[HN Gopher] Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings ... ___________________________________________________________________ Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn? Author : zinekeller Score : 293 points Date : 2022-12-19 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.tomscott.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.tomscott.com) | nerdponx wrote: | I didn't realize this was even an assertion that people made at | all. | | It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. People at the time must | have known that fires in cities were extremely dangerous because | they could spread over a great area. It's logical that insurers | would want to work together to prevent _all_ fires, purely out of | self-interest to protect their insured properties, and then sue | the pants off negligent and /or uninsured property owners after | each near-miss. | | The paper in TFA says as much, but it's weird to me that people | would uncritically accept the proposed narrative in the first | place. | michaelt wrote: | _> It doesn 't make a lot of sense to me._ | | Consider the following: | | * The first Fire Brigade, in Rome, was established by someone | who would insist on buying your building before extinguishing | the fire [1] | | * In the present day, you can live in an unincorporated area, | decline fire protection offers from the county and from your | insurer, and the fire brigade won't come out if you have a fire | [2] | | * The article provides 11 different sources for the apparently | incorrect claim London's insurance fire brigades circa-1700 let | uninsured buildings burn. | | Personally I find it quite easy to understand why people might | believe the incorrect claim. | | [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus#Rise_t... | [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna39516346 | Retric wrote: | The Rome thing may or may not be true. | | It's quite possible it is true, but we are a long way from | any direct evidence that it was generally the case. | bombcar wrote: | Half the things we know about famous Romans come from | writings that were attacking or making fun of them, and | some are pretty clearly satire or jokes. | pifm_guy wrote: | But then what is the incentive for anyone to get coverage if | they know that any fires will be put out regardless...? | | Unless the fire service is paired with insurance covering the | cost of a rebuild? But I don't think the original fire services | offered that. | cuteboy19 wrote: | It's similar to how hospitals are required to save you if you | are dying but at the same time you are still on the hook for | any and all costs incurred | pifm_guy wrote: | It could be... But were the laws that way in 17th century | England? | | I suspect not, because property ownership in England used | to be secret - ie. Even the government may not have known | who owned land. And if you don't know who owns it, who must | pay the bill? | bee_rider wrote: | It is covered in the article; the free-rider problem was a | problem, in London eventually the fire-brigades appear to | have basically convinced the city to buy them because they | couldn't solve it. | alex028502 wrote: | > Furthermore, only buildings were insured - neither their | contents, nor the lives of their occupants, were covered. | | Yeah it sounds to me from the article like the insurance was | for the rebuild, and the firefighting was something the | insurance company did to reduce their payouts. | | So I imagine if you didn't have insurance, you still were at | more risk than if you did, similar to now, because the fire | dept isn't going to save everything every time. | ars wrote: | > But then what is the incentive for anyone to get coverage | if they know that any fires will be put out regardless...? | | The coverage is apparently to pay for damages. It's not fire | insurance, it's property insurance, in case of fire. | constantcrying wrote: | There are rational reasons to reduce risk, even if it isn't | some game theoretic optimum. One can easily imagine that | certain owners either were concerned about an increased risk | of fire or high damages in such an event and we're willing to | bear the costs. | | The incentives are very clear, if nobody does it, no fire | brigades will exist. (I can also imagine other reasons, e g. | membership might have been required by some law or by | association.) And in the end every fire which is extinguished | is a fire which didn't spread. | | Just some little aside, today there are people who do | firefighting _for free_. What are the incentives for that? | sircastor wrote: | > The paper in TFA says as much, but it's weird to me that | people would uncritically accept the proposed narrative in the | first place. | | That's the point though. In spite of the logical and practical | evaluation, there was evidence from multiple, trusted sources | that said otherwise. And history is full of people doing dumb | things and making bad decisions, so why not this one too? | | Also, it's self-affirming - "Look at us! We've got problems, | but at least we know well enough to fight fires when there is | one, despite money problems" | jtlienwis wrote: | Maritime Law had a provision for salvors that saved ships in | distress from sinking. If a salvor saved a ship from sinking, | they were entitled to a percentage of the worth of a ship. Maybe | terrestrial law needs something similar in the case of uninsured | building on fire. | turtledragonfly wrote: | With private fire brigades, there was sometimes a monetary | reward for being first to the scene. Sounds like a good | incentive, right? But it resulted in competition between | companies, to the point that they would sabotage each other. | The article itself has some examples, and there are similar | ones from United States' history. | | I imagine some similar issues have happened at sea, but it | seems harder to take advantage of and make profit on, since it | probably wasn't too common for ships with expensive cargo to | sink. And even if they did, it would be hard to guarantee | getting there in time. Whereas in a city, fires are a pretty | regular occurrence. | woodruffw wrote: | We probably have better financial structures in 2022 than that, | like insurance (or taxes that fund professional firefighting, | like NYC). | | Besides: it isn't clear we should _incentivize_ untrained | professionals to run into burning buildings. Ships are somewhat | unique in that the people who are saving you are _also_ | sailors, and are presumably at least minimally qualified to | help another ship in distress. | horsawlarway wrote: | There's no reason you can't limit the reward to registered | groups (ex: existing fire departments). | horsawlarway wrote: | I actually think this makes the most sense. | | At least in the US - most areas assess the value of the | structure and the value of the land separately. | | I'd be in favor of providing a lien on the existing title in | the amount of the structure's value (or some relatively high | percentage of it, maybe depending on how much is salvaged by | the firefighters) if the fire department puts out an uninsured | building. | | There's no reason to let it burn - it's a waste of resources, | big source of pollutants, and a risk to neighboring areas. But | I also think you can't reward property owners for taking a | gamble that their property won't catch on fire. | Spooky23 wrote: | Or, god forbid, protect the general welfare of the population | of Yahoo County by having a fire service? | | The government has the ability to tax for such services. As a | partner who own a piece of a rental property in a ex-urban | town, the volunteer fire company levies a tax that amounts to | $300/year (based on valuation) which covers 2-3 towns with | fire, ems and paramedic services. | horsawlarway wrote: | Sure - but that doesn't cover the cases where we clearly | have folks who do not pay, or regions that vote in ways to | clearly place no priority on those shared services. | | And in your case - the results are actually very similar | (What do you think happens when you fail to pay your | city/county taxes? A lien on your title happens...) | | So again - I'm all for creating shared services and paying | for them, but some folks aren't. In those cases I'd still | rather not see people's homes burn (for all sorts of | reasons) and this is a meaningful incentive to put the home | out. | linuxdude314 wrote: | There shouldn't need to be any external incentive aside | from it being the firefighters job. | | There seems to be a lot of people on this site that think | life is fair. | | Is it fair that you paid for firefighting and your | neighbor didn't but still had their house saved during a | fire? | | Arguably no, but that is completely irrelevant as it is | still in the greater public interest for the fire to be | put out. | | There's a certain childish aspect about caring about | fairness in these types of situations as opposed to what | is right and moral. | bombcar wrote: | The problem comes when the only government is the county - | it may simply be impractical to have a firefighting crew | that can reach anything in a reasonable amount of time. | (There are sparse counties in the US that can't be crossed | by a firefighting helicopter in less than 60 minutes). | sethhochberg wrote: | https://cpb- | us-w2.wpmucdn.com/sites.udel.edu/dist/4/10696/fi... | | Voters in the county in question did eventually approve | "universal" fire response, either small prepaid fee or | post-paid full cost after response, but it sounds as though | they won't consider converting the fees into standard taxes | until 70% of residents have opted in to protection. Quite a | few people who live and vote there seemingly have no | interest in fire service. | gusgus01 wrote: | Interestingly, something similar happens with maritime law as | to what was alluded to in the article and in this post. Similar | to the competition and chaos caused by "First to respond and | put it out", certain salvage companies will ignore Coast Guard | warnings that a boat is already accounted for, that the | insurance company has already hired a salvage company to | reclaim the boat, and instead other salvage companies will try | to hurry out to the boat and claim it. Similar to the Terry | Pratchett quote, salvage companies will fortuitously find that | your boat detached from a mooring ball and drifted to sea if | it's left unmanned for long periods of time. | | So while a pretty good system, it's not without its flaws and | perverse incentives. | photochemsyn wrote: | Clearly, the fundamental argument here is about private provision | of services vs. public provision of services. Is the optimal fire | protection service one based on private subscriber payment to | firefighters or a publicly (taxpayer or other government revenue- | funded) operated fire department? | | The best IMO way to view this is to first clarify whether or not | that service falls into the 'natural monopoly' category, at least | when it comes to basic provision of services. That category is | defined by having a lack of meaningful or feasible competition, | i.e. would multiple competing services result in a better outcome | than a single state-run service would? | | My view is that provision of fire and police services, health | care and education services, water, electricity and fiber optic | connectivity service, as well as the maintenance of roads, etc. | generally fall into the natural monopoly sector, with caveats: | | 1) People should be able to augment basic services however they | wish, to they extent they can afford. One can purchase a fire | engine and a water tank and keep it on one's property, for | example. Private security guards can be hired to augment police | protection. One can hire a home nurse and expensive medical | equipment, etc. Private tutors can be hired to augment a child's | education. | | 2) State-run services should have competitive processes built in | - i.e. we may have a public fire department, but the manufacture | and sale of fire-fighting equipment is a competitive business and | should not be monopolized, etc. Corruption in the form of fire | officials giving preferential contracts to sub-par manufacturers | in exchange for bribes should be a serious criminal activity, | etc. | jasonhansel wrote: | > People should be able to augment basic services however they | wish, to they extent they can afford. | | Here's the problem with such schemes. Often both the providers | and the customers of "augmenting services" will have an | incentive to hollow out the state-provided service until it's | substandard. | | For instance, let's say the government provides "basic" health | insurance but allows private plans. Then the providers of | private plans will lobby the government to keep the "basic" | service as low-quality as possible, so that people are | incentivized to buy the private plans. Furthermore, those who | purchase private plans will not personally benefit much from | the state-provided scheme, so they will have little interest in | its success and little desire to subsidize it. | | In the worst case, the result is that the state-run service | becomes permanently low-quality. Then people attribute this to | public-sector inefficiency and say that "obviously" the free | market would do a better job. Then the state-provided service | gets abolished when it never had a chance to succeed. | leetrout wrote: | 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 | alex028502 wrote: | > South Fulton's mayor said that the fire department can't let | homeowners pay the fee on the spot, because the only people who | would pay would be those whose homes are on fire. | alex028502 wrote: | oops - by the time I recovered my password to post this | excerpt, lots of other people already had | alex028502 wrote: | There must be a price that the fire department could | theoretically charge if they were gonna always charge on the | spot, and still make a profit, as long as there is some | minimum number of fires. | | Also it says that this TN guy had insurance. I wonder if it | would have been worth his insurance company's while to make | sure that $75 was always paid, either by paying it | themselves, or making him pay it, or paying it and sending | him the bill, and somehow making it a condition.. to protect | themselves from having to pay out... as the London article is | about insurance companies starting fire brigades themselves | for that very reason | asddubs wrote: | sounds like a good way to encourage arson | ghufran_syed wrote: | How would you deal with the credit risk? or are you | assuming that the homeowner has arbitrary amounts of cash, | at hand, but somehow _not_ in the burning house? | FinnKuhn wrote: | I guess they have a house wich could account for some of | that credit risk? | lolinder wrote: | A house that now requires tens of thousands of dollars of | repairs. | jahewson wrote: | Not once it's on fire. | systems_glitch wrote: | Don't know how it works there, but the bank through which | we have our home loan requires insurance, payment of | property taxes, etc. and to ensure all that actually | happens it's done through an escrow account. We pay one | bill to the bank every month, they handle the rest. Seems | like a solid way to make sure these kinda things don't | happen, and then we can't forget something like the | property tax, which happens every six months. | | Back on the farm, which is 30 minutes from the nearest fire | brigade, one does have to pay to opt-in for fire service. | They still answer the phone if you're not on the list. | You're also strongly encouraged to have a pond or cistern | near anything you want saved. I don't know if the farm's | mortgage required payment of that fee, but I do know we | were given insurance discounts _for_ having ponds near the | houses and barn. | | I do know of one case of a particularly belligerent | property