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Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

tomscott.com

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Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#411

Post by turtledragonfly »

stickfigure wrote: post #380
turtledragonfly wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Ok, fair enough — was a public API at the time, which was subsequently removed/limited and apps that had been using it in that way were termed "abusive".

And I should correct myself that the phrase used by Zuck[1] was "breach of trust" not "data breach," though several other sources (articles, etc[2]) at the time did in fact use the term "data breach."

  [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180326162844/https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104712037900071
  [2] (example) https://money.com/facebook-cambridge-analytica-data-breach-numbers/

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#412

Post by thebradbain »

ejb999 wrote: post #403
rayiner wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicaid means testing is driven by the moral belief that people should support themselves before turning to the public for help. It’s driven primarily by that moral ideology, and not a desire to save money. In other respects Medicaid is extremely generous: no co-pays, no cost-benefit calculations for treatments, etc. But Americans in many cases would rather spend more money ensuring that public support only goes to…

Do we really want a system where a very elderly person, with say millions in assets, gets all their nursing home care for free in their final years, just so they can leave a bigger inheritance to their kids? I don't. Going thru this now with my own elderly parents - I am perfectly OK with medicare ending up owning the equity left in their house, and meager other assets - to recoup money spent on their care - people s…

I didn't say millions in assets -- in fact, the way the system works is that those are the only people who come out with any of value to pass down to their heirs! The system is working for those people as intended; they benefit from lower costs (since everyone has to pay market price) and they are not penniless from it. The rest are drained of everything they spent their life building, and denied the opportunity to share that with their loved ones.

The thing is that death is a universal experience; Many, if not most of us, will end up needing some form of late-life care. Private insurance companies often won't cover what is ultimately inevitable. It would make sense for more of our public policy to aid in what is so common.

The average nursing home cost is $7k/mo. The average nursing home stay is 1-2 years. That's enough money to bankrupt most US families entirely yet comparatively little in the public budget. We spend _much_ more public money on incarceration every year.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#413

Post by dang »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #190
zpthree wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want the benefits of society you can't ignore the costs. Every home that is protected by fire departments pays taxes in the developed world, this family chose to live in unincorporated land. Btw - The fire was started by the homeowners grandson who was lighting trash on fire and afterwards the homeowners son assaulted the fire chief.

Quoted post unavailable.

Would you please stop? You started a nationalistic flamewar, and then fueled it with 17 comments in this thread alone. Seriously not cool.

Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome here, regardless of which country you have a problem with. Please don't do this on HN again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#414

Post by dang »

Animatronio wrote: post #235
RC_ITR wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"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.

Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#415

Post by dang »

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…

You started a huge nationalistic flamewar and then fueled it over and over again. Other people broke the site guidelines as well, but your account was by far the main cause, and you broke the site guidelines very badly in several places. Please don't do anything like this again.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34072882 as well.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34054804.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#416

Post by dang »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #333
twblalock wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We can't have a functioning society if people who opt out of paying for it demand to benefit from it anyway. We clearly can. Why can't you? Over here, we help first, figure out who owes who later. In America, first you gotta figure out who's paying, then you get help.

Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#417

Post by dang »

abduhl wrote: post #344
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't have a functioning society if people who opt out of paying for it demand to benefit from it anyway. We clearly can. Why can't you? Over here, we help first, figure out who owes who later. In America, first you gotta figure out who's paying, then you get help.

In the last century you (as in “you over there,” not you) made Iceland default on its loans rather than help them out causing them to suffer both as a country and as a people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932011_Icelandic_fi... In the last decade you failed to offer help to hundreds of thousands of refugees because nobody could figure out who owed who. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_European_migrant_c…

Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#418

Post by dang »

WarChortle wrote: post #233
Aunche wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. So... I am sure that is one reason of the highest preventable death rate. doesn't invalidate GP point. > I'm supportive of universal healthcare, but this is a huge exaggeration. Sadly in a way its not an exaggeration at all, will doctors and nurses literally watch you die o…

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#419

Post by dang »

pdonis wrote: post #199
that_guy_iain wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You are egregiously misinformed about the US.

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#420

Post by dang »

LarryMullins wrote: post #363
that_guy_iain wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Quoted post unavailable.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how bad other comments are or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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