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UCS Hellmaker posted:That's exactly what mean though. It's areas where they are outside of even the rural volly departments that you here of it, and primarily so that they have some ability to get coverage and the department does get some extra finding in order to pay for it. Again volly departments don't get paid. And have to fundraise more often then not for vehicle expenses. Considering how spread out the areas in question can be having to cover everything in a county is insane considering how bad it can get. Ok but why don't they, like, use tax money to pay for a fire department that can afford to drive out into the middle of nowhere if the same three log cabins are burning down again
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Jul 10, 2021 01:15
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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I feel like telehealth could replace about half of mundane doctor visits but you're still going to have to go the doctor to do lab work. Like you can't get your blood drawn to check your cholesterol, have your blood pressure and heart rate checked over the phone, but once it happens there's no pressing reason why the doctor can't tell you those results over a zoom. Or tell your complaints over the phone, it's just that you're going to be there anyways so...
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Jul 10, 2021 02:08
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suck my woke dick posted:Ok but why don't they, like, use tax money to pay for a fire department that can afford to drive out into the middle of nowhere if the same three log cabins are burning down again Sounds like communism to me.
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Jul 10, 2021 02:20
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suck my woke dick posted:Ok but why don't they, like, use tax money to pay for a fire department that can afford to drive out into the middle of nowhere if the same three log cabins are burning down again There are many places that do have taxpayer-funded county fire departments, but there are also plenty of counties that like LARPing as Mad Max America and neglect to organize one. That Tennessee county was one of the latter. The firefighters didn't want to let the house burn, the guy certainly didn't deserve to have his house burn over a $75 fee, the grandson was a young idiot but not uniquely so, and while the family was clearly playing the system they wouldn't be doing that if they could easily afford to just pay the fee. It's a bad system, and the solution to bad systems is to change them.
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Jul 10, 2021 02:48
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Kaal posted:they wouldn't be doing that if they could easily afford to just pay the fee I feel like 2020 and 2021 have some pretty bad news for you about what people will do even if they can easily not do it.
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Jul 10, 2021 03:50
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suck my woke dick posted:Ok but why don't they, like, use tax money to pay for a fire department that can afford to drive out into the middle of nowhere if the same three log cabins are burning down again Because these places literally don't have the taxpayer money to do so. Like, I'm talking rural areas where you basically have a volunteer service that handles 50 sq miles have poo poo for funding, and most states don't give poo poo for first responder stuff. A legit fire department costs a gently caress ton of money, and paying people to staff it is not cheap. People don't get that most of it is soley funded by property taxes, and volunteer squads literally do it on their own dime, with the tax payer funding the station and equipment as they can support it. It's not an element or correct design, but it's literally all some areas can afford to do because guess what, everyone else in the surrounding area is in the same boat and funding one central station means that your response time is 30 minutes or more.
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Jul 10, 2021 07:31
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Take it from the police budget. There is no way any part of the US should lack a fire department. Richest country on the planet but y'all just getting scammed.
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Jul 10, 2021 09:03
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knox_harrington posted:Take it from the police budget. There is no way any part of the US should lack a fire department. Richest country on the planet but y'all just getting scammed. you mean the sheriffs budget that is literally paying for five people in an entire county including dispatch (which handles ems)? Stop spouting bullshit when you know nothing about the enviroments that actually exist in the hyper rural areas.
