You Can't Silence Us

FEMA Refresher

From three years ago. I figure this is needed since there is a lot of misinformation about the hurricane response.

Many people see FEMA as some sort of large Federal organization that responds to emergencies. They aren’t. What FEMA is, is a guy with a Rolodex (Remember those? If you don’t, ask your parents, snowflake.) and a checkbook. There isn’t some magical team of Federal Employees sitting around, waiting for “the big one” so they can swoop in and save everyone. That isn’t how it works.

No, this FEMA guy’s phonebook is filled with the contact information of local and state resources that can be called in an emergency. Those resources respond, tracking expenses and man hours used, and the FEMA guy then breaks out the checkbook to reimburse the states involved. The Governor doesn’t call out FEMA for shit. If you want to get technical, FEMA can’t do a thing unless the President tells them to. (Didn’t Trump catch hell for that recently?) FEMA’s largest contribution is writing the check to pay for it all.

After 9/11, the US government came up with the concept of Urban Search and Rescue Teams. They follow a set of guidelines in equipment and training, so that all of them nationwide operate on a similar set of procedures. This makes them interoperable across state lines: a person qualified for one could easily fit into any of the others. A USAR is equipped with everything from power generators to food trailers and rescue equipment. They have medical supplies, fuel, and all other equipment needed to fulfill their mission. Each USAR maintains over 5,000 pieces of equipment and has 140 or so assigned personnel. They can operate independently for 2 weeks, longer with resupply of fuel, food, and other consumables.

While there are some variations in the mission for each team (a team in Florida doesn’t need to be equipped for blizzards, for example) the teams are remarkably similar in training and equipment.

Florida doesn’t need FEMA resources for a building collapse. The state has eight Urban Search and Rescue Teams, all of whom are trained and equipped for that. Each one is centered on a large city, and draws its personnel from surrounding first responders. These first responders volunteer for the team, are sent to special training, and then become qualified for the team. Specialists are trained in HAZMAT, trench rescue, building collapse, confined space, water rescue, dive rescue, high angle, and vehicle and machinery rescue. Every member is certified as an EMT or Paramedic. It takes 2 to 3 years of training to fully qualify for a USAR team, on top of the extra training that they do on a constant basis. Most USAR members are the best of what their employing agencies have to offer. They are the most motivated and able of emergency responders.

To be honest, I loved deployments. Not because deployments meant people were suffering. No, mostly it was because they were a test of all that you had learned. That, and a FEMA deployment usually pays pretty well. I was deployed to Katrina for 12 days and was paid more than $5,000. You want people who bring years of expertise and thousands of hours of training to come save you? You want people willing to live on 3 hours’ sleep a night without bathing while shitting in a bucket and eating old MRE’s for two weeks? It’s gonna cost ya. That kind of expertise and dedication isn’t cheap.

People who have read this post: 155
By Divemedic, ago

DeSantis Takes Action

Every time there is a strike from a national union, we hear stories of union members committing violent acts to keep others from going on with their lives without the union’s blessing. I remember a Greyhound being shot at during a teamsters’ strike years ago. The leader of the longshoremen threatened to “cripple” us. The Governor of Florida took action to make sure that this doesn’t happen.

People who have read this post: 312
By Divemedic, ago

Fire Departments

When talking about libertarian theories of government, someone always comes forward with the example that fire departments be privatized. When I point out that private fire departments were already tried in this country and didn’t work, someone always points to volunteer fire departments as an example.

And they are wrong. Fire departments are a subject in which I consider myself to be an expert, having functioned and worked in half a dozen of them over a three decade period. I have been a volunteer with at least four different volunteer fire departments. Three of them are no longer staffed by volunteers, and the fourth is in a VERY rural area.

The problems with running a volunteer department are many. Let’s start with the reason why libertarians want to use them- money.

Funding

While cheaper than a full time, paid department, volunteer departments still cost money, and in most cases those departments are nowhere near as effective as a career department. There are only two ways that a fire department can be funded: Through tax dollars, or through voluntary donations called “membership fees.”

