Flutterby™! : Fire protection

So the Intarwebs are up in arms today over the sad story of a guy who lived in a county in Tennessee, in an area that didn't have fire protection services. Residents, however, had the option of buying fire protection services from a nearby city for the princely sum of $75 per year. Yes, that's a whopping $6.25 a month. But this guy wasn't willing to pay for the upkeep of a fire department, participate in the common good. One news report quotes him as saying:

"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick.

So guy expects that someone else is going to undertake the capital costs of putting together a fire department, and the ongoing costs of keeping it ready, so that in the event his house burns down they can then go after him, newly destitute from losing his house ('cause a guy who'll gamble with $6.25 per month probably won't carry insurance either), for the costs of putting out the fire and keeping a bunch of hundred thousand dollar plus trucks hanging around in running order and staffed with people who know how to use that equipment.

Well, sure enough, someone's got a fire going in a couple of burn barrels in this guys back yard, it gets out of control and gets his house. He calls the fire department. They say "no dice". It gets further out of control, his neighbor, who has been foresightful enough to help support his local fire department, calls the fire department, and the fire department puts out the fire on the neighbor's property.

So guy who couldn't be bothered for seven bucks a month to participate in an existing fire department endangers his neighbor's property, loses his house, and varous people in my social circles on the internet are sorry for him?

Sorry, y'all: The guy got what's coming to him, and if the world is fair his neighbor should be able to sue him for what little assets he has left.

A relative of Mr Cranick apparently was so stuck in this sense of entitlement that he went and punched out the fire chief.

Now there are a lot of complaints that he shouldn't have been allowed to opt-out, the county should have provided the fire protection by default, the fire district should have saved his house anyway and billed him later. A few things on that:

1. Whatever. Whether or not he should have been able to opt-out, he did opt-out.
2. Yeah, it'd be great if the county provided such services. Who's the local government? Residents who get off their ass and make things happen. Presumably not assholes who can't be arsed for $75 a year to stop mistakes before they endanger neighbors.
3. Bill him for it later? If everyone did that, do you think there'd actually be a fire department? Should they be able to run a credit check before they start fighting the fire? How does that work exactly? Probably much like modern emergency rooms: The fire departments would pass the costs on to the people responsible enough to pay their freakin' $75/month, and it'd go up to a grand a month for the people who actually would pay, and then we'd be talking about closing down fire departments, and someone would decide that firefighters had to have special protections so they made real profits in order to keep 'em in business, and we'd be spending 18% of our GNP on fire protection too.

So, yeah, sucks to be Gene Cranick. If you don't want to be the next Gene Cranick, take basic steps to protect your home, including, perhaps, getting involved in your local government to set up systems so that assholes like Gene Cranick who think that the government is some magical thing that will protect them from themselves no matter what can't endanger your home.

News story about the house burning, News story about the assault and battery on the fire chief, Volokh, Metafilter, Sensible Erection.