owner who refused to pay, had fires, still | wouldn't pay, etc. who did eventually wind up with | firefighters watching his property burn. Hard to really | feel bad about something like that. | fatbird wrote: | The FD had tried retroactively charging for fire services, | but then spent more on collections than they'd collect. | People living in the unincorporated part of the county were | usually trying to pay as little as possible for anything. | Three times they voted down taxes to fund fire services | generally. | | Not to mention the question of duress when the FD shows up | and says "sign this and we'll put out the fire." | [deleted] | analog31 wrote: | A friend of mine lived in a rural town with a weird mistake in | its code, that let him build at the top of an extremely steep | grade. The town said, legally we can't stop you (though they | immediately fixed the code) but there's no way a fire truck can | get up your driveway. Sure enough, his large detached shed with | vintage cars in it went up in smoke, and the firefighters tried | but couldn't get their truck up there. | Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote: | Money can be exchanged for goods and services. If you want your | house extinguished then pay for it. | grecy wrote: | In developed countries that's where our tax dollars go. | WalterBright wrote: | One example in a nation of 330,000,000 is not indicative of any | sort of systemic problem or of what "we" do. | red_phone wrote: | I grew up in a poor, rural area of the US and can attest that | it's true... if you didn't pay the fee (and affix the requisite | metal sign below your mailbox) you were on your own in the | event of a fire. | | At that time and place, fire protection wasn't considered a | public service unless you lived in town. I never heard anyone | question the arrangement and there was little appetite in that | era for the tax increase that would've been required to provide | universal protection. | bluGill wrote: | That depends on which rural area. I've lived in several rural | areas, and we always had automatic fire service provided by | the township, it was just another required tax line item. | Normally they contracted with the nearest town (I know in one | case the township legally owned half the town fire department | and paid half the costs, the others I don't know what the | details were, just that there was service from the nearest | town). I know of townships that don't contract with a nearby | town - but then they go in with other rural townships to form | a fire department (generally volunteer - farmers sometimes | got a call to leave the tractor and fight a fire) | db48x wrote: | Townships only exist in New Jersey and Pennsylvania; most | of the rest have counties. As you say, it varies from place | to place; any of them could start a fire service if the | residents vote for it and fund it via local taxes. | mbg721 wrote: | Ohio has townships within its counties; they serve as a | catch-all for areas that aren't otherwise incorporated as | cities/villages, and that can make a big difference for | local property tax and services. | supertrope wrote: | https://www.wkms.org/government-politics/2012-03-15/south-fu... | yardie wrote: | 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. | gambiting wrote: | Hmmmm. I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life | even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or | pay taxes or whatever. I'm not sure I want the same "protect | at all costs" attitude extended to buildings, but fire can | definitely spread and even if they don't care about your | property they might care about other places. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _fire can definitely spread and even if they don 't care | about your property they might care about other places_ | | They protected the neighbouring property. | ghufran_syed wrote: | Not true. An _emergency_ department in the US is obligated | to provide life-saving care, as are EMS services and | hospital doctors _if_ the ER doc thinks you have an | _immediately_ life threatening condition . But a random | oncologist has no obligation to treat you if you have a | life-threatening cancer, _unless_ you go to an ER and they | determine that your condition is immediately life- | threatening (say, a perforated bowel). Then the surgeon | _will_ treat you enough that you are not _inmediately_ | dying, but they are not obligated to say, remove an | underlying cancer if it's not causing immediately life | threatening problems | [deleted] | yamtaddle wrote: | > Hmmmm. I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life | even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or | pay taxes or whatever. | | ERs in the US are required to provide stabilizing care to | patients who come in, even if the patient can't pay, by | law. It's a law because otherwise some of them wouldn't. | bryanlarsen wrote: | It's also a Reagan law. So you can say that it was Reagan | that introduced universal healthcare to the US. | yamtaddle wrote: | Eh, kinda, but it's not like you can walk into an ER with | just _any_ condition and get treated for free. You 've | got to be having pretty serious problems before they're | required to do anything about it, and even then they're | not required to fully treat you, just get you stable. | Kkoala wrote: | Imagine thinking that mandatory stabilizing emergency | care means "universal healthcare" | | I hope that was a joke | superpatosainz wrote: | That's not what universal healthcare means. | citilife wrote: | Then you protect the insured buildings, not really sure why | it's an issue? | | The same logic could apply to police... what if all the | crime is coming from an unincorporated part of town? Do you | just go and start policing it (kind of like an invading | army occupying)? Or do you erect borders / station patrol | cars near key locations? | db48x wrote: | You call the county sheriff. Sheriffs and courts were the | original reason why counties exist, and why there aren't | any parts of the country that exist outside of a county, | while there are quite a lot of people living outside of | any incorporated city. | tedunangst wrote: | Usual response is the city annexes the land and starts | policing it. | chadash wrote: | But people complain about this too. No one seriously talks | about not treating people in the ER with gun wounds, but | Obamacare explicitly introduced the mandate that you get | insurance or pay a penalty to address this very issue. | Everyone is entitled to a basic level of care, but the | mandate says that you should have to pay for it. | someweirdperson wrote: | "Gun wound" as in a wound caused by (actively) using a | gun, or a bullet wound, typically caused by someone else | using a gun? I could understand the former (like | excluding accidents while skiing, skydiving, whatever), | but excluding the latter seem pretty cynical. | dmoy wrote: | The vast majority of gun wounds in the US are purposeful | crimes or suicides | | For deaths, there's maybe 300 accidental deaths, 10,000 - | 15,000 homicides, and like 60,000 suicides. Non-death | injuries scale similarly, with the caveat that like 6,000 | ish people per year try to kill themselves with a gun and | fail, but still injure themselves. | vkou wrote: | The Obamacare penalty for not buying insurance was | eliminated by Trump, because reintroducing the free rider | problem is a cornerstone of GOP health policy. | | Reinstating the penalty is going to cost political | goodwill, which is why the Dems aren't doing it. | | Regardless of whether the penalty is or is not in place, | I wouldn't recommend being poor and sick, regardless of | whether you are insured, or are freeloading. | colechristensen wrote: | It wasn't the Trump administration but the 5th Circuit | Court of Appeals which struck down the mandate as | unconstitutional and being liberal and a supporter of | health care reform I think they had a point. I can't see | in the constitution where the federal government has the | power to force me to buy health insurance. I like my | constitutional rights being protected even when the thing | being compelled (me having insurance) is a good idea. It | means that things which are not quite so good of ideas | have less chance of being forced on me later. | jjeaff wrote: | The plaintiffs in the case were several gop attorney | generals. Related cases were also carried out by the | Trump admin. And several courts had previously upheld | that the ACA was constitutional because it does not force | you to buy health insurance. It actually just imposed a | fine if you didn't and that fine was considered a tax, | which Congress has constitutional authority to levy. The | GOP forum shopped to get in front of a rubber stamp | republican judge. | | Additionally, the whole point of these cases was not | simply to get rid of the penalty. The idea was to get rid | of the penalty so they could go back to the supreme court | and again claim that the mandate is unconstitutional | because now there is no "tax" associated with it. | | I don't know where things are at now, but it seems | unlikely to go anywhere now because it would be difficult | to argue that buying insurance is required at all at this | point. So we are left with the backup gop strategy of | hoping that disarming the mandate will simply bankrupt | the program. At least until republican voters wake up and | realize that the program is miles better than what we had | before. | colechristensen wrote: | I likewise do not approve of the Feds expanding their | powers arbitrarily by declaring the punishment for | whatever they wouldn't otherwise be allowed to enforce "a | tax". Calling the insurance mandate constitutional | because the punishment was a "tax" was abusing the intent | of the law. | generj wrote: | If you worried about fines being used to deter activities | society doesn't want, and that fine money being collected | as tax revenue, you are at least 200 years too late. | yamtaddle wrote: | It's pointless to try to draw a distinction here, because | you can re-frame the exact same behavior several | different ways, some of which are already common, so it | doesn't represent any expansion of power. Like, raise | taxes by that much and give people with insurance a | credit for it, but not those without insurance. Done. No | "worse" than e.g. child tax credits, as far as | constitutionality. Insisting that the law do some | particular word-dance to get to the exact same place | isn't productive and doesn't defend liberty. | vkou wrote: | Trump's government repealed the individual mandate | penalty, and then the court ruled ruled that in it's new | form, it no longer qualified as a tax and was | unconstitutional. (Not that this meant anything, since | the legality of a fee of $0 doesn't matter.) | | The court case as a whole argued that because the GOP | changed the ACA in a manner that made part of it (the $0 | fee) illegal, the entirety of the ACA should be made | illegal. | | The fifth circuit agreed with some of the arguments in | the case (the fee one), but did not practically change | anything about the ACA. | | And then SCOTUS, surprising ~everyone, ruled that | actually the whole of the ACA is constitutional. | | Look at this timeline, and you tell me - who spent years | trying to re-introduce the free rider problem, and to | break the ACA? Congress, the president, and the plaintiff | states... or the fifth circuit, which when presented with | a singular, narrow question, ruled that a $0 fee | (whatever that is) isn't a tax? | | Now, as of 2022, we are in a world where the ACA has been | thoroughly litigated, and is still here, with the free | rider problem hanging like a millstone over its neck. | P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: | calling insurance a tax is about as strong an indication | of regulatory capture as I can think of. | | It should have never been a tax specifically because it's | an unconstitutional act. Calling it a tax is the letter | vs the spirit of the constitution. | | If you and others like yourself want to ensure everyone | has health insurance then __make it mandatory for the | state to pay for it__. Anything else and you're just | taxing the poor for being poor. | vkou wrote: | > it's an unconstitutional act. | | That is an interesting opinion, but at this point, both a | conservative, and then a super-conservative, packed-with- | federalist-society SCOTUS has disagreed with you twice on | this issue (5-4) and then (7-2). It's about as written- | in-stone as you can get in the United States. | | The courts think this is above-board, the executive | thinks this is above-board, most of the public thinks its | above-board, it's safe to say its above-board. | mbg721 wrote: | As I recall, the whole "call the penalty a tax" thing was | Roberts' tortured justification for allowing it in the | 5-4 vote. Nobody ever really believed it was a tax. | P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: | Slavery was also considered above-board at one point, | so... | | lets not use that as justification, shall we? | | carrying private service X is required for you to exist | in the united states. If you don't pay for X, you get | fined Y as a punishment. | | yep, I'm sure the powers-that-be considering that above- | board should be the only justification we need! | vkou wrote: | > Slavery was also considered above-board at one point, | so... | | It was also perfectly constitutional[0], hence the need | for that 13th amendment. And that civil war thing. As it | turns out, the constitution kind of sucks[0], it has a | lot of problems with it. Fewer than it did in the past, | but we aren't quite at the end of history just yet. | | You're going to need a better complaint than 'it's | unconstitutional', as this is pretty verifiably | constitutional. The people who have been empowered[1] by | the founding fathers to determine what is, and what is | not constitutional have determined that this is | constitutional. It's not a matter of opinion at this | point. | | > carrying private service X is required for you to exist | in the united states. | | And that's nothing new. Government can compel all sorts | of things from you. Showing up to contribute your labour | to a jury duty. Involuntary servitude in the military. | Taxing the land you live on. Following emergency orders. | Not heading a communist political movement. Every society | - even this society - provides you with privileges, and | requires obligations from you. | | This obligation has been ruled to be well within the | legal framework of this society, and if you think it | should be outside that legal framework, you should look | into passing a constitutional amendment on the subject. | | Or, you could believe that this obligation is a | constitutional, but bad idea, and have the legislature | repeal it. Either way, it's currently constitutional. [0] | | [0] You're confusing 'constitutional' with 'just'. They | are not the same thing. | | [1] Actually, SCOTUS' powers in this sphere are what's | unconstitutional[2], but we all close our eyes, and | collectively pretend that they are. | | [2] You're not going to find anything in either the | constitution, or passed legislature granting SCOTUS the | incredibly broad powers it currently enjoys. These powers | were invented out of thin air, and are backed by neither | fiat, nor democratic will. All that the constitution says | on the subject is 'We should, like, probably have courts. | That should do stuff, maybe.' | P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: | stop tilting at windmills, | | the question is whether or not the government can force | you to pay for a __PRIVATE__ service just for | __EXISTING__ within the borders of the US. | | There is __NO PRECEDENT__ for this. The closest you can | get are things like car insurance where you're required | to carry insurance in order to drive on US roads. You can | choose not to drive, you cannot choose to "not exist". | | That puts this into an entirely different category. The | fact that it originally got rationalized as a tax opens a | whole different can of worms. Good luck refusing to pay | taxes. | dahfizz wrote: | I agree with you, but the "tax" is the penalty for not | having health insurance. The health insurance itself | isn't considered a tax. | djbebs wrote: | There is no free rider problem. | yamtaddle wrote: | 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. | dmitriid wrote: | 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. | yamtaddle wrote: | 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. | jjeaff wrote: | Of course there is. You aren't denied service at a | hospital even if you don't have health insurance. That is | a free rider problem. | mhalle wrote: | The Reagan administration, I believe, imposed the | unfunded mandate on emergency rooms to treat patients | using EMTALA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Med | ical_Treatment_an... | | This mandate makes sense from a moral point of view, | especially for true emergency situations. However, the | act didn't take care of the cost of care, which was | placed on hospitals and ultimately passed on to other | patients and the government. Obamacare attempted to | address this issue. | | EMTALA also distorted US healthcare be redirecting poorer | people to expensive emergency care rather than preventive | or primary care, which might well serve many of their | needs better. That's also something that Obamacare was | designed to fix. | bombcar wrote: | https://healthcostinstitute.org/emergency-room/ouch-new- | data... | | $80 billion of 3.4 trillion. A rounding error. | P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: | it's fire, if they're ever not doing it with the same | fervor then we have a problem. | | It's one thing to declare something too dangerous and | work on containment, but what's being described here | isn't that. | yardie wrote: | They will save your life. They won't treat your trick knee, | erectile dysfunction, or failing vision. And they | eventually put it out to prevent it spreading. Just not | with the same fervor of preventing property damage. | flutas wrote: | > And they eventually put it out to prevent it spreading. | | Reading the article, that's not true. | | They watered down the fence line to protect someone | else's land. | | > Firefighters did eventually show up, but only to fight | the fire on the neighboring property, whose owner had | paid the fee. | | > "They put water out on the fence line out here. They | never said nothing to me. Never acknowledged. They stood | out here and watched it burn," Cranick said. | | So to your examples... | | > They will save your life. They won't treat your trick | knee, erectile dysfunction, or failing vision. | | It would be closer to the story if it was "they won't | save you, but they'll spray down everyone else with a | disinfectant to protect them from your disease." | monkmartinez wrote: | Funny, we get called for much less than a hurt knee and | failing vision via 911 every day. I don't have a choice | other to send them to the ER if that is what they want. I | recently went to a call where the young man thought he | took too much "extenze"... Long story short, we checked | vitals and asked if he wanted to be seen at ER for | further evaluation. "Nah man, I got work to do now... | just thought I was gonna die for a second." Anxiety and | Panic... number one call type. | rhacker wrote: | My wife called for me because I accidentally drank my | mouthwash. I couldn't speak and technically couldn't | breath for a minute. And I would have been fine, but the | bottle said to call poison control (or something - this | was 10 years back) if ingested. So my wife called while I | was wheezing. By the time the ambulance arrived I was | totally fine... sorry about that too | Spooky23 wrote: | They will evaluate you and give you a ride home if you | are indigent. There are places where it's not uncommon to | call 911 for a runny nose or whatever, request ER care, | and get the medicab home. | smnrchrds wrote: | > _They will save your life. They won 't treat your trick | knee, erectile dysfunction, or failing vision._ | | I thought in the US, hospitals were only required to | stabilize, not treat, non-paying patients. For example, | if someone has cancer, they are not required to perform | surgery or chemotherapy, just stabilize their symptoms at | the moment. | kortilla wrote: | Saving burning buildings with no people in them is still a | risk to the firefighters' lives. Why go through that when | the owners explicitly declined the protection repeatedly? | zehaeva wrote: | This actually hasn't always been the case. | | In fact Hospitals were not required to treat you until | 1986, which was part of the COBRA act. | | Prior to that there was a large practice of "Patient | Dumping" where a hospital would kick you out if they found | out they you couldn't pay for your treatment. Hospitals in | the US would literally let you die out side the ER doors. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_a | n... | LorenPechtel wrote: | No. Hospitals will do what they have to *against immediate | threats*. They will not do what's needed in the bigger | picture if they are not paid. You don't get the | chemotherapy etc if you can't pay. | Spooky23 wrote: | Sort of. | | They will save you from an acute emergency, stabilize you, | then dump you into a care home with inadequate care or to | the street as appropriate, where you play the long game of | succumbing to whatever ails you. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Going by the linked article, they did care about | neighboring property (whose owner paid the fee in advance), | so they controlled the spread. | fatbird wrote: | The municipal fire department's insurer told them that they | would not cover injuries sustained while fighting fires on | uninsured homes, which was the final straw for the fire | department. | | The FD had tried for years to find a workable solution and | failed because the people in the unincorporated part of the | county _just didn 't want to pay for fire services_. IIRC, | the county had tried three times in the previous decade to | pass taxes to either fund the municipal FD or set up their | own; three times the residents of the unincorporated part | voted against it. The FD had tried retroactively charging | owners, and spent more on collections than they'd earn. | paxys wrote: | Doctors will save your life, not your property. It's the | exact same in this case. | LarryMullins wrote: | > _I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even | if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay | taxes or whatever_ | | So will firefighters. They'll save your life to the best of | their ability, no matter any contracts, payments, taxes, | etc. | | Saving your house is another matter. | monkmartinez wrote: | Number one priority on any emergency scene. Life | safety... my crew comes first, but I have taken some | serious risk to save people. Once the humans and animals | are safe, everything else is less concerning. Risk a lot | to save a lot. Most "things" can be replaced. My crew | takes great pride in saving homeowners animals these days | as we now have some tools to help post smoke/heat | exposure (Cyanokit and O2). | flandish wrote: | Adding a second reply with same sentiment. I am also a | firefighter, and my main "assignment" over the years has | been search/rescue. | | We'll always risk to reward. But more and more the phase | after life saving is trending toward "surround and drown" | - not that I want to fight like detroit in the 2010's, | but yes we do make a call sometimes to stop risking when | lives are all confirmed safe. | bombcar wrote: | There's also a point where a structure is a total loss | even if the "damage doesn't look so bad from out here" at | which point letting it burn as long as other buildings | aren't in danger may be the safest thing to do. | elliottkember wrote: | Thank you (both) for your service to the community. | fakedang wrote: | Coming from a poor "uncivilized" country, while now | living in an "uncivilized" Arab country with barbaric | laws, what the f** is even this? I thought that taxes | were supposed to pay for basic neighborhood services, | including fire, police and emergency services? | | Did capitalism hit America so hard that they kicked them | back to the Roman Era (yes, I'm referring to Crassus | here)? | munificent wrote: | 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 | of 3.4/km^2, almost ten times more people per square | kilometer. | | People outside of the US really have no idea how empty | much of the country is. I think there's an assumption | that just because much of the land is livable (i.e. not | desert, bare rock, etc.), it must occupied. But that's | simply not the case here. | mytailorisrich wrote: | I think there is a difference between a remote place that | is difficult to access and a place that is not entitled | to use public firefighters' service. IMHO the former has | no bearing on the latter. | | I am not judging the way things work in the US, just | commenting that I don't think that population density is | relevant here as the issue is one of right. | | Now, of course, if you live 100 miles from the nearest | town it may well take hours for the police or | firefighters to show up when you call them. That's | another issue. | | Edit: I must have written something offensive without | realising it... | bombcar wrote: | Much of the Midwest is sparsely populated but not | unpopulated - you're never more than a half mile from a | house but never much closer than that. It can cause weird | servicing issues. | rayiner wrote: | State and local governments aren't exempt from tort laws, | etc. If they commit to service a location 100 miles away, | and can't practically do so, or someone gets hurt in | trying to make heroic efforts to do so, they can and will | get sued. And in such a suit, making that sort of | unrealistic commitment can and will be held against them. | mytailorisrich wrote: | I don't think that this is how it works (paying taxes | doesn't entitle to a level of service) but I admit I | don't know US law. | | As a side note, in this very case the issue wasn't | remoteness since they could have had access to | firefighters for a small annual fee. Rather it was a | legal and administrative issue. But I would indeed be | curious if voluntarily paying a fee rather then being | taxed can have an impact on any enforceable expectation | of service. | munificent wrote: | _> I don 't think that population density is relevant | here as the issue is one of right._ | | It is absolutely relevant because services can only be | logistically and economically viable at certain levels of | density. Fire services aren't very useful if it takes | them a two-hour drive to reach the fire. So they have a | maximum radius where they are useful. They only provide | value to the people within that radius. If the density is | too low, then there aren't enough people in there to | afford supporting fire services. | mytailorisrich wrote: | Public services are not expected to be 'economically | viable' on their own. Moreover, whether there are enough | people to support service is also a purely administrative | and political issue. | | You're not addressing my point, either, which is that | there is a big difference between getting a crap service | because you're hard to reach (which does happen including | here in Europe) and having no right to call for help in | the first place. | | Again, I am not criticising, I am just thinking that | there are different, separate issues here. | vdqtp3 wrote: | > Public services are not expected to be 'economically | viable' on their own. | | They inherently are. If these neighborhoods have fire | coverage equivalent to that of a metropolis, but they | would be paid for via taxation at the rate of $50K per | year per household, that's not economically viable. | fakedang wrote: | 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? | nisegami wrote: | By living on unincorporated land, they wouldn't have been | subject to the tax that pays for the fire department | (which would be county level or city level I'm guessing?) | bombcar wrote: | City; counties only have states above them so there isn't | "out of county land" usually. | Larrikin wrote: | Some states like Virginia have city and county both at | the top local level. Richmond City is completely separate | from the extremely rural Richmond county located more | than an hour away. | | Virginia is also technically a Commonwealth and not a | state as well. | bombcar wrote: | Virginia has lots of oddities- like being west of West | Virginia. | Majromax wrote: | > I thought that taxes were supposed to pay for basic | neighborhood services | | _Neighbourhood_ is the operative word here. In some | parts of the rural United States, homes are far away and | far between. Public services of the kind expected in | populated areas are impractical, particularly for | protection of property rather than life. | | With that as a baseline, some "rural" areas maintain this | peculiar, low-cost characteristic even as they become | more populated. There's a degree of self-sorting | behaviour as well, since some residents become attracted | to the area specifically for its vanishingly small local | tax burden. | [deleted] | comte7092 wrote: | This is a place where people actively choose not to pay | taxes instead of paying and receiving services. | | "Unincorporated land" means that the landowners have | chosen not to incorporate (create) a municipal (ie | city/neighborhood) government. | | It's "rugged individualism". | mushbino wrote: | Considering the location, I imagine they couldn't afford it. | HWR_14 wrote: | The family accepted fire protection from their insurer and | claim they forgot to pay the $75 fee, not declined to do so. | It's possible they opted out, it's also possible it was an | oversight. Certainly, the more human thing would be to make | opting in/out more explicit and handle a late payment by | sending it to collections (or reminder notifications) instead | of just turning service off. | | Or do you have any evidence they actively opted out of the | $75 payment? | fatbird wrote: | A reporter on the scene spoke to the homeowner, who said he | didn't pay the fee because he thought he could just pay | after, like happened previously. He literally thought he | could get away with not paying unless a fire happened. It's | a textbook case of moral hazard. | | I discussed the case a lot at the time it happened, and it | never came out that he "forgot" to pay the fee. It was very | clear at the time that he thought he didn't need to and | they'd put out the fire anyway. | LorenPechtel wrote: | Exactly. There are two separate cases: | | 1) Insured by another company. The sensible course of | action is to fight the fire and bill them. Every company | benefits from such cooperation. | | 2) Uninsured. The moral hazard problem, if too many | people are not paying the only sensible approach is to | let uninsured buildings burn. | bombcar wrote: | People do the same with AAA - don't pay to renew until | you need a tow and pay the renewal over the phone. I | think they're a bit smarter now and make you pay for the | years you skipped. | grogenaut wrote: | That's hard as I wouldn't back pay but my insurance | company goes back and forth on doing roadside depending | on if you have comprehensive and has changed the rule and | rates to be more or less competitive with AAA. When it's | cheaper I use my I aurance, when not AAA. If they made me | back pay I wouldn't use them. But I generally don't just | do the sign up and tow immediately. | bombcar wrote: | I think it's only when you want a tow same day - renewing | a failed account has a three day waiting period if you | don't pay the rush fee. | HWR_14 wrote: | 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. | david422 wrote: | 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? | [deleted] | tsimionescu wrote: | Definitely not by letting them or their belongings burn | down. | cryptonector wrote: | Just FYI for all those in the thread who don't know, | unincorporated doesn't mean "no taxes, no fees". Generally | the county provides services (Sheriffs and Constables, fire | dept.), and ambulances tend to all be private anyways. If | you're in the middle of nowhere then you may have to join a | co-op for helicopter medical, and the nearest fire station | may be too far to save your house in a fire. | | If you're in the middle of nowhere you're probably also on | unincorporated land, but the challenges of being in the | middle of nowhere have nothing to do with the land being | unincorporated. | dantheman wrote: | If it wasn't a gov agency, something could have been worked | out on the spot. Ask them if they want to pay the full price, | what is it $10k, $20k?. | | If you don't pay, you'd have the lowest priority. But there | is no reason other than bureaucracy that they couldn't have | handled it. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Article doesn't seem to agree with you here, instead citing | different reason: | | > _South Fulton 's mayor said that the fire department | can't let homeowners pay the fee on the spot, because the | only people who would pay would be those whose homes are on | fire._ | jefftk wrote: | dantheman was proposing agreeing to pay the full cost | (tens of thousands of dollars), not just the advance fee | ($75). | s1artibartfast wrote: | Another problem is the difference between _agreeing to | pay_ and _ability to pay_. Someone might be wiling to pay | anything in the moment, but you might be hopelessly | unable to actually collect. | willcipriano wrote: | Fires are pretty rare, I'd take that bet. | Arainach wrote: | How do you calculate the "full cost" of having staff on | call 24/7, well maintained equipment that's regularly | inspected, building inspectors to verify that fire code | is being met to keep usage down to sustainable levels, | and so on? The full cost isn't $10k in salary and | gasoline and foam, it's millions. | jefftk wrote: | My city spends ~$20M/y on the fire department [1] and has | ~300 structure fires and ~14k callouts annually [2]. The | cost for a marginal fire is definitely not millions; even | if you only divide $20M by 300 you get $70k and that | ignores the tens of thousands of other calls they take. | | [1] https://stories.opengov.com/somervillema/published/Bh | SqQ0eG2 | | [2] https://www.mass.gov/doc/2020-county- | profiles/download | aaronax wrote: | Total cost of running the department for a year, divided | by the number of callouts. Possibly weight the callout | types depending on approximate resources consumed. | | Though I am fully in support of just letting the house | burn. | mook wrote: | These costs still exist in a hypothetical year with zero | fires, though. Additionally, people whose house were just | on fire with zero insurance are probably not in a good | financial position (anymore), and they are unlikely to be | able to pay... | dantheman wrote: | If you don't have the money, then a lien is placed on the | property and it will be sold to pay the debt. Or you can | take out a mortgage to buy it. In any case you'll be | richer than if the house is burned down. | s1artibartfast wrote: | Ability to pay still not guaranteed, depending on the | financial situation. Family can easily have more that's | than assets to their name, preventing collection. | s1artibartfast wrote: | Your first problem is trivial cuz you can look at a | multi-year average. | | The second part is more significant in people simply | don't have the money to pay. | chordalkeyboard wrote: | amortize that cost over the population that is covered; | perhaps discount the services utilized by residents who | pre-pay and charge a premium for those who pay on the | spot. | ghufran_syed wrote: | the guy who can't pay the insurance fee isn't usually going | to be able to pay the full price of the services | anotherman554 wrote: | "If it wasn't a gov agency, something could have been | worked out on the spot." | | Or there would simply be no fire service at all because the | rural area isn't profitable to service. | s0rce wrote: | Do people have that cash lying around, what guarantee would | you have that people would pay? Maybe you can take the deed | to the house that you saved? | jefftk wrote: | Seems like the agreement could be backed with the threat | of a lien on your property. | triceratops wrote: | The property that just burned down? | s0rce wrote: | Presumably they would save it by extinguishing the fire | then if you can't pay the cost of the service they take | the property or place a lien on it. | michaelt wrote: | The fire brigade would borrow the technique of Marcus | Licinius Crassus and buy your property as it burned, | improve its value by extinguishing the fire, then rent it | back to you. | [deleted] | jefftk wrote: | If the firefighters can't keep it from burning to the | ground, I doubt you want to be paying for them to do | anything. | | Even then, there's still the value of the land. | ddalex wrote: | Hold on there Crassus. | modderation wrote: | If they do have that cash laying around, hopefully it's | not stored on-premises. | [deleted] | tlavoie wrote: | Not quite the same thing, but there are certainly places | where people will choose to live, without conventional fire | department coverage. I live on an island on Canada's coast, | where there is a fire department, funded as a local | improvement area. It covers ~ 90% of the population, on a | much smaller proportion of the island's area. | | People do live in some of these less-accessible part of the | island, but it's outside of the department's service area. | Fires in other areas are officially the responsibility of the | regional fire service, like for forest fires. Our department | might go on certain calls, especially life safety, but will | typically keep some people and vehicles back in our own | service area in case calls come in there as well. | | I think the term for people outside of the district is "self- | insured", because nobody else will be able to assist quickly. | that_guy_iain wrote: | 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, the | fire department refused to accept money to put it out. | | This whole "unincorporated land" execuse is a sad state of | affairs. The whole "You're not with us, so it's not our | problem" mindset is really why America is so low down on | every single ranking in the world, except for military might. | It seems like a constant battle to make sure you're doing ok | at the expense of others. School kids getting shot? It's ok, | I can still have my gun. Unarmed people getting shot by | police? It's ok, they haven't shot me. Corrupt police officer | hired a town over? It's ok, he's their problem now. People | dying because they can't afford to visit a doctor? That's ok, | I can. | | Instead of grouping together the US has decided to constantly | separate it self among itself. Other countries have | orginisations that deal with entire areas. The US each town | has to have it's own. It results in a lower quality of | service. Not every town can afford x,y,z fire equipment that | is only going to be used once a month but an biradge that | deals with 10 towns and would be using it two times a week | can. | | The thing is, the solution to most of the US' problems aren't | hard. They're already figured out by everyone else. We all | just have to put up with hearing about the craziness that | comes from the country that thinks it's great while their ass | is on fire. | cies wrote: | It not a nation for people. It's a nation for big business. | The effective two party system being the best thing for big | biz: they can simply lobby both. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | Right, that's why our elections always come down to a | 50.001% majority, because if you let the majorities be | bigger it's more expensive to turn them into a minority | when they turn against you. | drstewart wrote: | >Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally | stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing | with their toys. | | I assume insurance of any kind doesn't exist in the rest of | the world, since everyone else would have long figured out | that you just don't need to pay it and then reap the | rewards afterwards by just claiming it then? Or would | insurance companies in Europe just stand by with their big | bank accounts and refuse to pay? Sad state of affairs, very | third world of them. | chung8123 wrote: | The alternative is they wouldn't be allowed to live there. | America allows people to get into situations that may | result in harm to them if they are not careful. We do the | same thing with healthcare and our nutrition. We still | allow tons of processed and sugary food even though we know | it will result in slamming our healthcare system but | hopefully you have insurance. | zpthree wrote: | 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. | that_guy_iain wrote: | If you want to have the benefits of society, you have to | have a society. And my entire point is the US lacks that | fundamental thing. | pdonis wrote: | You are egregiously misinformed about the US. | that_guy_iain wrote: | 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 pointless since those are | two massive things. You need to remember, how fucked up | the US is, is well documented. It's documented by your | own media. And confirmed and defended by people like you. | | No kind of society doesn't look after it's own. That's | what a society is. | interroboink wrote: | 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. | that_guy_iain wrote: | > 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. | | It comes from reading/listening/etc the responses of | Americans to all the crazy shit that happens there. There | are factual things that happen. They are talked about, | Americans are talking about them, I listen. That is first | hand experience of the American culture I talked about. | | Here is the thing. The Americans I meet, you should see | how embarrassed they are when you start talking about the | latest American stuff you've seen. The faces of the | Americans I worked with when I talked about the time the | cops shoot up a stolen UPS van in the middle of the | highway killing everyone including the hostage and | endangered the lives of random drivers who couldn't get | away. Like they know that stuff happens. And at the same | time, there are Americans I've met personally and talked | to frequently online who would defend that. "They stole | it, they couldn't risk the lives of the police officers", | etc. | | When talking about culture problems, how Americans act is | first hand experience. | interroboink wrote: | > It comes from reading/listening/etc the responses of | Americans to all the crazy shit that happens there. | | Right, no disagreement from me that these things happen. | And responses are varied, as you say. | | What I was trying to get across was that you get a very | lopsided view by concentrating on "crazy shit" and | people's responses to it. | | For example: | | I live in the US. It's snowing where I am. It makes | things beautiful. Some birds are at the feeder, and the | furnace just turned on. I'm thankful for the warmth. I | have some cookies to deliver to the neighbors later on | (they recently gave us a loaf of their bread, which was | delicious). | | ---- | | There you go, that was some real American culture (still | second-hand for you, and admittedly not entirely | representative). Not very interesting, but it's home. | Multiply that by hundreds of millions of people, and yes, | sprinkle in a handful of crazy shit too for good measure. | Maybe that gets you a little bit closer to reality. | | Still plenty that needs fixing, of course. And I'm glad I | don't live in Mississippi (: | veb wrote: | 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_shootin | gs | | 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, they tend to make good judgement calls (most of | the time). | | To the defence of the US, sometimes their system does | work: https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/11/24/us-jury-charge- | police-off... honestly though, shooting a guy in a car | that wasn't in immediate danger to anyone else around him | (he rung the police originally because he was having a | mental health crisis - in NZ you do call the cops if you | can) so they shoot him with beanbag rounds, tase him then | shoot him six times fatally. A bit over the top... | Faark wrote: | German here. We do have a public healthcare system. That | we can opt out of and go private. The trade-off is it | being increasingly hard to get back into the public one, | especially as people get older and thus more "expensive". | | Insurances (including fire service or roadside | assistance) has to be payed. You cannot just opt back | into it once you need it. If parent is right and they had | chances to opt into fire service but decided not to, you | cannot just bill them for a single instance. Otherwise | they're behavior would be reward, and everyone else had | incentive to do the same. | twblalock wrote: | By your definition, no "society" existed in the entire | world until the 20th century. | lmm wrote: | > 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? | | What country puts that kind of positive obligation on the | police? I'm not aware of any that do. | mbg721 wrote: | The US is built on a fundamental distrust of mainstream | authority. Our founders were religious radicals who | thrived as long as they were exiled someplace where they | couldn't affect anybody who mattered. Our folk heroes are | dimwitted-but-clever rebels who defeat all the experts | with old-fashioned know-how. The Russians sent men to | space essentially as cargo for the mathematicians back on | Earth to work out; we sent seat-of-your-pants pilots, and | arguably our most memorable space mission was the one | that got screwed up until our team improvised their way | to victory. We proudly pay cash to lawn-mowers and | restaurant servers we like so they can hide it from the | taxman. So given all that, why would we ever meekly hand | our humanity, our free will, to the bureaucrats in the | police department or hospitals, just so that they can | abuse it more efficiently? | pdonis wrote: | 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 in no | position to judge anyone else. | | As for "confirmed and defended", since it's impossible to | have a government that actually does the things you | claim, of course I can "confirm" that the US doesn't. And | of course I'll defend freedom, particularly when that | means explaining what freedom actually means to people | who don't understand it. | that_guy_iain wrote: | >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. | pdonis wrote: | _> They show video footage_ | | Video footage can tell you that some small group of | people did some particular things at some particular time | and place. | | Video footage cannot tell you what isn't on the video. | Which is the vast majority of what the vast majority of | actual Americans do with their time every day. Which does | not look at all like your media-inspired, uniformed | caricature. | | _> This whole the media is lying wasn 't such a thing | before Trump._ | | Excuse me? The media has _always_ lied. The evidence for | that is overwhelming for anyone who actually cares to | look. | | Decades ago, we had no way of knowing about the extent of | lies being told to us by the media (and by our | politicians, for that matter) at the time they were told | to us, because we had no other sources of information. | Now we do. We can spot the lies told to us by _all_ of | our so-called "trusted" sources, just as they can spot | lies told to us by Trump. There are _no_ genuinely | trustworthy sources of information. I agree that sucks, | but it 's the fact, and trying to ignore it or sugar coat | it just makes it worse. | dantheman wrote: | Society != Government | ianmcgowan wrote: | 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". | stevesimmons wrote: | 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" | LarryMullins wrote: | > _" They didn't pay, so they die."