The tax dollar funding model is self explanatory, so I will spend some time discussing membership fees. In order to become a member of the fire association, each property owner pays a voluntary membership fee, with these fees ranging from $30 to a couple of hundred, depending on the particulars. If a member’s property is responded to by the fire department, their membership fee is all that they pay. If the fire department responds to a nonmember’s house, there are two possibilities:

  • The department refuses to respond to the nonmember’s property. This creates a lot of bad press, as people think that it’s wrong to allow a home to burn down because they haven’t paid. There are those who say “Just let them pay the fee after the house catches fire.”
  • So the department has a fee structure where a nonmember is billed after they have a fire. That is not really workable, because the chances of any one person having a fire is exceedingly small, on the order of 1 in 10,000 or so. Many people will roll the dice in such a situation and wait until they have a fire to pay. If everyone refused to pay until they have a fire, the department would either have no funds, or the fee would be so large that people couldn’t pay it. Even volunteer departments charge fees of $5,000 or more to put out your fire.

All fire departments require large amounts of funding. There are fire trucks to be bought, a fire station, firefighting equipment, insurance, utilities, fuel, and a myriad of other expenses like training that all must be paid for. The larger and busier the department is, the more that costs.

Let me explain:

Volunteer department D: This was a very busy volunteer fire and rescue squad in a large city (over 400,000 people) that had been in operation since the 1950s. Over the years, more and more career firefighters were added to staff the station during periods when the volunteers were unavailable. When I was there, one fire engine and one ladder truck in the station were staffed 24/7 by a crew of 8 career firefighters, while several EMS units and a second fire engine were staffed by volunteers. There are no longer any volunteer firefighters there. While I was there, it was volunteer, but it still was funded by tax dollars and had an ISO rating of 4/9.

Volunteer Department H: This is a volunteer department in a very rural area of the Ozark mountains. It’s staffed by untrained volunteers, and while they work hard, they have almost no money for equipment. The fire engine that they had was a 1950’s era fire truck. In the year that I was there, they had exactly 5 fires: 2 brush fires, 2 chimney fires, and one house fire that saw the house burn to the ground. It had an ISO rating of 9. It is funded through mandatory fire fees that are collected through the county tax office, and has an operating budget of about $50,000 a year, even though there are only about 500 residents.

Volunteer Department B: This was a busy volunteer department that responded to approximately 4,000 calls per year out of two stations that contained a total of four engines, two brush trucks, two ambulances, a pair of tankers, and a rescue squad. The ambulance at each station was staffed by two career firefighters, and the fire engines were staffed by volunteers. The requirement was that one fire engine at each station was staffed 24/7 by two volunteers. Each volunteer was required to be in the station for four 12 hour shifts per month. The funding for this department came from tax dollars. Eventually, the department went to a full time career staffing model. When it was volunteer, it had an ISO rating of 5/8.

Volunteer Department M: This was also a busy volunteer department. It responded to about 1,500 calls per year out of one station. It served a small town of about 12,000 people until the late 90s, when the population (and 911 calls) exploded, with the town going from a population of 12,000 to 70,000 within just three years. The volunteer system collapsed under the weight of increased call volume, and it was taken over by a career department. The station had a rescue squad, a tanker, a fire engine, and a brush truck and was supported by tax dollars. Its ISO rating was a 6/9, but the station is gone and there is a gas station where it used to be.

There are some very successful and large volunteer fire departments. The Thibodaux Volunteer Fire Department is one such department. It boasts 500 volunteers responding to calls out of 10 fire stations, with 150 of those volunteers being active in responding to calls, the rest of them doing fundraising and other services. The department has an ISO rating of 3. However, the city of Thibodaux provides nearly half of the department’s $2 million in operating expenses from tax dollars. This is a great example of the best in Volunteer firefighting, but it still needs to be funded through taxes.

Staffing

The additional fact is that volunteerism is declining in this country, and has been for decades. A lot of factors go into the reasons for that. The demands on volunteers’ time is one- training, maintenance, and increasing call volumes are big reasons for this. Not to mention, it’s easy to get people to show up to the “exciting” calls like plane crashes, fires, and auto accidents. It isn’t nearly as easy to get volunteers to show up to EMS calls, because it isn’t “fun” to show up and deal with the demented old lady who is covered in her own shit. Firefighters, especially volunteers, are adrenaline junkies, and EMS runs just aren’t exciting.

Trust me- I was in charge of retention and response at department M during the end of my time there. We tried a mandatory staffing model like Department B, but there weren’t enough volunteers to do it. We tried paying a volunteer $5 an hour to staff it during the day when the other volunteers were at work. Then we tried paying volunteers $4 each for showing up to EMS calls, but that didn’t work either. The demands on people’s time was just too much to bear. The number of calls that went unanswered climbed steadily, until almost 10 percent of non-fire calls went unanswered. People just didn’t want to run the “boring” calls. As one volunteer told me- “I am here because I like putting out fires. I give the time I want to give, that’s what volunteering means. I am not about to come in at 2 am just to wipe grandma’s ass or deal with some homeless junkie.”

