By this logic, everybody with the slightest means of helping others who got themselves into a jam through stupid decisions should do so. If you **** up, tough ****. Not my problem, I don't want to pay for it, you aren't on my radar, I don't give a rat's ass about you, your family, or whether or not your house burns to the ground. If it it starts to threaten my house, I will call in the services I paid for.

Most of us don't have to worry about this because we have county fire. I don't oppose this because it makes sense. But maybe it doesn't make sense in rural Tennessee.

I already said that they should have something in place to charge people a couple grand if they have to come to a house that isn't on the list. But, they didn't, and this was the policy and they made a point that had to be made. Maybe people will start paying their fee now.



What the hell difference does it make if you pay for your fire protection through a fee paid to a private contractor or a tax? Obviously if they had a county-wide fire department, their taxes would be higher to pay for it. Maybe they don't want this? I'd rather pay a fee to a private contractor than a tax to the county any day of the week. And don't tell me it should be mandatory. If some idiot wants to opt out of fire protection for $75 a year, that's not only his problem, but his right.

As I'm sure you're aware, I never stated that one should expect to get "everything" one wants when paying taxes. The point that I was clearly making was that there are certain entitlements that one should expect to "receive" in a modern civilized nation (you know, like the ones that every other modern civilized nation receives) & that one of those should be access to emergency response regardless of where one resides w/in said nation & that paying for said "services" via taxes is a superior method to paying via fees.

P.S. for anyone wondering, here is BobTheMasher's entire life philosophy summed up, direct quote, swear to god (you know it's authentic because of the quote tags):



P.S.S. My quote is just as fake as his.

Hey, don't look at me! :downs:

Uhh...yeah. Everyone SHOULD help others if they can.

Mentat, so you think that since you were born in America after 1950 you are "entitled" to fire, medical, and police emergency services? Do you think that this entitlement pops fully formed from the earth when we decide "i guess this nation is civilized and modern" or do you think that maybe we call a nation civilized and modern when people decide that maybe it's worth paying a certain amount of money to create and support these services? Because I think it's the latter.

Taxes, fees, whatever, but you have to PAY THEM or else that thing CAN NOT EXIST.

Also, I don't understand your quote of me. I don't get what you're (I'm) saying. What does the majority have to do with it? what? I'm confused, can you rephrase me?

Your sociopathy proves my point.


The obvious difference is that they wouldn't have a choice in the matter. If you give ignorant people a choice on matters that most, if not all, modern, civilized countries consider a given, ignorant decisions will be made. There are some things that ignorant populations of people have no business voting on (e.g: whether or not it should be legal to discriminate against homosexuals). This is one of the reasons that we elect officials to do this for us.

I'm more interested in what's true than in what the people think & under the constraints of our system of government, entitlements are one of the only feasible options that I'm aware of. It's a fact that we have entitlements in this country so I don't understand why you're asking me if I think I do or not.


I've already stated that these services should be paid for via taxes so we've been in agreement on this since my initial post.


I'm basically poking fun at you by stating that your philosophy is the exact opposite of what you're claiming mine is, despite the fact that I have very little to base this on (like you have very little to base yours on), other than your posts on this forum & that the opinion that citizens, despite their expertise in any given area, should be making decisions on all matters is ridiculous (forgive me if I'm incorrect in this assumption).

Then maybe the county population should have come up with their own fire department.

The only thing US citizen are really entitled to is rights.

And I think I see what you meant with the quote now. But yeah, pretty much, people should be given a choice even if the smart choice is obvious and they make the wrong choice anyway. You're the one arguing that the majority is always right...by saying that the majority should make the decisions for the stupid people because they can't be trusted.

Anyway, point is, what a ****ty county.

So this is what happens when the stupid people are the majority, right?

I find this whole story pretty damn idiotic...

Now I'm all for personal freedom, choosing what you want to pay for and not, but seriously, not providing a fire service through taxes...that's just plain stupid.

There are plenty of rural areas in the UK, but every house in the UK has fire coverage, yeah some of it can be miles away and the rural stations are subsidised by the larger towns and cities but having fire coverage I would assume, naively it would seem, is just common sense.

People shouldn't get a choice, everyone pays a certain amount to insure there is coverage, there is no option, it comes straight of your pay. Now if someone can give me a good reason why this is a bad idea let me know, coz the only thing I can think of is that the less well off will complain about losing more of their pay....as with any form of government tax, suck it up, or hey...your house will burn down