Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won't respond, then watches it burn. That's exactly what happened to a local family tonight.
A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.
The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.
Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay.
The mayor said if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck.
- Show Prep
- Listen to FTL
- FTL Info
- Community
- Support FTL
- Learn More
Communities are playing very
rebbetsmith 2 years 31 weeks 2 days 10 hours ago
Well? What did they expect?
phonon 2 years 36 weeks 6 days 15 hours ago
They didn't pay. $75 isn't much to pay for fire service, people.
Added (copied from a comment on Salon.com)
The firefighters that refused to help this family are employed by the state. They are not a market organization. The state does not respond to market incentives. It doesn’t have the capacity to accept a higher fee for last-minute service. Market organizations do have that capacity. Airlines don’t make you wait two weeks to fly, they just charge more if your need is urgent. Gas stations don’t only offer one kind of gas. They just charge more for the higher quality ones.
Libertarians want market organizations to provide services with free and open competition. I am a libertarian who is not in favor of a state-run fire brigade such as this. I find it utterly stupid and self-destructive of them to not save this house. The fire brigade is short of funds. Imagine their windfall from situations like this! Instead of a measly $75 per house per year they could charge $2,000 to save a house on the spot. If I ran a fire brigade, I would save his house just so I could get him as a customer. If I didn’t, a competitor might.
I hope the people of Obion county, Tennessee don’t demand more services from their local governments. Do you really want more of the same? Their best hope lies in forming a volunteer firefighting department. We are the solution we’ve been waiting for. The state has no magic wand to do anything we can’t already do.
Salon thinks this is a libertarian outcome. But it’s the authoritarian reality we face today. Authoritarians like to have monopolies. They tout their zero-tolerance policies. Buy our service the way we say, or you get nothing at all. That’s dumb. That’s the state.
—George Donnelly
as usual..."just doing my
iambinarymind 2 years 36 weeks 6 days 17 hours ago