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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

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 4y ago
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  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.
  - cies 4y ago
    Yes, just a small nuance: > always come down to a 50.001% majority It's not a person-vote-majority, but some sort of aggregate. Due to the aggregation scheme it becomes even easier to manipulate/game with "key counties" and "key states". A party does not even need to convince the general population anymore, but just focus on a tiny fraction.
LarryMullins 4y ago
> "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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    > 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 4y ago
      >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 4y ago
        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.
rayiner 4y ago
> 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.
- cryptonector 4y ago
  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).
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  - twblalock 4y ago
    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.
zdragnar 4y ago
> "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 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    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_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      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.
robertlagrant 4y ago
> 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.
RC_ITR 4y ago
[flagged]
- rayiner 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    - bloppe 4y ago
      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_charitable_donation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charita...
      - lmm 4y ago
        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.
drstewart 4y ago
>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.
zpthree 4y ago
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 4y ago
  - pdonis 4y ago
    You are egregiously misinformed about the US.
    - that_guy_iain 4y ago
      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.
      - mbg721 4y ago
        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?
mabbo 4y ago
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.
- pdonis 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        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.
adolph 4y ago
> 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."
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  They have a water gun. They chose not to stand at a safe distance shooting water into a burning building. Because... water is too expensive to waste on these people who didn't pay their taxes or whatever. Instead, they chose to stand at a safe distance, not shooting their water gun, and just watch the building reduced to ash.
  - adolph 4y ago
    I see you are doubling down on belittling the work of others. In an unincorporated area (that is to say a place where erecting a domicile is not supported and yet also not forbidden) the firefighters may not have water for a "water gun," as you say. If they had access to water, a standoff approach with "a water gun" would only control the fire from spreading more broadly than building and damage the structure through inundation. If the structure was salvable, then the work of a firefighter is to control combustion to extinction using tools to manage the movement of air and other gases so building materials stop burning and do not reignite. It is a close-in effort.
thegrimmest 4y ago
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.
AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
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...?
chung8123 4y ago
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.
webnrrd2k 4y ago
> I think the moral of the > story is America has some > very serious third-world > problems. That's true, and that's true of other first-world nations, too. America has plenty of problems. However, this fire brigade isn't one of them. It they work through insurance then, if you havent paid the insurance, you shouldn't be suprised when they don't put out your fire. I was a volunteer fire fighter for a while, and I did it because 1.) I'm kind of an idiot about danger, and 2.) I think it's important to help others. There are many other people in the US that will go to ridiculous lengths to help others. > Not only that, the fire department >refused to accept money to put it out. It that's how it's supposed to work? Your building catches fire, the F.D. rolls up, and you hand them $75 right there? Are they supposed to carry cash in case you don't have exact change? Set up a stripe account so they can take credit or debit?
- hejaodbsidndbd 4y ago
myself248 4y ago
No. People _seek out_ unincorporated land _because_ they don't want to be beholden to city services or any of the trappings of civilization. It's like Texas as a whole, opted out of power-grid interconnection with the rest of the country, specifically so they could deregulate their industry. And when the consequences of their actions came calling, the rest of civilization stared, agape and aghast. Here's the question though: Should it be legal for people to opt out of these things? Can they be forced to comply? If your answer is "no sane person would opt out of fire insurance", I would agree. But sanity is in short supply in the US lately. I would argue that it's not a question of laws in isolation, it's a question of laws perverted by brainwashed people acting against their own self-interest because they've been sold a tribal identity of exceptionalism, by America's enemies, for the purpose of weakening America, and it is working better than they possibly could have dreamed.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  I think it's obvious there's a price at which point opting out of fire insurance makes sense. For unimproved land, that price might be quite low, perhaps even $0.
dev_tty01 4y ago
>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." Your argument is based on a false premise. Nobody died. In a life/death situation, the fire fighters will do whatever is necessary to attempt to save lives, but they aren't worried about a structure that a homeowner chose not to protect. In your country, if someone chooses not to insure a home, will the government rebuild it for free? What's the difference? I'm assuming the non-indigent case where someone can afford to pay the insurance. If someone is indigent they probably don't own a house. If it is government housing, then it of course would be rebuilt by the government. There are plenty of problems in the US, but you have greatly exaggerated this particular issue.
n8cpdx 4y ago
I don’t think this person actually has much experience with local governance in the US, because collectivized responsibility and mutual aid is a hallmark of basically every local government I’ve experienced, across the US. Pass the guacymolo. As an aside, “You're not with us, so it's not our problem” could better be stated as “you organized your entire life around not contributing to the collective welfare by dodging taxes in unincorporated land, then not contributing to the fire brigade.” The state should not incentivize people to engage in the worst antisocial behavior, and giving services to tax dodgers who should know better is a seriously misaligned incentive. Perhaps life insurance companies should pay out to anyone who signs up and pays $20 from their deathbeds?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
danielfoster 4y ago
This is a case of a family who chose to live on unincorporated land because they wanted less government protection. It's a severe edge case involving very individual circumstances. You can't make any conclusions about the US from this. I wasn't able to find it again but there also people in Germany who lack health insurance due to an inability to pay and must rely on charity clinics. These are mostly elderly Germans who paid into a private system, foregoing the public system, and eventually lost health insurance after their earnings declined. It's just the US that has these "third world problems."
dang 4y ago
You started a huge nationalistic flamewar and then fueled it over and over again. Other people broke the site guidelines as well, but your account was by far the main cause, and you broke the site guidelines very badly in several places. Please don't do anything like this again. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34072882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34072882 as well. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34054804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34054804.

cies 4y ago

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
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.
- cies 4y ago
  Yes, just a small nuance: > always come down to a 50.001% majority It's not a person-vote-majority, but some sort of aggregate. Due to the aggregation scheme it becomes even easier to manipulate/game with "key counties" and "key states". A party does not even need to convince the general population anymore, but just focus on a tiny fraction.