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Jul 10, 2021 13:24
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suck my woke dick posted:Ok but why don't they, like, use tax money to pay for a fire department that can afford to drive out into the middle of nowhere if the same three log cabins are burning down again because the people who live there voted down the tax to pay for the volunteer fire department equipment the tennessee rural fire example gets pulled out a lot but people always misunderstand it. upthread someone called it 'privatized' which is extremely incorrect. rural areas in america can often have such low population that the tax base simply does not/cannot support public safety services. this is why things like volunteer fire departments exist, as in explicitly the firefighters are not paid and they volunteer their time and safety as a civil service the big example that people cite happened in obion county, tn, which has a total county/city population of 30k. which is also the median county household income. this area is empty and poor. in the united states, there is a distinction between city and county governments - counties often run services that cities don't, sometimes they share services, and so on, but there is a distinction between services within incorporated areas (cities, towns, villages, whatever) and services outside of incorporated areas (which default to the county). obion county did not have any sort of public fire safety, at all - not even an organized volunteer service. various cities within the county shared resources (funds raised by taxation) to run a volunteer fire service, whose annual budget in 2010 was $8,000 - yes, eight thousand dollars, the price of a decent but older used car the house of gene cranick caught fire, and he called for help. he didn't live in any incorporated area, so technically he had no available fire protection to help him - putting out fires on his property was his own responsibility. the volunteer FD from the local town of hornbeak (population: 400) showed up because the neighbor had paid his yearly subscription and the fire spread to his property. we can think of this subscription as a voluntary tax. cranick did not pay the subscription that year. he offered to pay on the spot but the local cities volunteer FD had a policy of not accepting this, because then who would pay the fee except when their house started burning down? the local FD has since allowed a pay-on-the-spot subscription, at $3,500 per incident (keep in mind that even in major cities, people can get billed to recoup the cost of their own rescue if the rescue is prompted for reasons of human stupidity) the reason the county didn't have a fire department is basically because they couldn't meaningfully raise the taxes to pay for one. the cities wanted the county to participate in a countywide, paid fire department, the county urged its residents to just pay the subscription fee for the local cities' fire protection. the tax situation in rural areas of the united states is dire, where people already piss and moan about the simple burden of public education (which often drains like 90% or more of superlocal government budgets). and this is a real burden, you can't simply raise taxes further without actual hardship being done to the people who live in the area - this is a case where there simply isn't enough money to go around, and no magic tricks like deficit spending to summon funds from thin air sort of the natural reaction is to say "i would simply raise taxes, or adjust the budget slider to devote more funds to fire coverage" but the messy reality of local goverment has a way of easily defeating such quick fixes knox_harrington posted:Take it from the police budget. There is no way any part of the US should lack a fire department. Richest country on the planet but y'all just getting scammed. you really don't understand how rural this area is or how cash strapped rural areas get. you'd be better off saying "tax the capital gains of the wealthy and get the federal government to pay for it" in terms of completely unrealistic solutions Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Jul 10, 2021 |
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Jul 10, 2021 18:22
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:get the federal government to pay for it" in terms of completely unrealistic solutions I don't think this last one is all that farfetched as at least two bills have passed that increase federal funding for law enforcement post January 6. (one for the DC cops specifically, another in general for increased hiring and supplemental training)
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Jul 10, 2021 18:27
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federal funding for fire protection is probably lower on the priority list than funding for mass transit or public housing, two desperately needed things that also aren't going to happen in any useful measure
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Jul 10, 2021 18:28
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Jan posted:Weren't there some rich-rear end parts of LA (I wanna say near Hollywood?) that had basically assembled their own private firefighting force during last wildfire season? Private wildfire services have existed for a while serving insurance companies. It’s kind of a different beast than structure though, as a limited number of crews can cover an absolutely massive geographical area because your necessary response time is measured in hours or days rather than minutes.
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Jul 10, 2021 19:21
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whatever, the point is that it's only your backwards-rear end country out of all developed nations that has this apparently insurmountable problem
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Jul 10, 2021 19:28
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knox_harrington posted:whatever, the point is that it's only your backwards-rear end country out of all developed nations that has this apparently insurmountable problem Also not even close to accurate. Why do you keep grinding this ax? You could at least do a cursory google search before posting yet more blatnatly incorrect information.
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Jul 10, 2021 19:34
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let's not let unfortunate truths get in the way of a good rage post. it is well known that rural poverty and income inequality only exists in amerikkka
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Jul 10, 2021 20:31
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knox_harrington posted:whatever, the point is that it's only your backwards-rear end country out of all developed nations that has this apparently insurmountable problem Because other first world countries don't have the land coverage and small rear end population densities of the us. The areas we talk about have densities in the range of 5 people.per sq mile. It's you that wants to keep slamming a square peg into a round hole to justify false equivalencies that don't understand the reality of how badly funding is in rural areas. And the feds give almost no money to local ems besides block grants. Legit many ems agencies in rural communities run off of fundraising by the stations doing pancake or spaghetti dinners in order to get extra money for loving gas.