Training

Another demand on firefighter time is training. Everyone likes to do live burns. Those are fun. Where people don’t like to train is in the more dry subjects- classroom time in HAZMAT, medical training, and the hundred other topics that are required to run a fire department. It’s getting more and more difficult to get people to come to things like training. Even paid firefighters hate training- and there is a lot of it. To become a state certified firefighter and EMT in Florida takes nearly 2,000 hours of training, and then another 250 or so hours of training per year. It’s a lot, and volunteers just don’t have the time to engage that much.

It’s tough, and it’s getting tougher, to recruit, train, and retain volunteers. It’s tough to fund their operations without using tax dollars- in fact, it’s almost impossible to do so without some form of mandatory, tax funded source of income.

People who have read this post: 212
By Divemedic, ago

Longshoreman, or Mafia?

It’s a lovely country. Shame if something were to happen to it.

He says if the government forces them to return to work, they will just show up and do almost nothing while collecting a paycheck. That should happen, and anyone who works at a production rate that is less than 80 percent of their average rate should be terminated immediately and without appeal.

Longshoremen make an average of $70 per hour, and are demanding a 77% raise- to an average of $124 per hour. THAT is why your dumb asses are being automated out of a job. All you do is drive a forklift or operate a crane. That simply isn’t a valuable enough skill to demand that kind of scratch, and it is far cheaper to get a robot to do your job than it is to pay you more than a quarter million a year to load and unload cargo.

Oh, and the union boss? He makes a million a year, owns a large yacht and a mansion. All paid for by the union dues of those whose best interests he claims to represent.

People who have read this post: 464
By Divemedic, ago

What Is Insurance?

Insurance is nothing more than a shared risk pool. One of the basic principles of insurance is that of risk sharing. The definition of risk sharing is nothing more than using strategies to mitigate the consequences of adverse events by spreading the potential burden across multiple stakeholders. 

The insured pays a premium in exchange for the insurer’s promise to cover the costs of certain losses, should they occur. This arrangement allows the insured to manage their financial exposure to risks, while the insurer pools the premiums from multiple policyholders to cover claims and maintain profitability.

Let’s start with life insurance, which is one of the easiest examples of risk sharing. You recognize that the cost of your funeral would be an unfair burden on others, so you want to purchase $10,000 in life insurance to help your loved ones out in the event that you die. The insurance company pools you together with people who have the same rough statistical chance of dying (using actuarial tables). Let’s say that those tables show that the chances of your death are 1 in 1,000 for any given year. This means that, in any given year, for every 1,000 people like you, the insurance company will pay out one policy. Now that they have the odds of payout, they have to calculate cost. Accounting for overhead, the insurance company will have to charge $12 in premiums to 1,000 people in order for $10,000 in coverage to be profitable for them. You are sharing the risk.

Now let’s assume that you are buying homeowner’s insurance in Florida. The company knows the chances of you having a fire, a flood, or a hurricane loss in any particular town. As we have seen with just the two examples (ISO and BCEGS), the insurance companies have REAMS of data that they use to calculate their odds of paying you. They then use their data to calculate the risk pool that your property falls into.

They use the ISO ratings of your area to determine the fire risk pool. They use the odds of a windstorm and the BCEGS rating of your community to determine the risk pool for natural hazards. They mitigate their exposure to liability due to criminal activity by excluding things like damage from police executing search warrants from coverage. Some natural disasters, like earthquakes, floods, landslides, and sinkholes, are often excluded from insurance coverage. (If there has been a sinkhole in the past 5 years that is within a mile of your house, no one will sell you a sinkhole policy) By the way, here is a listing of the ISO and BCEGS ratings (pdf warning) for all of Florida.

At the same time, the risk of a homeowner experiencing a theft are calculated, so are the risks of your dog biting someone, as well as every other risk they can think of. Even included is your credit score, because credit is a predictor of your likelihood of filing a claim versus just paying to fix it yourself. Poor people with bad credit are far more likely to file a claim than a well to do homeowner who doesn’t want his rates to rise for a small claim, so they just fix it themselves.

