When Will People Learn?

• se-alum

  

  I'm glad to see the Mayor has stuck by his guns, even after making the national news for the same thing last year.
  
  http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/tennessee-family-home-burns-while-firefighters-watch-191241763.html
• hasbeen

  

  Don't taxes cover fire departments?
• sleeper

  

  pnhasbeen;1005534 wrote:Don't taxes cover fire departments?

  Read the article.
  
  Enjoy!
  
  Also, I agree with the mayor. If you put the fire out, you just create the incentive not to contribute to the fire department. It's called moral hazard, and maybe the government should have realized this before they bailed out the banks.
• justincredible

  

  I mean, it sucks for the family to lose all of their crap but they didn't pay for the fire service. No one's life was in danger so the fire dept just watched it burn. I see no problem here.
  
  As a great philosopher once said, "if you don't weigh in, you don't wrestle."
• Cat Food Flambe'

  

  It's like health insurance - why pay it when you'll get care anyway? While it's certainly not a universal situation, how many people do you know that "can't afford" health insurance, but still have smartphones, cable TV, etc?
• queencitybuckeye

  As long as the people understand the risk associated with not paying the fee, I don't see how one could maintain that the fire department is doing anything wrong.
• fan_from_texas

  queencitybuckeye;1005577 wrote:As long as the people understand the risk associated with not paying the fee, I don't see how one could maintain that the fire department is doing anything wrong.

  Exactly. The homeowners made a calculated gamble. It didn't work out for them. Sucks, but that's part of life.
  
  If anything, it'd be insulting for the firefighters to jump in and save them: doing so says to the homeowner, "Listen, you're not smart enough to think for yourself, so we're going to think for you." The only rational, reasonable thing to do that respects the autonomy of the homeowner is to treat them like an adult and let them make their own choice about how to proceed.
• Heretic

  

  justincredible;1005567 wrote:As a great philosopher once said, "if you don't weigh in, you don't wrestle."

  Ric Flair?
  
  
• DeyDurkie5

  

  classic case of hindsight. sorry you didnt pay for the service, why should you get it? idiots. go fuck yourself
• dwccrew

  

  I think it would have been bad on the fire department's part only if they started making smores by the fire. Since they didn't, I'm ok with it.
  
  PS: roasting hot dogs would have been acceptable.