_ | | This didn't happen. A building burned but everybody was | fine. Had lives been at risk, the firefighters would have | intervened. The "moral" you are taking from this story is | predicated on gross misinformation. | that_guy_iain wrote: | No, the moral of this story is you taking a single part | massively out of context. And the fire department didn't | go out. So they wouldn't have known if someone's life was | at risk. So stop you're nonsense. | LarryMullins wrote: | > _And the fire department didn 't go out._ | | Again, more misinformation! They _did_ go out, and made | sure the fire didn 't spread off the property. If anybody | had been imperiled, the firefighters would have helped. | FFS, it's right in that article: | | > _They put water out on the fence line out here. They | never said nothing to me. Never acknowledged. They stood | out here and watched it burn, " Cranick said._ | | And if the firefighters were rude to these people, it's | probably because the people who lived there were a bunch | of anti-social shitheads and the firefighters knew it. | But the firefighters _did_ go out anyway. Stop _your_ | nonsense. | that_guy_iain wrote: | >Again, more misinformation! | | No, they went out after the neighbour phoned up because | of a fire on their property. Anyone who has fully read | the article will know that. So stop your nonsense. | | "Firefighters did eventually show up, but only to fight | the fire on the neighboring property, whose owner had | paid the fee." | jakear wrote: | So the fire department was contacted, did not hear of any | lives at risk, and did not show up. What an entirely | reasonable response to getting a service request from | someone who has not established a SLA with your company. | | Do you personally work at a company? If so, I demand you | to help me fix a problem I'm having. I haven't paid you, | but that shouldn't matter. What's that? You won't help | me? But you helped my competitor who did establish a | contract with you in which they paid you a monthly fee in | exchange for a guarantee you'd help them when the needed | it. | | The horror. The absolute travesty. Society has failed. | that_guy_iain wrote: | > So the fire department was contacted, did not hear of | any lives at risk, and did not show up. | | The article doesn't say that does it. They say the fire | department was contacted and responded that they weren't | on the list. They refused to accept any payment. And only | turned up when someone who was on the list called. | | We have a phrase for people like you, jog on. | zdragnar wrote: | > "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 society is just disingenuous. | | > Other countries have orginisations that deal with entire | areas. | | So does the US. Even unincorporated land falls under the | jurisdiction of whatever county it happens to be in as well | as the state and federal governments; the only difference | is it doesn't have a local town government... because there | is no local town. | cheriot wrote: | > This isn't a thing in the US. Hospitals will stabilize | anyone, regardless of ability to pay | | This is the bare minimum to avoid a PR disaster. When | someone is dying slowing of a chronic condition | (diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease) the US system | will just watch them die unless they have insurance. | EvanAnderson wrote: | It's not done for "PR". US hospitals are required to | treat emergency cases, by law. The Emergency Medical | Treatment and Active Labor Act[0], passed under President | Reagan, codifies the mandate. | | (This is, to my mind, what caused the United States to | end up with socialized medicine-- albeit a socialized | medicine system where we don't get to have public | discourse about how it works.) | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treat | ment_an... | yamtaddle wrote: | We don't have "socialized medicine". You can go to the ER | without insurance and with signs & symptoms of a heart | attack and they'll try to keep you from dying, but they | won't give you the triple-bypass and medicine you need to | keep it from happening again in a month--unless they | think you'll be able to pay for it. | EvanAnderson wrote: | Without making any moral argument one way or the other: | If people who can't pay and would otherwise die are given | "free" treatment then we have socialized medicine. The | costs are spread over everyone else. | | Uninsured and under-insured people are cited as one | reason why treatment costs are so high. Whether these | cases actually contribute to costs in a substantive way | doesn't stop the mandate to provide free emergency care | being used as a political football. | yamtaddle wrote: | This is hair-splitting for no reason, to the point of | destroying communication. Nobody (because this is HN: | yes, apparently at least one person, but you know what I | mean by this) means ERs having to eat the cost of | stabilizing uninsured dying/in-labor people when they say | "socialized medicine". You can draw some parallels, but | trying to put that, plus all the things people _actually_ | mean by the term, under the same umbrella, is a step | toward making it meaningless. | | This is like a burger joint telling you they don't serve | onion rings, and then you insisting that in fact they do, | because they put circle-cut onions on their burgers, and | technically those are both rings and onions. Like... OK? | So what? Which framing: "this place serves onion rings", | or "this place does NOT serve onion rings", is more | likely to confuse a diner? | | The only times I've seen people really, seriously try to | frame this as "socialized medicine" is when they don't | understand how very limited the mandated scope of care | is. It doesn't amount to much more than "you can't let | someone simply _die_ or give birth on the curb right | outside your ER ". The vast majority of what counts as | medical care isn't part of it. | EvanAnderson wrote: | I fully admit to being hyperbolic. | | Where I live, in a rural area of a red state with a lot | of wealth disparity, giving free medical care to anybody | absolutely is seen as "socialized medicine". (Of course, | there'll be a healthy dose of divisive racial and class | politics mixed in to the argument, too.) The reasons | behind that opinion are absolutely motivated by lack of | understanding, but there are strong political beliefs | there as well. | | I'd like to see substantive discussion about how the US | healthcare "system" really works. This is a detail that a | lot of people don't know about or understand. I think the | idea that "we already don't let people who can't pay just | die" has a good moral argument behind it. | yamtaddle wrote: | > Where I live, in a rural area of a red state with a lot | of wealth disparity, giving free medical care to anybody | absolutely is seen as "socialized medicine". (Of course, | there'll be a healthy dose of divisive racial and class | politics mixed in to the argument, too.) The reasons | behind that opinion are absolutely motivated by lack of | understanding, but there are strong political beliefs | there as well. | | Suburb in a red state here, grew up mostly in rural red | America, so I get what you mean. I'm sure there's also a | lot of thinking that free ER care is a lot more expansive | than it really is, and belief that "welfare types" (ahem, | cough, cough, lay-finger-along-side-of-nose) regularly | use ERs to get ordinary healthcare for free. As is | usually the case, I expect laying out what's _actually_ | available and how the mandate _actually_ works tends to | soften resistance to it. I 'm well aware that the Left | does some of this too, but god I wish right-wing media | would stop misleading Republicans about how basic things | like social-safety-net programs and taxes work. The death | of the Fairness Doctrine, however not-entirely- | comfortable I may be with the thing, has been a curse on | this country, in practice. | | > I'd like to see substantive discussion about how the US | healthcare "system" really works. This is a detail that a | lot of people don't know about or understand. I think the | idea that "we already don't let people who can't pay just | die" has a good moral argument behind it. | | Ugh, tell me about it. I especially think the enormous | proportion of medical spending that's _already_ public | isn 't well-understood enough. Especially since some of | those tend to cover some of the most expensive | demographics--the elderly, the disabled, soldiers. | Failure to grasp how our current system already works | leads to those infamous "keep government out of my | medicare!" protest signs and, more importantly, failure | to appreciate that shifting to cover _everyone_ with one | variety or another of government-funded healthcare is | actually a far less radical shift than some seem to | suppose it is. | | Sorry if I pounced on you there, BTW. I could have been | less confrontational with that previous post. | EvanAnderson wrote: | > Sorry if I pounced on you there, BTW. I could have been | less confrontational with that previous post. | | It's good. The nerd pedant in me can't let a mention of | EMTALA go by without hammering on it. It's a bit of | cognitive dissonance to inflict on the "free healthcare | market"-types who have moral qualms about letting people | die but aren't about to give an inch on "socialism". | that_guy_iain wrote: | >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 | amount of deaths because people couldn't pay is massive | for a so-called developed country. 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. | | > Unincorporated land holds a very tiny percentage of the | population of the US; trying to use this as an analogy | for the rest of society is just disingenuous. | | As used with the multiple other examples, it's an entire | culture. Not just "Oh unincorporated land, that's just | crazy". It's disingenuous to act like my point is hinged | on unincorporated land. | | > So does the US. Even unincorporated land falls under | the jurisdiction of whatever county it happens to be in | as well as the state and federal governments; the only | difference is it doesn't have a local town government... | because there is no local town. | | There are state troopers who have jurisction over | certaint things. However, there is then an array of other | law enforcement agencies such as towns having a police | department and sheriff departments which have | jurisictions over certain things. They don't have a | simple police force that deals with everything in that | area. This results in crimes not being truly investigated | because no one is sure whose job it is. | | There is no regional fire department as shown in the | linked news article. The fire department that was paid by | a neighbour to ensure they didn't get fire damage ignored | a fire nearby because they weren't paid by someone else. | The ignoring of that fire resulted in fire damage to the | paying customer. A regional fire department would have | dealt with that. | Aunche wrote: | > 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 policy decisions are motivated by | uninformed memes like this, then if we ever do get | universal healthcare, it will be a disaster. | | You can buy human insulin for $25 a vial at Walmart. It's | not as good, but it's what people used a couple decades | ago. Countries with nationalized healthcare often have | long backlogs for treatments. The cancer backlog in the | UK is over 2 million people and it's continuing to grow | [1]. Also, if you are insured, you're typically going to | get new and more sophisticated treatments on the US | compared to most places with nationalized healthcare. | | [1] https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2020/06/01/over-2-m | illion-... | that_guy_iain wrote: | > I'm supportive of universal healthcare, but this is a | huge exaggeration. If policy decisions are motivated by | uninformed memes like this, then if we ever do get | universal healthcare, it will be a disaster. | | No it's not. There are reports constantly of people dying | in the US because they tried to get their insulin to last | them multiple days and ended up dying. Not everyone has | $25. But your post that they can just buy it for $25 | proves the point earlier of "They didn't pay, so they | die". | Aunche wrote: | > "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." | tshaddox wrote: | 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? | EvanAnderson wrote: | In the US we prefer our "death panels" to be handled by | insurance companies, hospital administrators, and | pharmaceutical companies. Rather than having public | discourse about rationing of care we privatize our death | panels and they operate in relative secrecy. | that_guy_iain wrote: | The funny thing is they're using the UK which is | literally going nuts over the state of the NHS. The UK is | extremely unhappy with the backlogs. And almost certainly | they'll be getting reduced once a new goverment is voted | in during the next general election. The really funny | part, I bet a lower percentage of the captia die from | cancer in the UK than the US. Because they can get some | sort of treatment. And of course a system that treats | everyone is going to have longer wait times than one that | treats only a percentage of the population. And the | ability to pay to avoid wait times is still there. Turns | out having public and private hospitals pays off. | jandrewrogers wrote: | > The really funny part, I bet a lower percentage of the | captia die from cancer in the UK than the US. | | The US, quite famously, generally has the highest cancer | survival rates in the world. The standard bearers for | cancer survival rates in Europe have traditionally been | Switzerland and France, which are close to the same level | as the US. A decade ago in the UK there was a public | outcry when studies showed it had one of the poorest | cancer survival rates in the developed world; in the | well-known Lancet study, survival rates in the US were | 50% higher than the UK. | | The UK has improved their cancer survival rates | significantly over the last decade in response to those | studies but it isn't near the top tier. | | In the US, everyone gets essentially the same cancer | treatments, even if they are poor. The economic | stratification occurs around enrollment in _experimental_ | cancer treatments, by virtue of needing to be located | where experimental therapies are being tested. | Experimental therapies are a big deal in the US because | most state-of-the-art treatments are developed and tested | there before being widely available. If you want to | enroll in experimental cancer treatments outside of where | they are being tested, you need to have the economic | means to travel there. I personally know people on | welfare in the US who survived Stage 4 cancer because | they happened to live where highly effective experimental | cancer therapies were being tested, making it readily | available to them. | | The US lives a little bit in the future for state-of-the- | art cancer treatments. I know several people that | survived cancer in the US thanks to experimental | therapies that are now standard therapies. It usually | takes a while for these to propagate to other parts of | the world. | WarChortle wrote: | > 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 