Each of these risk pools has its own set of risks and costs, and the insurance premiums are a reflection of that. Since each insurance company has its own set of criteria for predicting risk and loss, each company will have different rates. If you look closely at your policy, you will see that it doesn’t pay out for things like a terrorist attack, an act of war, a nuclear detonation, and any number of other things that the insurance company knows will result in too much risk.

If you don’t want to pay higher premiums because of hurricanes on the coast, you can always insure your house without hurricane coverage, called an x-wind policy, or just go without insurance. If your house is mortgaged though, good luck with that.

An x-wind policy is where the homeowner signs a paper declining coverage from windstorms. If the home has a mortgage or a lien, then the policyholder must also get a written statement from the lender or lienholder saying it approves the policyholder choosing to exclude windstorm coverage from the insurance policy. If you do choose to keep hurricane coverage, you will have to select what your hurricane deductible will be: $500, 2 percent, 5 percent, or 10 percent of the policy dwelling or structure limits. (some other restrictions apply- talk to your agent) Selecting higher deductibles means that you are assuming some of the risk for hurricane damage, which will result in lower premiums by placing you in a different risk pool. YMMV.

People who have read this post: 159
By Divemedic, ago

BCEGS Schedule

Not only does the Insurance Services Office (ISO) rate fire departments, it also rates building code effectiveness. The Building Code Effectiveness Grading Schedule (BCEGS)  assesses community building codes and their enforcement, with special emphasis on mitigation of losses from hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and other natural hazards.

Areas with well-enforced, up-to-date codes have a better loss experience, which can be reflected in lower insurance rates. Lessening catastrophe-related damage and ultimately lowering insurance costs provides an incentive for local and state governments to enforce their building codes rigorously — especially as they relate to windstorm and earthquake damage.

Just like the ISO fire protection class, the BCEGS rating is based on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the best and 10 being the worst. ISO develops advisory rating credits that apply to ranges of BCEGS classifications (1-3, 4-7, 8-9, 10). So a community that is in the 1-3 zone would receive the best rate credit, while on in the 8-9 would be charged more for insurance. A community that refuses to participate would fall into the same category as a eight or a nine (called a nine eight, and written as 98).

The BCEGS program assesses a community’s building code enforcement in three areas:

  • Code administration
  • Plan review
  • Field inspection

The classification uses 1,243 data points to calculate two scores: One for one- and two-family residential construction, and another for commercial or industrial construction. The scores are assigned a scaled class rating of 1 (exemplary commitment to building code enforcement) to 10. The classifications apply to communities under the jurisdiction of each building code department. Here is the nationwide breakdown of BCEGS ratings:

The ratings vary by state. In Florida, the lowest BCEGS rating is in the Florida Keys, which has a 5 rating. The rest of the state is 4 or higher. Most of the coastal counties are a 1 or a 2. In Tennessee, more than half of the state is rated a 6 or lower.

The states with the lowest ratings are Kansas, South Dakota, and New Mexico, which are all an 8 for residential buildings. The highest rating for residential is California as a 3. Florida averages to a 4.

Keep in mind that the BCEGS doesn’t just rate building codes, but is also a rating of how vigorously they are enforced. California receives such a high rating not only because of their strict earthquake code, but in how strict they are in enforcing the code.

The BCEGS is an important datapoint used by insurance companies in determining the risk they face when insuring property against natural hazards.

People who have read this post: 194
By Divemedic, ago

ISO Ratings

Every fire department in the nation is ranked and graded by insurance companies. The Insurance Services Office (ISO) rating, also known as the Public Protection Classification (PPC) program, is a measurement of each community’s fire preparedness. The ISO rating is based on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the best and 10 being the worst.

The ISO rating of your area is important for calculating insurance rates. Fire and lightning account for almost 25 percent of all homeowners insurance losses, with the average fire and lightning claim resulting in $83,519 in insured losses. Insurance companies know that fire losses are the single biggest cause of large insurance payouts. This is why the ISO rating is a major factor in determining your insurance rates.

The rating is based on data collected about the quality of public fire protection, including: emergency communications, fire department capabilities, water supply systems, and community efforts to reduce the risk of fire. Each thing that your community does to handle fire preparedness earns points. The points are totaled, and the score is used to determine the ISO rating of the area.

Things that you wouldn’t usually think of earn points. A backup generator for the radio repeaters that the fire department uses, the amount of fire hose on the local fire engine, the average distance of homes to the closest fire hydrant, all of these are accounted for when the score is calculated.

