1271: What's Your Price?

[Keith]

"I cannot get this fat fuck-pig outta my life."


The official website of Stand-Up Comic Chris Iacono, Recently written up in the NY Daily News and heard weekly on 87.9 FM Comical Radio

[Leentron3030]

I'm going to have a bias because last year, my family and I lost everything to our house burning down. Just hearing this story reminds me of watching it all go and everything that followed.

I posted this on my FB which then sparked a discussion. The argument was made that they are making an example of those that don't pay. I liked this response:

"I'm sorry, making an example of someone in this case is medieval - we don't cut hands off anymore so what's the point of showing this kind of cruelty?

And a better analogy would be health insurance. If you walk into an ER with a gunshot wound they have to treat you regardless of health insurance coverage. This is a moral calculus made by society, we've decided that we're the type of society that doesn't let people bleed to death inches away from getting the care they need. Apparently this community fancies itself as the type that will watch your house burn down if you don't pay them $75 in advance."

The family paid taxes, taxes that also go to the fire department. The $75 fee is an extra fee that the firefighters of that fire department have been trying to get rid of for a while so that situations like this don't happen. This fee could have easily been rolled into the taxes, and should have IMO.
Also, the fire department has put out fires of other houses that had forgotten the fee before so why this one was the straw that broke the camel's back, I don't know.

And as for the "he didn't pay on purpose", you can't prove that just as much as you can't prove he didn't just forget. Car insurance is common, health insurance is common, I had never heard of an extra fee for firefighters before ever until now. I can see how this fee could be accidentally over-looked. He said he forgot and I believe him. If he can stand there with a blank check and say "just tell me the amount" then I don't think he was scraping for $75 whenever that fee was due.

[DWarrior]

Chemda's goto for video games is always killing hookers in GTA to get your money back. Here is how it actually works:

GTA lets you kill anybody in the game, and sometimes they drop cash.
GTA also lets you pick up hookers, which costs money and gives you health. You can't abuse them at any point, the only thing you can do is skip the cheesy "car sex" scene. There's also no way to rape somebody in the game.



So if you pick up a hooker, then when you're done and she's walking away, you can kill her (as you can do to any other character), and she may drop money when she dies. But killing her won't give any more money than just killing some other random person on the street.

You can just as easily go to the chicken place, buy a meal, then kill the counter guy to get your money back.

There's never any reason or mission that explicitly involves killing hookers, and killing pedestrians is generally a pretty bad way to get cash because it doesn't give that much and can get the cops after you.

[Jo_Culprit]

Why cant that guy just pay afterwards? theyre firemen not business men. have the city send him a bill for $75 and a fine or whateva. Chemda is 100% right and I usually dont agree with her.

A similiar comparison can be made with doctors, they have to take the hippocratic oath because they have a duty of care to their patients.

Keith shouldnt assume the only reason the guy hadnt paid the $75 was because he was being an asshole and deserved to have all his shit go up in flames.

McNally's house went up in flames a few months back didnt it? imagine if the same thing happen there, where the 76 hour marathon stuff was lost because the firefighters said it was too late because McNally missed the $75 payment.

IF the city is going to have that policy, they should have the sense to also have a late payment option.

He should sue the city for loss of property and incompetance end of story.

[DWarrior]

Regarding truth of the elevator dummy, here is the news story on a news website: Wheelchair man falls down elevator shaft after rage at missing lift | Metro.co.uk

Also, I don't see anything on YouTube explicitly disallowing videos of death. They just ban porn and say they reserve the right to delete any videos they want, so I'm guessing they'd delete videos of death on camera and suicide notes, but not stuff like plunging down elevator shafts. If you search, you'll find headcam videos of soldiers doing missions in Iraq, which clearly involving insurgents dying off-camera.

Originally Posted by Jo_Culprit

Why cant that guy just pay afterwards? theyre firemen not business men. have the city send him a bill for $75 and a fine or whateva. Chemda is 100% right and I usually dont agree with her.

A similiar comparison can be made with doctors, they have to take the hippocratic oath because they have a duty of care to their patients.

Keith shouldnt assume the only reason the guy hadnt paid the $75 was because he was being an asshole and deserved to have all his shit go up in flames.

McNally's house went up in flames a few months back didnt it? imagine if the same thing happen there, where the 76 hour marathon stuff was lost because the firefighters said it was too late because McNally missed the $75 payment.

IF the city is going to have that policy, they should have the sense to also have a late payment option.

He should sue the city for loss of property and incompetance end of story.

1. McNally's shit did burn down afaik, the fire fighters didn't put it out. He just grabbed his laptop.

2. Just an FYI, the reason for the $75 charge is because this house was outside the city limits, so while city taxes covered city firefighting, people on the outskirts in rural areas were asked to pay (and they knew). This wasn't a new policy, either.

