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When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

nytimes.com

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Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#51

Post by mnarayan01 »

arcanus wrote: post #2

> A man in the suburban South watched a chimney fire burn his house to the ground as he waited for the fire department, which billed him anyway and then sued him for $15,000 when he did not pay. Is one typically billed when you have the fire department arrive? I thought it was a public good.

> Is one typically billed when you have the fire department arrive? I thought it was a public good.

It's complicated. Unincorporated areas will often (depending on the state) leave firefighting to nearby municipalities, which will generally charge a periodic fee for coverage and bill property owners who do not pay the fee if/when they respond. Even some municipal corporations (e.g. towns, etc) do the same thing, though generally only in quite rural areas.

My impression is that it's generally pragmatic rather than ideological: most of us live in densely populated areas, but (in the US), most space is very sparsely populated.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#52

Post by hackuser »

humanrebar wrote: post #17
hackuser wrote: post #9

Free market enterprise requires, AFAIK, 'creative destruction' (business failure, freeing resources for new enterprises) and distribution of goods to those who can pay more. Therefore, I don't think it's a good solution when the specifications are that the institution cannot fail (e.g., you can't have the police department go out of business or otherwise fail to provide services), and when its good should be distribu…

So why not fix the problem at the demand side and not the supply side. If people can't afford essential-to-life services, isn't that the problem? While I'm on the subject, centrally planning and allocating the services doesn't really solve the problem of whether it's worth the cost to have one ambulance to serve a town of five people who live in the middle of nowhere. Someone still has to make the decision. We can co…

You created a fictional scenario and fictional people taking fictional actions, and then object to it all. I'm not sure that represents (other than a frustrated narrator).

I don't have the expertise or time to evaluate ambulance services, or water or police or road safety or much else; I have my own job to do. I don't want direct democracy, which is effectively what the comment describes (voting via checkbook). I like the republican model, where I elect representatives who study and decide these things for me. I call it "government".

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#53

Post by hackuser »

rayiner wrote: post #24

The article's focus on the private equity boogeyman is misdirected, for reasons that become apparent if you read far enough: > Private equity gained new power and responsibility as a direct result of the 2008 crisis. As cities and towns nationwide struggled to pay for basics like public infrastructure and ambulance services, private equity stepped in. The budgets of state and local governments around the country are…

> The budgets of state and local governments around the country are tapped out. Often, that's the result of problems that--though exacerbated by the financial collapse--have been in the making for decades.

Often it's the result of one party drastically cutting services and revenue, and taking the radical position that taxes, especially income taxes, can never go up.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#54

Post by kartan »

jzwinck wrote: post #16

In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…

> 911 is broken. Be prepared to take care of yourself.

For the past 30 years all around the world all cities are safer than ever. I don't see the catastrophic situation than you describe.

In any case if corporations are taking over basic services is a political issue that should be solved in elections and with political action.

"Be prepared to take care of yourself." is the wrong approach as it just asks people to renounce to their rights. You should defend your rights not happily renounce them.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#55

Post by PhasmaFelis »

winstonewert wrote: post #29
gozur88 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not work out as well as you'd expect. Insurance companies are going to run the numbers, and if they make the most money by covering only 95% of the houses and then just paying out the last 5% that's what they'll do.

Is that bad? If it costs the insurance company more to stop the fire then to replace my house, the rational action to take is to let the house burn.

Is it bad for the company that you are paying specifically to protect your house from fire to decide that they'd rather let your every mortal possession burn to ash and then cut you a check?

I want to be clear. Is this actually the question you're asking?

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#56

Post by dredmorbius »

Lazare wrote: post #49
URSpider94 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's more than enough blame to go around. Part of the issue is that private firms come in and pitch an option to cities and towns by which they can get out of their budget scrape by privatizing schools/fire/jails/traffic enforcement in return for granting a monopoly to a company and allowing them to charge new fees. This looks like an attractive option, rather than raising taxes, but I can't think of a time when I…

A lot of privatised systems work very well. Denmark has an almost entirely privatised emergency system; one company alone runs 65% of their fire brigades and 85% of their ambulance services, and it seems to work great. Frankly, this story seems to be "terribly run towns that mismanaged their way almost into bankruptcy and can no longer afford to provide critical services are also terrible at negotiating other contrac…

What are the regulations on those emergency services?

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#57

Post by dredmorbius »

arcanus wrote: post #2

> A man in the suburban South watched a chimney fire burn his house to the ground as he waited for the fire department, which billed him anyway and then sued him for $15,000 when he did not pay. Is one typically billed when you have the fire department arrive? I thought it was a public good.

There's the historical lesson of the fire brigade of Cassius: http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/people/a/crassus.htm

Crassus won a reputation for himself as a soldier in Sulla's campaigns in Italy (83), but fell out of favour because of his excessive greed in purchasing estates at knock-down prices during Sulla's proscriptions of his political opponents. Another source of his wealth was buying up property at risk from fire very cheaply and only then putting his private fire brigade into action. Other sources of his wealth were mines, and his business buying slaves, training them, and then re-selling them. In these ways he came to own most of Rome and increased his fortune from 300 talents to 7100 talents.

(A talent of silver is approximately 32kg, worth about 9 years of labour, so 7,100 talents would represent some 63,000 years of labour income. Very rough modern equivalent, about $2 billion, based on labour.)

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#58

Post by fanzhang »

jzwinck wrote: post #16

In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…

To add one more datapoint: my personal experience with 911 (called maybe 2-3 times for other people) has all been fast. Mostly responses within 5 minutes, and always within 10.

911 may have a local component and it could be your city being slow.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#59

Post by ec109695 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #30
jzwinck wrote: post #16

In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…

I founded and ran a VoIP 9-1-1 company for a few years. 911 is run and financed at the very local level. There's around 9000 PSAPs (public safety answering points) in the US, most of them have a large amount of leeway in doing their own thing. (Some states have better state-level coordination.) It's a not-excellently-paid job that is extremely stressful. It's extremely traumatic to hear someone dying, begging you for…

Could you and your guantamllan neighbors cooperate to share those guards amongst several houses? You could even create an easy to remember phone number ;)

Kidding aside, thank you for the thoughtful post.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#60

Post by [deleted] »

jzwinck wrote: post #16

In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…

[deleted]
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