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Jul 10, 2021 20:59
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Yeah, volunteer firefighting is still a thing in smalltown NA
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Jul 10, 2021 21:03
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UCS Hellmaker posted:reality of how badly funding is in rural areas. Exactly. Richest country on the planet but somehow no funding for fire services in some municipalities. Leading to this poo poo: https://www.kfvs12.com/story/13281481/fire-chief-responds-to-burning-questions-after-home-left-to-burn/ I don't think it should be a surprise in this thread of all places for you to realize the US is not in fact exceptional and the way you organize some stuff is dumb.
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Jul 10, 2021 21:26
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lol that in googling to try to find another example of this sort of thing happening you unknowingly repost the same incident people have been talking about for the last page pretty good wrinkle on the "explaining is endorsing" concept. post without rhythm, outlander
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Jul 11, 2021 00:50
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I was wondering how long everyone would talk about the exact same incident and link to it as an example like it wasn't what the previous person was obviously talking about. I have to wonder if there are any other good examples out there of this. Also I'm kind of trying to imagine the situation where the rural county I lived in would have the votes to have anything but a volunteer unit and it makes me sad.
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Jul 11, 2021 01:20
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:I was wondering how long everyone would talk about the exact same incident and link to it as an example like it wasn't what the previous person was obviously talking about. I have to wonder if there are any other good examples out there of this. The thing is, fire is goddamn expensive, and that's before you get to ems services. Fire departments cost an insane amount of money to staff, and typically have a 4 person crew on 24/7. That's not cheap. And that's before you consider that they dual role fire/ems. Then consider the equipment costs, and many places can't afford the upfront costs or care. Fire coverage is also something that just isn't economical even with government subsidizing inany areas because their isn't actual funds for it. And much of the fed funds go for wildfire coverage, local funding and state funding handles the local fire coverage because of classical ideals that volunteers can cover it out of heroism. That's a whole topic of rage that I can go on and how it fucks the whole system for everyone.
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Jul 11, 2021 01:48
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demanding an increase in property or sales taxes to fund rural fire coverage shows a tremendous lack of conviction in the Cause. the real solution is to seize inefficient private property allocations and relocate these scattered populations into efficient, compact planned communities. the advantage in terms of both governmental service provision and environmental remediation is obvious
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Jul 11, 2021 02:01
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:demanding an increase in property or sales taxes to fund rural fire coverage shows a tremendous lack of conviction in the Cause. the real solution is to seize inefficient private property allocations and relocate these scattered populations into efficient, compact planned communities. the advantage in terms of both governmental service provision and environmental remediation is obvious Or you could just divert a few paltry billion (a rounding error's worth) from military funds into fire services under the twin labels of national defense and home security... just sayin'.
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Jul 11, 2021 02:18
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Mister Facetious posted:Or you could just divert a few paltry billion (a rounding error's worth) from military funds into fire services under the twin labels of national defense and home security... Kind of a funny aside. The DLA handles a lot of purchasing stuff for the DoD. And a few years back it was discovered that their inventory system was poo poo. And a lot of stuff wasn't inventoried correctly. Including multiple fire engines. It apparently surprised the DLA that you could lose a fire engine let alone multiple ones but hey, they did it.