Each department is inspected every ten years, and sometimes upon request, to determine their ISO rating. When I worked for the fire department, we were inspected about a year before I retired. I was the coordinator to ensure that our fire trucks got the maximum points that they could for the inspection. (That’s what having a Bachelor’s in Public Safety Management gets you- more work.) I took a copy of the sheet that listed what points were available and made sure that we got the maximum points. Things like how many gallons of foam, how many feet of 3 inch hose, and how many spare air tanks for breathing apparatus were carried on each truck were all worth points. I spent months doing an inventory and placing equipment on the trucks to make sure we got as many points as possible.

Calculating the ISO Rating

The ISO uses a manual called the Fire Suppression Rating Schedule (FSRS) to determine what points your community scores. There are four different areas where your department can earn points:

  • Fire Department: The amount and condition of fire trucks, what equipment they carry, and the training level of firefighters is used to calculate points. For example: a full time firefighter counts for three times as many points as a volunteer. How complete are the department’s training records? How often does the department maintain the trucks, hose, and other equipment? All of those things earn points, and the points earned in this category make up 50% of your community’s score.
  • Water Supply: Does your community use ponds for water supply, or does it have city water? How many hydrants are there? How far are houses from those hydrants, on average? Is there water storage? How much pressure? Over a two hour period, what is the minimum water volume in gallons per minute that the fire department can deliver to any point in their service area? Water supply is 40% of your community’s score.
  • Communications: How well does the fire department receive and respond to emergency calls? How many call takers are there in the emergency call center? Does the center have computer aided dispatch? Does the call center and radio system have a backup generator? Communications is 10% of your community’s score.
  • Risk Reduction: How does your community prevent fires? Fire safety education, fire prevention techniques, building codes, and fire investigation all play a role here. This category is an “extra credit” category, since the rest of the score already adds up to 100%.

Any given community adds up to a total possible 105.5%. The biggest category is the fire department, which accounts for 50 percent of the score, but the hardest to improve is an area’s water supply. A lack of fire hydrants and access to an adequate amount of water cannot be easily remedied and would require extensive infrastructure development to fix. That, combined with the fact that volunteers earn far fewer points than do full time city departments, make the ISO ratings for rural communities served by volunteer departments much lower than their city based counterparts. The reason for this is simple- insurance companies have far more and greater fire losses in rural areas than they do in urban areas.

An ISO rating of a 10 is no fire department to speak of at all. A rating of a 9, the easiest one to get, is essentially a volunteer department consisting of four volunteers with a pickup truck and a fire extinguisher. The hardest jumps to make for a fire department is the jump from a 9 to an 8, and the jump from a 2 to a 1.

An ISO rating of 1 is the rarest, with only about 1 percent of fire departments earning the top rating. There are less than 500 fire departments nationwide that have an ISO 1 rating. In Florida, departments that are ISO 1 include: Orlando, Palm Beach, Kissimmee, Miami-Dade, Clermont, Deland, Key West, Pompano Beach, Lauderhill, Melbourne, Apopka, Stuart, Miami Beach, Lake Mary, Fort Lauderdale, and others.

It gets even more complicated. Some departments serve an area with hydrants, but also include an area without them. In those cases the department gets a hybrid rating, with areas that are more than 5 road miles from the nearest fire station, or more than 1,000 feet from a fire hydrant receiving a higher ISO rating than those within those limits. For example, one department in Central Florida that I am aware of is an ISO 5/9. That is, the department is an ISO 5 in areas within 5 road miles of a fire station and 1,000 linear feet of a hydrant, but an ISO 9 outside of those limits.

A great example of this is in Osceola county, which has a rating of 3/10. Meaning that if you are in Osceola county are are more than 5 miles from a station or 1,000 feet from a hydrant, the ISO says you really don’t have a fire department. I would be pissed, because you pay the same taxes and fire fees, but the county has written your property off if you are in a rural area. Those poor bastards in Yeehaw Junction are paying for things that they will never receive.

In general, residential fire insurance rates aren’t affected by any ISO rating that is better than a 4. ISO ratings of 1 through 3 primarily affect commercial and industrial insurance rates. This means that a department in a residential community would be wasting money chasing any rating better than a 4 or a 5.

You can find the ISO rating of your local area by going to your fire department’s web page. Nearly every department lists their ISO rating there. If they don’t have it on the website, you can call and ask them.

People who have read this post: 276
By Divemedic, ago

Stunned

I am stunned at the number of people reading this blog who think that those who are richer than they, or who choose to live differently than they should somehow be forced to comply with their own way of life.