LarryMullins 4y ago

> "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 4y ago
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 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    >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 4y ago
      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.

rayiner 4y ago

> 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.

cryptonector 4y ago
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).
saiya-jin 4y ago
- twblalock 4y ago
  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.

zdragnar 4y ago

> "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 4y ago
> 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 4y ago
  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_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    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.

robertlagrant 4y ago

> 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.

RC_ITR 4y ago

[flagged]

rayiner 4y ago
> 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 4y ago
  - bloppe 4y ago
    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_charitable_donation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charita...
    - lmm 4y ago
      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.

drstewart 4y ago

>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.

zpthree 4y ago

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 4y ago
- pdonis 4y ago
  You are egregiously misinformed about the US.
  - that_guy_iain 4y ago
    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.
    - mbg721 4y ago
      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?

mabbo 4y ago

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.

pdonis 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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.

adolph 4y ago

> 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."

hypertele-Xii 4y ago
They have a water gun. They chose not to stand at a safe distance shooting water into a burning building. Because... water is too expensive to waste on these people who didn't pay their taxes or whatever. Instead, they chose to stand at a safe distance, not shooting their water gun, and just watch the building reduced to ash.
- adolph 4y ago
  I see you are doubling down on belittling the work of others. In an unincorporated area (that is to say a place where erecting a domicile is not supported and yet also not forbidden) the firefighters may not have water for a "water gun," as you say. If they had access to water, a standoff approach with "a water gun" would only control the fire from spreading more broadly than building and damage the structure through inundation. If the structure was salvable, then the work of a firefighter is to control combustion to extinction using tools to manage the movement of air and other gases so building materials stop burning and do not reignite. It is a close-in effort.

thegrimmest 4y ago

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.

AlexTWithBeard 4y ago

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...?

chung8123 4y ago

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.

webnrrd2k 4y ago

> I think the moral of the > story is America has some > very serious third-world > problems. That's true, and that's true of other first-world nations, too. America has plenty of problems. However, this fire brigade isn't one of them. It they work through insurance then, if you havent paid the insurance, you shouldn't be suprised when they don't put out your fire. I was a volunteer fire fighter for a while, and I did it because 1.) I'm kind of an idiot about danger, and 2.) I think it's important to help others. There are many other people in the US that will go to ridiculous lengths to help others. > Not only that, the fire department >refused to accept money to put it out. It that's how it's supposed to work? Your building catches fire, the F.D. rolls up, and you hand them $75 right there? Are they supposed to carry cash in case you don't have exact change? Set up a stripe account so they can take credit or debit?

hejaodbsidndbd 4y ago

myself248 4y ago

No. People _seek out_ unincorporated land _because_ they don't want to be beholden to city services or any of the trappings of civilization. It's like Texas as a whole, opted out of power-grid interconnection with the rest of the country, specifically so they could deregulate their industry. And when the consequences of their actions came calling, the rest of civilization stared, agape and aghast. Here's the question though: Should it be legal for people to opt out of these things? Can they be forced to comply? If your answer is "no sane person would opt out of fire insurance", I would agree. But sanity is in short supply in the US lately. I would argue that it's not a question of laws in isolation, it's a question of laws perverted by brainwashed people acting against their own self-interest because they've been sold a tribal identity of exceptionalism, by America's enemies, for the purpose of weakening America, and it is working better than they possibly could have dreamed.

sokoloff 4y ago
I think it's obvious there's a price at which point opting out of fire insurance makes sense. For unimproved land, that price might be quite low, perhaps even $0.

dev_tty01 4y ago

>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." Your argument is based on a false premise. Nobody died. In a life/death situation, the fire fighters will do whatever is necessary to attempt to save lives, but they aren't worried about a structure that a homeowner chose not to protect. In your country, if someone chooses not to insure a home, will the government rebuild it for free? What's the difference? I'm assuming the non-indigent case where someone can afford to pay the insurance. If someone is indigent they probably don't own a house. If it is government housing, then it of course would be rebuilt by the government. There are plenty of problems in the US, but you have greatly exaggerated this particular issue.

n8cpdx 4y ago

I don’t think this person actually has much experience with local governance in the US, because collectivized responsibility and mutual aid is a hallmark of basically every local government I’ve experienced, across the US. Pass the guacymolo. As an aside, “You're not with us, so it's not our problem” could better be stated as “you organized your entire life around not contributing to the collective welfare by dodging taxes in unincorporated land, then not contributing to the fire brigade.” The state should not incentivize people to engage in the worst antisocial behavior, and giving services to tax dodgers who should know better is a seriously misaligned incentive. Perhaps life insurance companies should pay out to anyone who signs up and pays $20 from their deathbeds?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

danielfoster 4y ago

This is a case of a family who chose to live on unincorporated land because they wanted less government protection. It's a severe edge case involving very individual circumstances. You can't make any conclusions about the US from this. I wasn't able to find it again but there also people in Germany who lack health insurance due to an inability to pay and must rely on charity clinics. These are mostly elderly Germans who paid into a private system, foregoing the public system, and eventually lost health insurance after their earnings declined. It's just the US that has these "third world problems."

dang 4y ago

You started a huge nationalistic flamewar and then fueled it over and over again. Other people broke the site guidelines as well, but your account was by far the main cause, and you broke the site guidelines very badly in several places. Please don't do anything like this again. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34072882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34072882 as well. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34054804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34054804.