Interestingly in this case an "approval" similar to the one we are talking about did happen over that weekend didn't it? I think the approvers brokered the deal.
Regulators were concerned about a collapse causing contagion that results in a financial crisis. Would they care to do that for a little startup with a few dozen employees?
> Furthermore, only buildings were insured – neither their contents, nor the lives of their occupants, were covered.
Yeah it sounds to me from the article like the insurance was for the rebuild, and the firefighting was something the insurance company did to reduce their payouts.
So I imagine if you didn't have insurance, you still were at more risk than if you did, similar to now, because the fire dept isn't going to save everything every time.
> South Fulton's mayor said that the fire department can't let homeowners pay the fee on the spot, because the only people who would pay would be those whose homes are on fire.
There must be a price that the fire department could theoretically charge if they were gonna always charge on the spot, and still make a profit, as long as there is some minimum number of fires.
Also it says that this TN guy had insurance. I wonder if it would have been worth his insurance company's while to make sure that $75 was always paid, either by paying it themselves, or making him pay it, or paying it and sending him the bill, and somehow making it a condition.. to protect themselves from having to pay out... as the London article is about insurance companies starting fire brigades themselves for that very reason
The FD had tried retroactively charging for fire services, but then spent more on collections than they'd collect. People living in the unincorporated part of the county were usually trying to pay as little as possible for anything. Three times they voted down taxes to fund fire services generally.
Not to mention the question of duress when the FD shows up and says "sign this and we'll put out the fire."
Don't know how it works there, but the bank through which we have our home loan requires insurance, payment of property taxes, etc. and to ensure all that actually happens it's done through an escrow account. We pay one bill to the bank every month, they handle the rest. Seems like a solid way to make sure these kinda things don't happen, and then we can't forget something like the property tax, which happens every six months.
Back on the farm, which is 30 minutes from the nearest fire brigade, one does have to pay to opt-in for fire service. They still answer the phone if you're not on the list. You're also strongly encouraged to have a pond or cistern near anything you want saved. I don't know if the farm's mortgage required payment of that fee, but I do know we were given insurance discounts for having ponds near the houses and barn.
I do know of one case of a particularly belligerent property owner who refused to pay, had fires, still wouldn't pay, etc. who did eventually wind up with firefighters watching his property burn. Hard to really feel bad about something like that.
How would you deal with the credit risk? or are you assuming that the homeowner has arbitrary amounts of cash, at hand, but somehow not in the burning house?
Maybe the emphasis on high speed in not necessary. People already seem to love sitting around in all kinds of environments.. bars, watching netflix, or programming for a lot of people here. What if instead of figuring out what kind of rails would be needed to move a train at the speed of flight, we figured out what kind of rails were needed to economically move the equivalent of a first class lounge from Los Angeles to San Francisco in like seven or eight hours... or maybe it's an eco cruise ship, or a new bus design. Either way, for a lot of people who board just before 10AM on a Sunday, and watch two NFL games, the net travel time from Los Angeles to San Francisco could be close to 0.. and you can't beat that.
It should also leave every 20 mins with no late penalty (lots of spare capacity) so that you don't have to get there early just in case. That "buffer" standing around is also a waste of time. We invent a way to get there super fast and then we have to optimise it to the point where we have to get there an hour early to make it work reliably.. because a traffic jam or security delay can destroy everything.
> I think this article goes through a lot of micro-exercizes and micro-corrections and semantics to avoid the obvious conclusion that Japan is mostly honogenous, and to a far more degree than the US or a lot of European countries.