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Jul 11, 2021 02:38
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Mister Facetious posted:Or you could just divert a few paltry billion you can't, actually. one neat tricks tend not to work out in real life as neatly as they do in pure theory land the federal government is largely restricted on what it can do forcefully at the local level of government. the needs of local government are also really massive, far greater than what the feds are able to provide. did you know that through various programs, the federal government currently provides more than the us military budget in grants to state and local agencies for a constellation of purposes (a huge chunk of this, more than half, is Medicaid assistance to states) the tldr here is that while the feds are broadly able to cover capital needs, like new trucks or training programs or just giving a bunch of old milsurp to local PD, the more critical need is sustained operational funding, used to pay salaries and light bills and so on. structurally it is much easier for congress to create a fund to do a thing, put money into that fund, and then let localities apply for pieces of the fund, than it is for congress to commit to subsidizing the operations of various local government agencies. something has to be really important, like child hunger or healthcare for the profoundly disabled, for congress to commit to paying the tab. on top of that, there are a kajillion hands reaching out for assistance, from child nutrition programs to making sure rural hospitals don't collapse any faster than they already are, so rural fire is relatively deprioritized in the face of all these other needs ranging from food inspection to bus maintenance to fixing broken stormwater systems specifically regarding rural fire, what is the proposal? that the federal government take on their payroll the quarter million volunteer firefighters in the united states? even if you only paid each of them $100 a week with no benefits that would cost $4bn a year, bring the wage up to something decent and 40 hours with no overtime and you're cracking $50bn a year, tack on benefits and its closer to $80bn, when you consider pension contributions it would be closer to... at this point we've blown past social security and the Federal Fire Service is now one of the heaviest items in the discretionary budget, after Medicaid here is a good primer to read on the complications and demands of federal spending on local government, its only 40 pages and you can skip past all the history stuff https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40638.pdf and you can dig around here to explore what federal funds are already available for fire departments https://www.usfa.fema.gov/grants/ specifically you're looking for programs like SAFER, here is some documentation on that, pretty much the same program you're calling for https://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL33375.pdf Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Jul 11, 2021 |
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Jul 11, 2021 02:42
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Back to tech nightmares, the new beta for Tesla's autopilot system is out now and is being tested on public roads. https://twitter.com/BS__Exposed/status/1413896106077995008 https://twitter.com/BS__Exposed/status/1413896244171259907
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Jul 11, 2021 03:43
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lol i have a helmet cam video of me weaving in between those very same monorail columns on my motorcycle, but its because im an rear end in a top hat not because im incompetent 
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Jul 11, 2021 03:53
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Doggles posted:Back to tech nightmares, the new beta for Tesla's autopilot system is out now and is being tested on public roads. Maybe someone should grow a pair at Tesla and point out to Glorious Leader Elon that adding range finding and three-dimensional imaging systems would really help, considering its something our eyes and brains do automatically that his camera-only system clearly cannot.
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Jul 11, 2021 03:58
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sounds like a great way to lose your cushy engineering job and get your family cut down down in a hail of bullets after tesla internal security calls in an anonymous tip to the local police that you threatened to bomb a mall
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Jul 11, 2021 04:07
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Going back to dumb computer freezer displays from a few pages ago, those are clearly from a pre-COVID era as most of the business world has woken up to the reality that Just in time logistics is dead. So many of these tech devices are designed for things no one can supply anymore. One of my companies major suppliers that does make internet of things stuff has pushed delivery till October at this point.
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Jul 11, 2021 04:30
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sbaldrick posted:most of the business world has woken up to the reality that Just in time logistics is dead. lololol Please tell me this is satire. Even if some companies "recognized" this we'll be right back to the same place inside of 5 years, likely a lot less.
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Jul 11, 2021 05:04
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Mister Facetious posted:Or you could just divert a few paltry billion (a rounding error's worth) from military funds into fire services under the twin labels of national defense and home security... It doesn't work that way. and I say this having grown up in a town of 600 people with a volunteer fire department. There were maybe a handful of calls per year, and in the decade I lived there, perhaps one building fully burned down. Assuming a finite supply of money, literally anything would've been a better use of funds than maintaining a fully staffed fire station in that and the other nearby villages (all of which had their own volunteer firefighters). I'd say give them a good stipend for their service and being on call all the time, but it's not a full-time job, and it can't be. Now that I live in the city, the area covered by my closest fire station (which is perhaps 1km away) probably has more people in it than a one hour driving radius of where I grew up. There is such a massive difference between the two ways of life that it's impossible to compare. I think if you added everyone within a one block radius of where I live, it would be a larger population than the town I grew up in. PT6A fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Jul 11, 2021 |
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Jul 11, 2021 05:28
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PT6A posted:It doesn't work that way. and I say this having grown up in a town of 600 people with a volunteer fire department. There were maybe a handful of calls per year, and in the decade I lived there, perhaps one building fully burned down. Assuming a finite supply of money, literally anything would've been a better use of funds than maintaining a fully staffed fire station in that and the other nearby villages (all of which had their own volunteer firefighters). This volunteer fire brigade derail is pretty funny. To add to it I live in a county of a half million people and am in the coverage area of a volunteer fire company that apparently responds to 5000-6000 calls a year with fire/EMS combined. I've never considered why this is the case or how they are funded beyond wondering why the fire department begs for money via mail and the streets instead of just being tax funded. Looking at the history of the area it sort of makes sense but at this point it probably would be better to just pay a tax for it instead of them asking for a donation. Anyway thanks to the derail I set up a recurring donation to them so thanks.
