Paid your Fire Fee? No, then dont expect your house to be saved from burning down

[Flagg]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot...logical-debate

I wasn't aware of this, but in Tennessee, people can pay a $75 Annual Fire Fee. It's not compulsory, but if you dont pay this fee and your fire catches fire, then the Fire Department are not obligated to save your house should it catch light.

Not sure I like that policy. I thought the Emergency Services were for the Public? Can you imagine if you had to pay an Ambulance or Police Fee?

Victim: Operator, I need the police, theres a man trying to kill me in my house!
Operator: Paid the fee?
Victim:...no!
Operator: *Hangs up*

15 minutes later

Victim: Operator I need an ambulance, i have multiple stab wounds!
Operator: Paid the fee?
Victim: ....no!
Operator: *hangs up*

Okay the above seems a bit over the top but you get my drift. Since when were the Emergency Services privatised? I don't know if this is a common thing in America, but I was kinda shocked seeing as the Fire Crew WATCHED this mans house burn down, and were only there to make sure the fire wouldnt get out of control, spread or endanger home owners that had paid this fee.

[Ernst]

Certainly not normal, though this man clearly lives in the middle of nowhere. Simple fact is that people don't work for free.

Where I live our emergency services have to have a supplemental income to exist. We simply aren't big enough that our regular taxes will pay for it. The town hall pays a fee drawn from our taxes to the county sheriff to hire extra officers to provide police service in our town. Overwhelmingly, locals voted to add an additional property tax to provide the money for a decently equipped fire department and ambulance service and to keep a small hospital (in other words, we agreed to pay a non-optional fee). Otherwise, the nearest services we could depend on would be 30 miles away! Seriously injured people still have to be airlifted to a hospital in the nearest city where they have all the staff, resources, and equipment we couldn't afford.

[inheritmylife]

It's a bullshit story the american media is using to wage an argument against the free market economies ability to deal with this sort of shit.

This guys claim to fire protection services was denied by the government of whatever piece of shit town he lives in, not "the market." But they're all trying to make it a market issue, as if some magic capitalistic fire-engine should have appeared out of fairyland put out the fire on this poor ****s house.

Well, why should there be? It's not like their isn't a public monopoly on fire services is there?

If any other free market emergency service is any reasonable indication, they wouldn't have sat outside asking for payment while this guys house turned into burnt cinders (like they did in this exact event), they would have put the ****er out and billed him.