[jtlienwis]

Maritime Law had a provision for salvors that saved ships in distress from sinking. If a salvor saved a ship from sinking, they were entitled to a percentage of the worth of a ship. Maybe terrestrial law needs something similar in the case of uninsured building on fire.

[turtledragonfly]

With private fire brigades, there was sometimes a monetary reward for being first to the scene. Sounds like a good incentive, right? But it resulted in competition between companies, to the point that they would sabotage each other. The article itself has some examples, and there are similar ones from United States' history.

I imagine some similar issues have happened at sea, but it seems harder to take advantage of and make profit on, since it probably wasn't too common for ships with expensive cargo to sink. And even if they did, it would be hard to guarantee getting there in time. Whereas in a city, fires are a pretty regular occurrence.

[gusgus01]

Interestingly, something similar happens with maritime law as to what was alluded to in the article and in this post. Similar to the competition and chaos caused by "First to respond and put it out", certain salvage companies will ignore Coast Guard warnings that a boat is already accounted for, that the insurance company has already hired a salvage company to reclaim the boat, and instead other salvage companies will try to hurry out to the boat and claim it. Similar to the Terry Pratchett quote, salvage companies will fortuitously find that your boat detached from a mooring ball and drifted to sea if it's left unmanned for long periods of time.

So while a pretty good system, it's not without its flaws and perverse incentives.

[horsawlarway]

I actually think this makes the most sense.

At least in the US - most areas assess the value of the structure and the value of the land separately.

I'd be in favor of providing a lien on the existing title in the amount of the structure's value (or some relatively high percentage of it, maybe depending on how much is salvaged by the firefighters) if the fire department puts out an uninsured building.

There's no reason to let it burn - it's a waste of resources, big source of pollutants, and a risk to neighboring areas. But I also think you can't reward property owners for taking a gamble that their property won't catch on fire.

[Spooky23]

Or, god forbid, protect the general welfare of the population of Yahoo County by having a fire service?

The government has the ability to tax for such services. As a partner who own a piece of a rental property in a ex-urban town, the volunteer fire company levies a tax that amounts to $300/year (based on valuation) which covers 2-3 towns with fire, ems and paramedic services.

[bombcar]

The problem comes when the only government is the county - it may simply be impractical to have a firefighting crew that can reach anything in a reasonable amount of time. (There are sparse counties in the US that can’t be crossed by a firefighting helicopter in less than 60 minutes).

[sethhochberg]

https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/sites.udel.edu/dist/4/10696/fi...

Voters in the county in question did eventually approve "universal" fire response, either small prepaid fee or post-paid full cost after response, but it sounds as though they won't consider converting the fees into standard taxes until 70% of residents have opted in to protection. Quite a few people who live and vote there seemingly have no interest in fire service.

[Spooky23]

The “farmers” didn’t want to deal with a 0.13% property tax increase.

A place where the people who control the place are so reactionary and regressive that a piddly increase in a tax levy requires a 70% supermajority is a place to move away from. Gross.

[horsawlarway]

Sure - but that doesn't cover the cases where we clearly have folks who do not pay, or regions that vote in ways to clearly place no priority on those shared services.

And in your case - the results are actually very similar (What do you think happens when you fail to pay your city/county taxes? A lien on your title happens...)

So again - I'm all for creating shared services and paying for them, but some folks aren't. In those cases I'd still rather not see people's homes burn (for all sorts of reasons) and this is a meaningful incentive to put the home out.

[linuxdude314]

There shouldn’t need to be any external incentive aside from it being the firefighters job.

There seems to be a lot of people on this site that think life is fair.

Is it fair that you paid for firefighting and your neighbor didn’t but still had their house saved during a fire?

Arguably no, but that is completely irrelevant as it is still in the greater public interest for the fire to be put out.

There’s a certain childish aspect about caring about fairness in these types of situations as opposed to what is right and moral.

[horsawlarway]

Except in this case - it very literally isn't the firefighters damn job. They have not been hired to put out this fire. Full fucking stop. And just so we're fully clear here - this is a job that is extremely risky to personal health and safety.

Honestly - I think your attitude here is actually far more childish than mine. You're preaching about what's right and moral - I'm discussing practical details and incentives that might make people actually go do a thing.

My attitude is hardly making an assumption that life is fair - it's about making sure that service (fire fighting) has a space in which to exist at all.

Because what we're really talking about here is a social contract...

When it becomes clear that violating the social contract has no downside - many more folks start to do it, and we rapidly end up in a spot where the company that wrote the contract (Us - we the freaking people wrote the contract) are bankrupt. And now not only do the people not paying not have a fire service... NO ONE has a fire service. Because few people were willing to chip in the money when they got the benefit for free.

So back to your silly, silly question:

"Is it fair that you paid for firefighting and your neighbor didn’t but still had their house saved during a fire?"

That's absolutely relevant outside of a single isolated case. It might not matter for one instance - it matters a whole freaking lot in aggregate.

[woodruffw]

We probably have better financial structures in 2022 than that, like insurance (or taxes that fund professional firefighting, like NYC).

Besides: it isn't clear we should incentivize untrained professionals to run into burning buildings. Ships are somewhat unique in that the people who are saving you are also sailors, and are presumably at least minimally qualified to help another ship in distress.

[horsawlarway]

There's no reason you can't limit the reward to registered groups (ex: existing fire departments).