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Jul 11, 2021 06:58
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Motronic posted:lololol I was hoping that covid and Ever Given and so on would make the world realize that shipping everything halfway across the globe (sometimes multiple times) is stupid, and that we should maybe move towards more local production. That was naive.
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Jul 11, 2021 09:09
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UCS Hellmaker posted:Because other first world countries don't have the land coverage and small rear end population densities of the us. *laughs in Australian* Not that we have a perfect system mind you, far from it,but the US is far from the only country with novel concepts such as rural areas.
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Jul 11, 2021 10:33
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Some people may be interested in the wiki of different fire / rescue systems around the world. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_firefighting One thing that leaps off the page is how local and decentralized the American system is compared to its peers. Funding and population density aren't actual stumbling blocks. There are large rural areas of Britain, Australia, France, Germany, and Spain that have very sparse populations but also have centralized fire / rescue systems with volunteers or paid firefighters on retainer. The US is fully capable of following the lead of other countries and implementing more efficient and more effective public services, it just chooses not to. This sort of thing would be very fixable at the state level, if we didn't have to contend with Republican saboteurs. Kaal fucked around with this message at 12:19 on Jul 11, 2021 |
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Jul 11, 2021 12:16
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Relevant to the post by Kaal above.
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Jul 11, 2021 12:40
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Kaal posted:Some people may be interested in the wiki of different fire / rescue systems around the world. This can be applied to a lot of topics where American exceptionalism nonsense is brought up, including the thread favorite of rural broadband. Finland is poorer than the US and has a population density lower than most US states, with the north and east being exceedingly empty. People complain if they can't get a 100 Mb/s connection in their lake cabin, but 20 is readily in just about every spot in the country. Its always just some variation of this: 
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Jul 11, 2021 12:58
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It's not firefighters, but the UK has the Royal National Lifeboat Institution which is a volunteer/charity organization that runs coastal rescue operations using volunteers and is funded by charitable donations. Smaller stations are just a RIB and tractor but larger stations have larger vessels. I'm not saying it is an ideal situation but for rural areas it is better than a subscription. There's no reason a similar model couldn't be applied to rural firefighting. Throw in some government funding as well and you have much robust coverage.
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Jul 11, 2021 13:00
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UCS Hellmaker posted:Because other first world countries don't have the land coverage and small rear end population densities of the us. The areas we talk about have densities in the range of 5 people.per sq mile. Pop US: 328million Pop Australia: 25million. Size versus the US:  I think that hits your metrics of "land coverage and small rear end population densities" quite well. The number of times we've had to stand by and let things burn because we had no money? I'm going to go ahead and say, never. Sure there have been many times fire fighters have been overwhelmed because of a fire storm, or that time a couple years ago when the country looked like this:  The problem isn't the size. The problem isn't the population density. The problem is that the US is fundamentally broken, has been since day one. Your country allows this to happen because it does not care. Senor Tron posted:*laughs in Australian* American Exceptionalism, but far too few realise that they're just exceptionally lied to and propagandised. EDIT: Hey America, remember that time [US City] was incredibly damaged by [natural disaster] and, instead of immediately sending funds and aid, your country dicked about and did nothing. Or demanded any money in aid was met by a equal cut in spending elsewhere? Here's something you all need to hear - nowhere else in the loving world does this. Not just now. I mean ever. Megillah Gorilla fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Jul 11, 2021 |
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Jul 11, 2021 14:22
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