of course not. | If you go into the ER they legally have to stabilize you. | But that's it. If I have cancer and and really sick, If | they take to me to the ER, they will stabilize me but | they want start treating the cancer. Even if its still | early, they will watch you die over time as the cancer | advances and makes you worse. | | To be fair, I am certain the doctors and nurses want to | treat you. But the hospital won't/can't allow it for | bullshit reasons. | | > You can buy human insulin for $25 a vial at Walmart. | It's not as good, but it's what people used a couple | decades ago. | | I can't believe your defending poor people having to use | worse insulin. How is that okay for you? We are talking | about peoples lives, can the richest country on earth aim | a little higher then throwing decades old medical | knowledge at poor people to shut them up? | | > I'm supportive of universal healthcare, | | No you aren't, after that claim about supporting it, you | spend the rest of your post shooting down universal | healthcare. | | > Countries with nationalized healthcare often have long | backlogs for treatments. The cancer backlog in the UK is | over 2 million people and it's continuing to grow [1]. | | > Also, if you are insured, you're typically going to get | new and more sophisticated treatments on the US compared | to most places with nationalized healthcare. | | The UK has its issue, but from what I can see its because | they are purposely starving it of money so they can | ultimately privatize it. | | America's health care is fucking garbage. There is no | defending it, I'm so tired of spending my time calling | several different companies to figure out why I am | getting billed for something I shouldn't be. I'm not | exaggerating either, literally one or twice a month I get | the joy of calling my insurance and whatever doctor sent | the bill and try and solve why my insurance won't cover | it. | Aunche wrote: | > The UK has its issue, but from what I can see its | because they are purposely starving it of money so they | can ultimately privatize it. | | This isn't true. Healthcare spending has grown every year | and has never significantly fallen relative to GDP. https | ://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan.. | . | | > America's health care is fucking garbage. | | I agree, but it's not for a lack of spending. The US | government actually spends more per capita on healthcare | than the UK in total. I'm not opposed to universal | healthcare. I'm opposed to politicians throwing money at | a problem to buy votes, but that is the only thing that | can result from a universal policy that results from | healthcare at all costs rhetoric. | dantheman wrote: | Completely agree, maybe if the USA got rid of the FDA and | the whole concept of prescription medicine we'd be able | to buy cheap medicine without the all the protectionism | that the state bolts on. | WarChortle wrote: | I can't tell if your being serious or just trolling. | | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/23/aids.suzann | ego... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_Corporation_of_Ameri | ca#... | | Oh boy, Wells Fargo is so shitty, most of their page is | about their various scandals. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Fargo#Lawsuits,_fines | _an... | | While not all are directly related to healthcare or the | FDA, I present this 3 articles as evidence that | corporations don't give a shit about you and unless they | are kept in check they will happily sell you a faulty or | bad product to help their bottom line. | | I can produce many many more articles of various scandals | if you want. There is plenty of them. Reducing regulation | does nothing, but help corporations provide even worse | health care to people. | | Healthcare should not nor ever be for profit. Its an | inelastic good, the so called "free market" doesn't even | apply to it. | ejb999 wrote: | >> But the hospital won't/can't allow it for bullshit | reasons. | | Bullshit reasons like they don't want to go bankrupt and | not be able to serve anyone at all? | WarChortle wrote: | Exactly, healthcare should be free, whatever your issue | is, whatever your status is, you should be able to go to | the doctor/hospital/whatever, and get treated. End of | story. | | I got news for you its going to happen regardless, turns | out trying to extract as much profit from healthcare as | possible is a terrible idea. | | Hospitals closing down | | https://www.vox.com/policy-and- | politics/2022/11/28/23424682/... | | https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2022/11/22/rural | -ho... | | Or they can't afford to be staffed fully | | https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/us-hospitals-are- | so-... | | For profit health care is a scam and the US healthcare | system is failing rapidly. And its only getting worse. | rqtwteye wrote: | "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. | vxNsr wrote: | This is false, a hospital cannot kick you out, you need | to agree that you are ready to leave. | linuxdude314 wrote: | That's BS. I've been to the hospital plenty of times in | USA and have never been asked if I'm ready to leave. | | Patients get discharged when doctors say so. | justin66 wrote: | > > "They didn't pay, so they die." | | > This isn't a thing in the US. Hospitals will stabilize | anyone, regardless of ability to pay. | | It's weird that you think you've offered a retort here. A | person who cannot afford medical treatment and | experiences one or more of these emergency room visits | followed by immediate discharge as soon as legally | permissible is likely to die before their time, perhaps | shortly after being discharged. | | > First responders- police, ambulance, fire fighters- | will save any life they are able to. | | They do that sometimes when it suits them, but they | certainly aren't legally obligated to. | adolph wrote: | > 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." | AlexTWithBeard wrote: | The question is: on one hand, any sane adult should be able | to make whatever decision they want regarding their own | health and property (some text in small font goes here). | | On the other hand no sane adult will refuse medical | insurance: it's an outright suicidal behavior, unless you | have a seven-digit sum in your account. | | So...? | rayiner wrote: | > 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 accept money to put it out. | | It's not just a question of money, but legal arrangements. | Going into a fire isn't a game--it puts the firefighters | and their equipment at risk. What does the firefighters' | insurance contract look like? If one of the firefighters | gets hurt, is their insurance going to cover it when the | fire was outside the jurisdiction of that fire department? | Insofar as this illustrates a "problem" it's not a "third- | world" one, but a distinctly American one. Americans are | the most legalistic people in the world, and reflexively | accept the consequences of the legal state of affairs. In | many other contexts, that's a strength, not a weakness. | | > This whole "unincorporated land" execuse is a sad state | of affairs. The whole "You're not with us, so it's not our | problem" mindset is really why America is so low down on | every single ranking in the world, except for military | might. | | Even Americans aren't so tribal as to hold grudges between | towns and adjacent unincorporated land. The significance of | the house being on unincorporated land is that it | demarcates the _legal boundaries of the fire department 's | jurisdiction._ A public body acting outside its | jurisdiction can have all sorts of consequences. | saiya-jin wrote: | You didn't refute parent's main points at all, saying | 'this is by law and contracts' just confirms his | statements about bigger problems within society. If | firemen let someone's house burn while the owner begs | them for help, its something wrong on very basic moral | level, and no matter of lawyering around is changing | that. | | Parent summarized well why people like me would never | want to spend their lives or raise kids in places like US | although we like visiting there, not when I can see in | (some parts) of Europe how modern society should work as | 1 unit, taking care and helping the weak because its | simply the right fucking moral thing to do. It is in some | aspects Star Trekkish utopia that actually works long | term and improves lives of everybody involved. | | Yes it costs money, almost nobody here has comparable US | wages, but what are those numbers for when 1 serious | visit to emergency can financially wipe out poorer | families and good luck sending few kids to university, | which are both basically no-topics here. Suddenly that | million or two in the bank account seem more like | necessary minimal backup rather than actually free usable | money. And how many US families actually have those | numbers sitting around, its rather mortgages left and | right. | | The amount of constant backstage stress for endless | stream of regular blue and also white collar joes this | removes is significant but hard to measure in easy-to- | present numbers. I tend to call it one very important | part of quality of life. | twblalock wrote: | 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. | cryptonector wrote: | Yes, fighting fires is dangerous. Can't blame the | firefighters for not fighting a fire that they weren't | legally or contractually required to fight, though fire | departments can and do often volunteer to fight fires in | other jurisdictions, so they could have (and perhaps | should have, but that depends on the details of the | fire). | robertlagrant wrote: | > 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." | | The reason you think this may be because your | preconceptions stopped you reading what was written. This | is not what happened, and not what happens. | mabbo wrote: | The solution is that the government steps in and says "No, | you _must_ ". And American culture does not like when | government says "must". | | But in the rest of the world, we act like grown ups and | accept that sometimes, it's perfectly okay. | bombolo wrote: | > And American culture does not like when government says | "must". | | Except when it's about treating everyone like terrorists | in airports, I presume. | cragfar wrote: | Why is it not acceptable for someone to lose everything | when three different entities (probably more) say "hey | you should do this". | pdonis wrote: | No, you have this backwards. Acting like a grownup means | taking responsibility for your own actions and not | expecting the government, or any institution, to | magically make sure nothing bad ever happens to you. | Paying for services like firefighting is fine; but being | forced to pay for things because some government | bureaucrat decrees it is not. | | And acting like a grownup also means letting people take | the consequences of their decisions. According to other | posters in this thread, the family in question repeatedly | refused to pay a fair price for firefighting coverage, | and the fire was started by a family member. That means | the consequences are on them. | rqtwteye wrote: | Acting like a grownup means that you realize that not all | things that happen to people are their own fault and that | you yourself can't totally avoid bad things no matter how | careful you are. It also means to understand that some | things can be handled much better by a shared effort | instead of everybody on their own. That's why we have | police, firefighters and the military. | thegrimmest wrote: | I think this is exactly where reasonable people disagree. | Some (myself included) feel that acting like a grownup | means exactly that everything that nature (not other | people) inflicts on you is your _responsibility_. This | includes your house catching on fire or your person | contracting a disease. | linuxdude314 wrote: | No reasonable person thinks this. | | If you truly believe this, your perspective have been | warped by the culture you are immersed in. | | It sounds like you don't find value in living in a | society. | | Try living in a different culture than USA for 6 months | to a year and I suspect your eyes will be opened. | thegrimmest wrote: | 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 | bombolo wrote: | 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! | pdonis wrote: | Police, firefighters, and military don't have to be | provided by governments. There are plenty of historical | examples of all three being provided by private | institutions (indeed, the article referenced in this | discussion talks about such institutions for firefighters | in England over a period of several centuries). | | Nor does charity for those in genuine need need to be | provided by governments. Indeed, charity throughout human | history has worked best when it is provided by private | institutions made up of people who genuinely want to help | others, of which there are plenty in the US as there are | everywhere, not by government departments staffed by | bureaucrats. | JetAlone wrote: | autoexec wrote: | Adults know the difference between creating sensible | regulation at the level of government and expecting some | authority to "magically make sure nothing bad ever | happens to you". They also know that planning ahead to | make sure that their government can provide important | services for everyone doesn't prevent anyone from | "letting people take the consequences of their | decisions". | | There's a very childish culture in America where people | react to the idea of cooperation by stomping their feet | and crying "You're not the boss of me! You can't tell me | what to do!". It makes it very hard to work together to | improve things. | | It's also a very selfish culture where people aren't just | indifferent to the terrible things that happen to other | people, they convince themselves that those people | _deserved_ terrible things to happen to them. It 's as if | they think that everyone looking out only for themselves | will cause only the "best" people to succeed and | therefore everyone else can and should be ignored. It is | childishness and it really hurts us as a nation. | pitaj wrote: | Coercion is not cooperation. | pdonis wrote: | 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 worse than | the disease. | | 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 made up of people who | genuinely want to help others (and there are plenty of | those in the US just as there are everywhere), not | government departments staffed by bureaucrats. | autoexec wrote: | > 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 | opinion, 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. | pdonis wrote: | >* 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. | thegrimmest wrote: | Even if we take your points at face value, which other | comments clearly don't, you seem to be coming from a rather | ethnocentric perspective. It seems that you value "solving | problems" above other things, I'd hazard that your personal | philosophy can be categorized as negative utilitarianism. | This isn't a universally shared perspective. There are many | other worldviews that prioritize other things besides | reducing suffering. In the case of the US, it seems to me | that Americans value individual liberty over ameliorating | suffering. These values do in fact come into conflict | often, and there's no one "right" answer. | RC_ITR wrote: | >This whole "unincorporated land" execuse is a sad state of | affairs. The whole "You're not with us, so it's not our | problem" mindset is really why America is so low down on | every single ranking in the world, except for military | might. | | I'm really curious where you're from. | | On the specific point of unincorporated land, I think | you're _vastly_ underestimating how physically _large_ the | US