort to explain.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#377

Post by hilbertseries »

logicchains wrote: post #376
PakG1 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really weird reading this, it makes me realize that motivations and rationalizations of people who joined Jan 6 and similar events are really nothing new under the sun.

The motivations of people who joined Jan 6 are very simple: they thought they had been disenfranchised because of unprecedented anomalies during vote counting on election day, which their opposition made no effort to explain.

Literally dozens of articles were written about a red mirage and how the mail in vote which would be counted later, would skew towards the democrats.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#378

Post by mewse »

veb wrote: post #269
that_guy_iain wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Here in NZ, when the Christchurch Mosque shootings happened, the Police just rammed the offender off the road and cuffed him... without firing a single shot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings Wee video here: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/11195... Honestly I think our Police do a lot of good. There's some bad apples, there's complaints - but that is normal. Overall, t…

> There's some bad apples

[caution: good-natured linguistic pedantry follows. Apologies in advance!]

As a point of interest, this usage of "bad apple" derives from the old folk wisdom: "one bad apple spoils the bunch".

Unlike quite a lot of old folk wisdom, this saying is literally true: mold growing on one apple will quickly jump to and colonise other nearby apples, and overripe apples emit a gas which causes other nearby fruit to ripen (and then overripen) much faster than normal; so it's important not to store overripe/moldy apples together with regular fruit!

Anyhow, my point is just this: "bad apples" doesn't mean that something is in the minority and therefore doesn't have much effect and can be safely ignored -- it means that something is in the minority but is likely to infect everything around it if urgent action isn't taken to separate them. If that wasn't your intended meaning, then "bad apples" was definitely the wrong metaphor to reach for. :)

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#379

Post by rayiner »

bruce511 wrote: post #361
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…

I agree with your categorization of this as a US issue,not a "3rd world" issue. As an ex fireman, in a so-called "3rd world" [1] country, we often got involved in fires "beyond our juristriction". Our job was to put fires out, not worry about insurance or legal liability etc. We were never reprimanded for doing so, and there was never a suggestion of anything other than gratitude. [1] 3rd world was originally the ter…

But it’s not “money rules everything.” Americans spend tremendous amounts of public money on, for example, extending the life of old people a few months. American social security is quite generous compared to other countries.

Instead in Americans are extremely rigid about rules and norms. You never just “not worry” about “legal liability.” It’s a country where criminals can sue you if they injure themselves robbing your house. For the most part, this is a good thing. Americans will also never ask you for a bribe, like is typical in the third world country I’m from.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#380

Post by stickfigure »

turtledragonfly wrote: post #248
stickfigure wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 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…

So maybe a fair re-phrasing would be: "Facebook provided personal information to Cambridge Analytica and they used this information to assist the Trump campaign" With the understanding that (1) the data was taken without the permission of all people impacted (i.e. if your friend installed the app and gave their permission, then you could be affected), and (2) it's debatable how effective the data actually was for the…

Around that era I used those APIs to build a somewhat novel (and not very successful) dating site where you could play matchmaker for your friends based on their likes. I assure you, the API was public.

At some point Facebook started getting flak for having APIs that grant access to data-about-friends. There are a couple ways of looking at this; one way is "I didn't grant my friends permission to share my data with an app!" the other is "you shared your data with friends via Facebook, what does it matter if they use the FB UI or some other app". It's a can of worms but I don't think anyone would call it a breach.

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