3. Chemda's "$75 is a lot, they really can't afford it" argument is inconsistent, then how will these guys ever pay a $10,000 fine? Besides, the firefighters now have to hire actuaries to predict costs of these non-payers, have lawyers look over the relevant laws for on-the-spot contracts, have lawyers available to go to court to fight for the billed amounts, and have a collections agency to collect from the deadbeats. Great, now everybody else has to pay $300/year to support this additional overhead.

4. The firefighters have probably been putting out these non-payers' fires for years now, and nobody gave a shit about their heroism. Then they got fed up with it and suddenly all the checks came in.

5. They did contain the fire, they went over to the paying neighbor's property and made sure the fire didn't spread to there (it's in the story).

This just shows that Anarcho-Capitalism is bullshit and its proponents should be kicked in the balls.

[Jo_Culprit]

Originally Posted by DWarrior

1. McNally's shit did burn down afaik, the fire fighters didn't put it out. He just grabbed his laptop.

2. Just an FYI, the reason for the $75 charge is because this house was outside the city limits, so while city taxes covered city firefighting, people on the outskirts in rural areas were asked to pay (and they knew). This wasn't a new policy, either.

3. Chemda's "$75 is a lot, they really can't afford it" argument is inconsistent, then how will these guys ever pay a $10,000 fine? Besides, the firefighters now have to hire actuaries to predict costs of these non-payers, have lawyers look over the relevant laws for on-the-spot contracts, have lawyers available to go to court to fight for the billed amounts, and have a collections agency to collect from the deadbeats. Great, now everybody else has to pay $300/year to support this additional overhead.

4. The firefighters have probably been putting out these non-payers' fires for years now, and nobody gave a shit about their heroism. Then they got fed up with it and suddenly all the checks came in.

5. They did contain the fire, they went over to the paying neighbor's property and made sure the fire didn't spread to there (it's in the story).

This just shows that Anarcho-Capitalism is bullshit and its proponents should be kicked in the balls.

Dude they just stood there and let it burn, at least let the dude try to use your equipment if your sick of unappreciated heroism.

The point about the $75 thing is that you cant guarantee that someones payment has gone through the system all the times. What if someones payment got lost or some clerk didnt file it right. The point is you have to have an addendum to the policy that forsees situations where a house is burning down by someone hasnt paid.

My point about McNally was that important shit can get lost in a fire thats tied to other people.

Your argument is basically that in absolutely alllll cases people that arent registered for this $75 thing are assholes and deserve to have theyre houses burned down.
Its half thought out policy. If beaurocracy was 100% accurate and it was 100% this guys fault for being lazy and there is a 100% chance in these caes that these people cant pay it back, then its a good law, until then I dont think you can generalize like this.

[DWarrior]

Originally Posted by Jo_Culprit

Dude they just stood there and let it burn, at least let the dude try to use your equipment if your sick of unappreciated heroism.

The point about the $75 thing is that you cant guarantee that someones payment has gone through the system all the times. What if someones payment got lost or some clerk didnt file it right. The point is you have to have an addendum to the policy that forsees situations where a house is burning down by someone hasnt paid.

My point about McNally was that important shit can get lost in a fire thats tied to other people.

Your argument is basically that in absolutely alllll cases people that arent registered for this $75 thing are assholes and deserve to have theyre houses burned down.
Its half thought out policy. If beaurocracy was 100% accurate and it was 100% this guys fault for being lazy and there is a 100% chance in these caes that these people cant pay it back, then its a good law, until then I dont think you can generalize like this.

It's not half thought out. Do you want firefighting service or not? If no, then ok, no service. Maybe you own your own firetruck and can do a better job of it.

I'm sure if the guy said "I already paid" they would have put it out. But that's not what happened, and don't try to twist it into that scenario, because it's not. And there's no obligations on the firefighters to be 100% certain that the person can't pay their fine. Besides, how would you even arrive at that certainty, what does that even mean?

And it's certainly not their responsiblity to lend the guy their equipment, that would probably not do anything for the fire and end up just damaging their equipment. But that's not even relevant because the firefighters were using that equipment to protect the paying neighbors' property.

It's $75 per year, just pay it.

[Sparrow]

If they hadn't paid, why did they show up? They spent all the money already to get out there and they just watch it? Asshole move. You put on your suit and rode all that way, do you job and put out the fire. Firefighting is a public service; it would've been the right thing to do.

[DWarrior]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

If they hadn't paid, why did they show up? They spent all the money already to get out there and they just watch it? Asshole move. You put on your suit and rode all that way, do you job and put out the fire. Firefighting is a public service; it would've been the right thing to do.

They showed up because the fire started spreading to the paying neighbors. They didn't just show up with marshmallows.

[Ryan_1523]

Originally Posted by DWarrior

They showed up because the fire started spreading to the paying neighbors. They didn't just show up with marshmallows.

Probably wouldn't have been as big a deal if they actually brought the marshmallows, to be fair.. Maybe that's the real issue here.