I guess I shouldn’t be. People who claim to support “freedom” only want freedoms that they agree with. No different than people who only want free speech with which they agree.

So far this week, we have heard from people who want to eliminate fat people, people who own expensive homes, people who don’t eat like you, and other freedoms. All because they don’t like paying insurance.

Enjoy your soy and cricket dinners, hypocrites.

People who have read this post: 634
By Divemedic, ago

Tyrants

From the Interwebs comes this notice:

The wannabe dictator cites the state law 870.044 almost verbatim, but leaves out the important part:

870.044 Automatic emergency measures.—Whenever the public official declares that a state of emergency exists, pursuant to s. 870.043, the following acts shall be prohibited during the period of said emergency throughout the jurisdiction:

(1) The sale of, or offer to sell, with or without consideration, any ammunition or gun or other firearm of any size or description.

(2) The intentional display, after the emergency is declared, by or in any store or shop of any ammunition or gun or other firearm of any size or description.

(3) The intentional possession in a public place of a firearm by any person, except a duly authorized law enforcement official or person in military service acting in the official performance of her or his duty.

Note that the pertinent part was left out- the state of emergency has to be declared pursuant to 870.043. What does that particular law have to say on the subject? State statute 870.043 reads:

870.043 Declaration of emergency.—Whenever the sheriff or designated city official determines that there has been an act of violence or a flagrant and substantial defiance of, or resistance to, a lawful exercise of public authority and that, on account thereof, there is reason to believe that there exists a clear and present danger of a riot or other general public disorder, widespread disobedience of the law, and substantial injury to persons or to property, all of which constitute an imminent threat to public peace or order and to the general welfare of the jurisdiction affected or a part or parts thereof, he or she may declare that a state of emergency exists within that jurisdiction or any part or parts thereof.

The state of emergency in Florida wasn’t due to an act of violence or a flagrant and substantial defiance of, or resistance to, a lawful exercise of public authority. It was due to an approaching hurricane. Therefore, the entire declaration of this tyrant was unlawful.

This is what tyrants do- they twist the law to suit their own purposes.

People who have read this post: 645
By Divemedic, ago

You Can’t Live There.

Peter and Aesop both ask the same question: Should the government ‘let’ people build a house in an area known to be prone to disasters like hurricanes? The reasons that they give:

  • it costs local and state authorities huge amounts to maintain access to such areas to protect them, fire and rescue departments to aid those living there during disasters, etc.;
  • Insurance companies typically won’t insure against hazards that are so easily foreseen, meaning that either they have to be compelled to do so through legislation, and/or subsidized to do so from taxpayers’ coffers, and/or have state-aided insurance plans such as flood insurance to cover the risks they will not.
  • There’s all the infrastructure (roads, power, water, sewage processing and disposal, maintenance, etc.).  That’s not just capital cost to provide them all, but ongoing running costs year in, year out.
  • There’s the expense of subsidizing and/or providing insurance coverage.
  • There’s the burden of restoring services to such areas when natural disasters disrupt them (which also means the resources devoted to doing that can’t be used in other areas where they may be needed, imposing additional delays and costs).
  • There’s the additional bureaucracy and complexity of legislation and/or regulation accompanying all of the above.

These positions seem reasonable. They are also tyrannical and wrong. If we were to grant government the power to declare that you can’t live somewhere because it is too expensive to provide services there, then you open the door to government getting involved and ruling over your entire life.

Owning guns is too dangerous, and therefore illegal. So is smoking, drinking alcohol, eating salt, eating fatty foods, and not exercising 1 hour per day. SCUBA and sky diving, contact sports, owning a car that is capable of speeds more than 40 miles per hour, as well as roller skates, bicycles, and air conditioning (Climate Change!) are all dangerous.

Governments were created, among other things, to provide for the common defense. Services like fire, police, and rescue are properly part of that response. Don’t tell me how we should have for profit fire and rescue services- we tried that, and it plain doesn’t work. (Seriously- read the link before you comment)

Water, power, roads, and all of those other services are paid for by companies that have been granted a monopoly by the government. They aren’t paid for by taxes in many cases, but by fees passed on to consumers.

Back to the subject- when the government decides that it’s most cost effective to make everyone live in tenements in downtown Detroit, come back and explain to me how you didn’t see that coming. But hey, you can sign on to the Green New Deal if you prefer.

People who have read this post: 431
By Divemedic, ago