is. | | For example, Rovaniemi seems pretty isolated from the rest | of Europe, right? | | It's level of isolation (both in terms of distance to the | next large city and hospitability of the land in between) | is similar to Las Vegas. Salt Lake City isn't too far off | either. America is _huge._ | | The US just has _too much empty land_ to offer urban-level | fire services to everyone who chooses to live in the | country side. It 's logistically not possible. So instead | if you _choose_ to live in the wilderness, you can _also | choose_ to pay for protection, but if you don 't, then I'm | not sure exactly what your expectations are. | | In terms of 'whataboutism' - Europe (assuming that's where | you are) sure loves shedding the responsibility for the | chaos they caused in the colonies, while living in | buildings paid for by/made out of materials physically | stolen from those colonies. | rayiner wrote: | > It's level of isolation (both in terms of distance to | the next large city and hospitability of the land in | between) is similar to Las Vegas. Salt Lake City isn't | too far off either. America is huge. | | Right. The issue isn't so much that "America lets people | die because they don't pay." It's that "America gives | people the freedom to live in the middle of fucking | nowhere, including where a state or local government | can't reasonably commit to offering reliable emergency | services." | that_guy_iain wrote: | Except, in the link scenario. Stop trying to twist it. | Every other country has communities that live so far from | anyone that they're in trouble if they have a heart | attack. But you know what? They still have something. | House burning down? The local volunteer fire fighters | will help you out. Not, we'll come out and put out your | neighbours fire and stop and the fence line. And ignore | you and refuse any offer of money to help you. | | The issue is the US can't get it's shit together. And | they can't get their shit together because Americans | accept it. They just think "That's they're problem". | bloppe wrote: | 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 shocked by how nice and helpful | people are here. Americans are by far the most | financially charitable people in the world [1] but can be | famously neighborly in many more ways than that. | | [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by | _charita... | lmm wrote: | 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. | [deleted] | RC_ITR wrote: | The linked scenario was controversial _because_ this one | small town of 2,500 chose to not help (vs. the standard | practice of other towns that do help). _Then_ the | national outcry from _the rest of America_ caused them to | change it. | | Wherever you're from, I'd love to use a town of 2,500's | actions to define the morality of your country... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Fulton,_Tennessee#%22 | Pay... | that_guy_iain wrote: | >On the specific point of unincorporated land, I think | you're vastly underestimating how physically large the US | is. | | So is Russia, they don't have these problems. The US is | vast so we can't have basic stuff. | | And most of the US population is next to each other with | large areas of nothing. | ejb999 wrote: | >>So is Russia, they don't have these problems. | | Really, Russia doesn't have any similar problems? You | want to rethink that by any chance? because now you are | making yourself sound quite ignorant. | Animatronio wrote: | "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. | RC_ITR wrote: | 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 trains west of | Chengdu? | lmm wrote: | 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... | Yizahi wrote: | The joys of libertarianism. | ch4s3 wrote: | A libertarian scheme would look like what neighboring | counties in Tennessee do, which is to charge you an hourly | rate per truck if you didn't pay the subscription fee up | front. This is a case where clearly no one thought about how | to handle the free rider problem beforehand. I believe | they've changed the policy since. | throwawaymaths wrote: | No, the competing insurance companies as described in the | video is a libertarian scheme. Counties in Tennessee are a | state run operation and their refusal to fight fires is a | function of jurisdictional borders, which does not exactly | match libertarian values. | ch4s3 wrote: | I'm commenting on the parent which was responding to the | anecdote about Tennessee, and not the article. The fire | fighters in question in rural Tennessee are volunteers | and NOT run by the state. That's why they came up with | the subscription services. Some of the counties and towns | do contract with fire departments, but not all of them | and not the one in question. | | I'm not actually sure what you're trying to say here. | afterburner wrote: | If this is the same story I read a long time ago, one of the | reasons the firefighters didn't intervene is because their | health insurance wouldn't cover any injuries, due to the house | not being part of their unit's responsibilities. | | Universal health care might have changed the firefighters' | minds. On the other hand, perhaps other liabilities would not | have been covered too, so maybe not. | dantheman wrote: | I think it was a fundamental lapse of judgement and | incompetence on the firefighters side. They should have had a | plan for uninsured fires nearby, and been able to execute it. | What is the marginal cost of putting out a fire for the | uninsured, I'm sure its quite low - equipment is paid for, | staff is payed for, etc. So they should be able to make a | substantial profit by charging $20k for putting it out, or | whatever amount they deem necessary. | | Just because this was an emergency doesn't mean it wasn't | unexpected. We would want firefighters to go the next town | over if there was a fire there, so it seems like their | insurance policy was improperly under specified. | ejb999 wrote: | >>They should have had a plan for uninsured fires nearby, | and been able to execute it. | | They did have a plan, and they did execute on it - exactly | as they advertised. | | ...and if they decided to risk it, and put out the fire | anyway - and tied up all their pumps hoses ladders and | trucks, and then another call comes in a few miles away - | from someone that _did_ pay for coverage - how much | liability would they have for tying up all of their | equipment at a fire they are not supposed to be fighting, | and thus unable to respond to the fires they are supposed | to be responding to? | | People in this country should be free to make stupid | decisions - and free to suffer the consequences of those | stupid decisions. | yamtaddle wrote: | No solution to the free-rider problem ever makes everyone | happy. | wolfram74 wrote: | Interestingly, the low density of a rural area probably | changes the calculus on "let it burn or eat the loss as a | prevention measure" as opposed to places where uninsured | buildings might be physically touching insured ones. | [deleted] | constantcrying wrote: | > And here we are in modern times where we do, indeed, let | buildings burn. | | The linked article aside, letting buildings burn down is in | fact standard procedure for fire fighters. A sufficiently dense | fire is extremely hard to stop as long as it can fuel itself | and a controlled burn down is often the only reasonable way to | end a fire. It's not like anything would be recoverable in any | case. | jasonhansel wrote: | I would hope, at least, that firefighters would always | prioritize saving lives over saving property. | leetrout wrote: | Yes and no. | | Defensive operations on an active fire ground are standard | operating procedures; no argument. | | But most departments do not operate the way this department | in Tennessee does where they did not run the call when it was | received because the caller was not on their participant | list. | | They would have likely encountered a brush fire or, at most, | a room and contents fire from the structures closest exposure | based on the story and they would not have let it just freely | burn. | constantcrying wrote: | I am absolutely not defending whatever happened in that | article. Truly a bizarre situation. | | Where I live firefighters certain actions will require a | fee (obviously not paid to the firefighters), like pumping | out a cellar or felling a tree on private land which is not | threatening any property, but actually not fighting a fire | when it would be easily possible would be unthinkable. | at_a_remove wrote: | Other situations exist in which firefighters don't kill | themselves (quite literally) over it. Take fast food joints. | First, they're notorious for not cleaning their grease traps, but | second, many are self-insured. More interestingly, the fast-food | companies tend to scrap a building that has had a fire, have it | scraped down to the concrete pad, and build again. Source: was | just talking with a fire chief about this. | alexandargyurov wrote: | Video: I was wrong (and so was everyone) | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wif1EAgEQKI | modernerd wrote: | "The Guild of Firefighters had been outlawed by the Patrician the | previous year after many complaints. The point was that, if you | bought a contract from the Guild, your house would be protected | against fire. | | Unfortunately, the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the | fore and fire fighters would tend to go to prospective clients' | houses in groups, making loud comments like 'Very inflammable | looking place, this' and 'Probably go up like a firework with | just one carelessly-dropped match, know what I mean?'" | | -- Terry Pratchett: Guards! Guards! | nnadams wrote: | A great example of the confusing reality that the words | "inflammable" and "flammable" mean the exact same thing. | masklinn wrote: | This is likely more directly inspired by Marcus Licinius | Crassus: | | > The first ever Roman fire brigade was created by Crassus. | Fires were almost a daily occurrence in Rome, and Crassus took | advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department, by | creating his own brigade--500 men strong--which rushed to | burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at | the scene, however, the firefighters did nothing while Crassus | offered to buy the burning building from the distressed | property owner, at a miserable price. If the owner agreed to | sell the property, his men would put out the fire; if the owner | refused, then they would simply let the structure burn to the | ground. After buying many properties this way, he rebuilt them, | and often leased the properties to their original owners or new | tenants. | db48x wrote: | Twoflower the tourist telling people about in-sewer-ants was | also pretty funny. | legitster wrote: | 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 with a mistranslation (think reading "me and the | boys" as referring to actual children). | | But people spent 500 years discussing the horrors of the | children's crusade without ever really questioning if it | happened. | vlovich123 wrote: | Wouldn't children be useful in terms of doing a bunch of tasks | that aren't worth the time of your soldiers? Ie what was the | age of the squires for the soldiers? | PeterisP wrote: | A squire would generally be between the ages of 14 to 21. A | pre-teen boy wouldn't be useful for the core duties of a | squire because of a lack of strength for the physical labor | involved in handling arms, armor and horses. | LarryMullins wrote: | Prior to the modern era, the Royal Navy and others had boys | sometimes 12 or younger on ships as servants, sometimes | (those boys with higher ranks) being trained to be | officers. The age for this sort of thing was gradually | raised with time, but even during WW2 there were still | minors serving on combat vessels. 134 boy seamen died when | the HMS Royal Oak was sunk in 1939. | vlovich123 wrote: | 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 20th and early 21st century on | every continent, with concentrations in parts of Africa, | Latin America, and the Middle East.[33] Only since the | turn of the millennium have international efforts begun | to limit and reduce the military use of children. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_military | | I can see how it would be controversial because an | argument could be made that children only are useful when | you have some kind of artillery that doesn't require the | strength needed for a bow / crossbow. Still, I wouldn't | discount anything, especially on the purely modern | subjective view of "it wouldn't make financial sense". | Lots of human endeavors and actions don't make financial | sense. It's not the only axis upon which humans behave. | | I suspect of the controversy probably arises from the age | "child" denotes. Is it a prepubescent human (lets say 10 | and under) or a teenager (let's say 13 and over). | cafard wrote: | As far as I know, the draft in the US has always had a | minimum age of 18, and one could volunteer at 17, but | only with a parent's consent. Most young men grow | considerably between 13 and 17. | pessimizer wrote: | Why is that relevant? There are also child soldiers even | younger than 13, today. Just not in the US. Additionally, | before the 21c US surveillance state, it was very easy to | lie about your age in a way that would take a long time | to verify. An enormous number of underage boys lied their | way into WWII. If you were born at home, you may not have | even had a birth certificate. | LarryMullins wrote: | 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, make his breakfast, or any | number of other chores a knight doesn't want to bother | with personally. | greedo wrote: | 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). | vlovich123 wrote: | Multiple children could work together to carry the armor. | Pack animals would be responsible for carrying over | longer distances. | legitster wrote: | Sure, but to that extent the "children" that would have been | sent would have been considered normal working age. | | Funnily enough, the word "infantry" comes from the same word | as "infant". IE, the young guys on the battle field. | qwytw wrote: | > 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 children departed Northern France a | couple of months before the 'proper' army left. | | It wasn't pretty. Along the way they murdered thousands of | Jews, sacked or attempted to sack multiple cities and most of | those who survived the journey were eventually massacred by the | Turks (according to some that's one of the reasons why the | Turks were so ill prepared when the actual Crusader army | arrived, they expected that all westerners were poorly armed, | disorganized and had no understanding or proper warfare... ) | FormerBandmate wrote: | That's pretty close to what we think of as the Children's | Crusade. It was peasants with little weapons or training | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | IIRC, the Children's Crusade never made it to the Holy Land. | Instead they ended up a port in Europe where some "friendly" | people offered to take them to the Holy Land on their ships for | free. Turns out they were slavers and the children were taken | to Northern Africa and sold as slaves. | | This story sounds actually plausible as it may not be that far | from where the children started to a port city. | shagmin wrote: | That's basically how I remember learning it. | | The Wikipedia article mentions that also, but only after one | of the children who apparently had visions from God and said | the Mediterranean Sea would part into two and leave a path | (sort of like the Red Sea for Moses) for them to march | directly to the Holy Land...when that failed they settled on | hitching a ride on ships from people who turned out to be | slavers. | relaxing wrote: | Wikipedia is right there: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Crusade | | It's pretty big jump from "it never happened" to "some things | happened, just not the way the stories told us." | qikInNdOutReply wrote: | ? 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/Thirty_Years%27_War | | Well obviously the taliban aint real either. A mountainous | area, in eternal intertribal warfare.. not actually accepting | the nation state.. ridiculous thought. | | The english soldiers fighting in the independence war against | the americans, were partially germans, sold by in debted | aristoctrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junker_(Prussia) | | This was the reality on the ground, even up until the 2nd | worldwar. The only escape for the peasants and althose 2nd,3rd | sons who were bound to the land, was to go on pilgrimages. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrimage or to flee to the "new | world" were the nicer frontier awaited them. | | I find the idea of a children crusadd very plausible. The | crusader knights surely promised the conquered lands to | peasants who would follow them. And pre-pestilence europe was | certainly crowded. | | Idealism is nice. Success self hypnosis is nice. But not | believing in the brutality of bygone reality, while some parts | of it are still around you, is foolish, and spreading that | foolishness, is preparing for it to repeat itself. Work hard | and meaningful, if not for yourselves, then to prevent the | return of the olden times. | Bouncingsoul1 wrote: | wow. almost all of your sources (except the last one, which | is quite broad) misses the timeframe of "medival europe". | Eleison23 wrote: | I wrote a research paper in college on the Children's Crusade, | and the question I posed to be answered was "how many children | participated in it?" | | It turns out that it was a real phenomenon, and many children | did leave home, but being children, practically none of them | made it to the Holy Land. The journey for many was much, much | shorter. And likewise, for many it was merely a spiritual | crusade and they went nowhere but "TO GOD!" as they were heard | to shout. | | There were eyewitnesses and contemporary accounts, and I | compiled an impressive list of sources to document what could | be gleaned from those accounts from a modern perspective. | ljf wrote: | Sounds like a fascinating paper - would like to read that, or | at least more of the sources. | monkmartinez wrote: | How times change!!! | | We are the defacto fire and medical insurance providers in | metropolitan areas that employ/staff fire and EMS departments. | Funded by property or sales tax, we have become the primary care | providers for thousands of people in our cities. | | We also get called for water leaks, hazardous spills, vehicle | accidents, construction mishaps, swift water rescues, hiker | rescues, venomous snake removal, bee attacks and dangerous hive | removal, roof collapses, natural gas leaks, stubbed toes, | fentanyl abuse, mental health emergencies, gun fights, knife | fights, cooking fires, refrigerant leaks, trench collapse, people | and things stuck in very high places, flash floods, electrical | problems and much much more... | RunSet wrote: | I once heard some Lenny Bruce standup that gave me the impression | that firemen were generally considered opportunistic thieves at | the time of the material's delivery, independent of its | punchline. | for_i_in_range wrote: | "Show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome." --Charlie | Munger | bluedino wrote: | We have a ~$200 fee for trash pickup in our municipality. You get | the bill every year. | | If you don't pay it, a 10% penalty is added. The next step, a | lien is placed on the property. | | They never stop picking up the trash, though. The next purchaser | of your property has to pay the existing trash bill! | | This same council raised water rates so they could reduce the | penalties for late water bill payments. | frosted-flakes wrote: | Why is trash pickup not bundled with property taxes? It's seems | ridiculous to charge for it separately when every occupied home | will generate a similar amount of trash. | bluGill wrote: | Why should it be part of taxes at all? I've lived in places | with city trash pickup, and places where you choose your own | private company to get your trash (in the later some cheap | people just drove their trash to the dump every couple | months). The costs were about the same in the best case so | long as the private people shopped around, and in the worst | cases the city didn't shop around and so costs were a lot | more. | frosted-flakes wrote: | Because with the information I was given above: | | - every household gets trash collection service, no matter | what | | - every household must pay a flat fee for trash collection | service, no matter what | | Why charge it as a separate fee? | pkaye wrote: | Smaller households can generate less trash. In our area | you can pick between 3 sizes of trash/recycling/green | bins. The trash bin size determines the service cost but | there is no additional cost for the recycling and green | bins. | bombcar wrote: | Probably because you can get them to stop picking up and | charging if you show some process of your own. Sewage is | sometimes bundled with property tax, sometimes with the | water bill - another example. | ThunderSizzle wrote: | You don't want your neighbor to not have trash pickup if | they live within smelling distance. You want their trashed | to be picked up. If you live in an area where that can | easily become a problem, it becomes important to make it | regular and "included". | | If you have more space/land in between, it doesn't matter | nearly as much. | Spooky23 wrote: | Sometimes there's other restrictions. | | For example, | | - In some states there's a cap on property tax increases. So | the moving to a fee-model takes it off the tax levy by making | it a user fee. | | - Bundling trash services with the tax levy is inequitable in | that commercial properties are subsidizing services they do | not use. A 20 unit apartment building usually has to use a | private hauler, for example. | | - Some places try to setup consumption based models, where | you pay per occupancy unit or even by the bag. | [deleted] | cratermoon wrote: | An interesting analysis of the outcomes of free market forces at | work. | pessimizer wrote: | This seems like an interesting short survey of London | firefighting history, but I'm missing the debunking people are | remarking about. The only thing that slightly resembles debunking | is that in the conclusion the idea that fire brigades ever let | houses burn is referred to in passing as a "legend." | | In regard to the _legend_ - I don 't think that anyone ever said | that fire brigades would refuse to put out uninsured buildings | where the fire might spread to other buildings, that fire | brigades couldn't be induced by cash to put out the fires of the | uninsured, or that cities never offered baseline inducements for | fire brigades to put out fires whether the buildings were insured | or not. That would be adding content to the _" legend"_ in order | to debunk it. Looking at the record and finding out that all of | these things happened is expected and unremarkable. | | The fires that we would _expect_ not to be put out if the _" | legend"_ were accurate would be fires that happened to uninsured | buildings that didn't endanger nearby structures, buildings owned | by people who didn't have enough cash or credit to convince an | uncontracted fire brigade to act, that were close enough to the | city to be accessible to a fire brigade yet far enough away that | the city didn't feel responsible for them. Additionally, the | chance that a building owner might simply pay (under flaming | duress) a brigade that showed up would mean that they probably | generally _would show up,_ and if they weren 't ever willing to | watch a building burn, they'd be undercutting their own last | minute deals. | | These are the exactly the fires that we would expect not to be in | the record. Fires in detached structures, owned by people with no | money. | | It seems that the city started rewarding brigades for putting out | fires in uninsured households based on the order in which they | arrived. Additionally, they were consolidating/federating in | order to take on larger contracts - which incidentally meant | [original scholarship] that the consolidated/federated brigades | would always get the first arrival bonus through this collusion. | As the number of independent brigades dwindled and the | _socialist_ city reward money became large enough that the actual | insurance element receded to only being profitable for large | contracts rather than individual homes, the consolidated block of | fire brigades organized their own nationalization. | hristov wrote: | Sorry but I do not believe this. The paper rings a lot of alarm | bells. It provides very little evidence for the actual thesis it | is trying to prove and provides ample evidence that seem related | to the thesis it is trying to prove but in fact it does nothing | to prove it. Thus, the paper provides plenty of evidence that | insurance companies helped each other to fight fires at sites | insured by their fellow insurance companies, and then | subsequently reimbursed each other for these efforts, but that of | course has no bearing on what the paper is trying to prove. | | Usually commonly held widely believed oral histories emerge for a | good reason. So if it was commonly believed that insurance | companies let un-insured buildings burn, then it is likely to be | true at least part of the time. | | Also, lets look at the source -- he is an "archive and heritage | consultant", i.e. someone that solicits money for his research. | Is he getting paid for this article? Is he writing this in the | hopes that he will advertise his services for insurance | companies? | stickfigure wrote: | 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. | turtledragonfly wrote: | 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... | stickfigure wrote: | * 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. | turtledragonfly wrote: | 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 | campaign. | | I think the "public Facebook APIs" descriptor is a little | off -- Facebook viewed it as a data breach and apologized | (and got sued, and fined, etc). So it was pretty shady, | not just simple above-board access. | SamBorick wrote: | The article specifically says: | | Originally writing in 1692-3, Daniel Defoe noted that the | firemen were "very active and diligent" in helping to put out | fires, "whether in houses insured or not insured".[33] | Insurance companies' instructions to their firemen were clear - | they were to attend and help extinguish "all" fires. [34], [35] | | What specific issue with this do you have? Do you disagree with | the content of "Of Assurances", in An Essay upon Projects? Or | the Union Fire Office Board Minutes? | | Or did you just not read the article? | turtledragonfly wrote: | I can't speak for the person you replied to, but I don't | think the quote you provided really invalidates the point. | | Maybe you two are talking past each other. One way to phrase | the core question is: "did fire companies let competitors' | buildings burn, regularly, as standard practice?" And I think | the evidence in the article pretty strongly indicates "No." I | think that's what you're referring to. | | Another way to phrase the core question is: "Did it ever | happen, at various points in history, that fire companies let | competitors' buildings burn?" And I think the article | indicates that it very well may have. And the possibility was | absolutely used as a threat, even if it never actually came | to pass. | | I feel like even a handful of such incidents would have been | so terrible as to get etched into social memory and passed | on, and I think that's the sort of thing the person you are | replying to was referring to. | | So... I think you're both right (: | lolinder wrote: | > Usually commonly held widely believed oral histories emerge | for a good reason. So if it was commonly believed that | insurance companies let un-insured buildings burn, then it is | likely to be true at least part of the time. | | Yes, oral histories emerge for a reason, but that reason | doesn't have to be "because it was literally true". There are | countless oral traditions that are complete nonsense! Urban | legends existed 200 and 2000 years ago just as much as they do | today, and no historian would ever claim that you should take | _every_ oral history at face value. | | > Also, lets look at the source -- he is an "archive and | heritage consultant", i.e. someone that solicits money for his | research. Is he getting paid for this article? Is he writing | this in the hopes that he will advertise his services for | insurance companies? | | He was paid by a prominent YouTuber to find out whether a video | said YouTuber made several years ago was incorrect[0]. That | doesn't scream "conflict of interest" to me. | | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wif1EAgEQKI | Spooky23 wrote: | I think it's an article where you need some context. | | A relative is a retired fire chief of a city department and | overall fire buff. He's spent 15 years engrossed in this stuff | for various cities in the US - the answers vary! Usually in the | 19th century there were different types of fire service. A fire | brigade or volunteer company focused on protecting the city or | subscribers, and protective companies who salvaged buildings or | contents of buildings. Sometimes they worked differently in | different places, and you need to understand the context of | precisely when and where you are talking about. | | Keep in the mind the nature of 18th and 19th century buildings | - often row houses, often with shared attics, etc. Protecting | property, then and now might mean sacrificing some buildings to | protect others. Consider the destruction of San Francisco... | when the leaders of the city fire department were all killed, | and underground water cisterns damaged by the earthquake, a | madman Army officer blew up half the city to "save" it. | | The property insurance folks had a first priority to save the | contents of a house - they may be dragging the piano and hutch | out of a house while the house 3 doors down burned. Or they may | have helped. From the perspective of contemporary eyewitnesses, | what they report and write down may vary. | frosted-flakes wrote: | He was paid for the paper by Tom Scott, the video essayist. | There's an accompanying video at https://youtu.be/Wif1EAgEQKI | psychphysic wrote: | I'll need to update my local yours for when people visit me in | London. | turtledragonfly wrote: | I feel like people might read this (or just the headline) and | take away a message like "aha, so for-profit fire companies | actually worked just fine!" | | As far as I know, there are still plenty of examples of that | model failing hideously in various ways (eg: [1][2], and many | examples of unproductive competition from TFA itself). This | article is specifically about firefighting in London, in a | certain time period -- notably starting _after_ the Great Fire, | when presumably those dangers were fresh in people 's minds. | | And also, to its credit, I think the article leaves the question | pretty muddy and un-answered. [1] https://en.wiki | pedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus#Rise_to_power_and_wealth | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Tweed#Early_career | bee_rider wrote: | It also ends with the fire brigades basically asking the city | to take over because they couldn't solve the free-rider | problem, so anyone who thinks of it as an example of the free | market system working clearly didn't read far enough. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-19 23:00 UTC)