Marcus Allen the Cat

thegreg:logicallypositive:ilyagerner:

Firefighters stood by and watched a Tennessee house burn to the ground earlier this week because the homeowners didn’t pay the annual subscription fee for fire service.

“You could look out my mom’s trailer and see the trucks sitting at a distance,” Vicky Bell, the homeowner, said.

“Here’s the more important part of the story, letting the house burn — while, I admit sad — will probably save more houses over the long haul. I know that if I opted out of the program before, I would be more likely to opt-in now” - Jonah Goldberg, the last time firefighters watched a home burn down in South Fulton.

Bell and her boyfriend said they were aware of the policy, but thought a fire would never happen to them.

As much as I dig libertarianism from an intellectual standpoint, this is a prime example of why it will never work in the real world.  A significant percentage of people are too goddamn stupid to look at the big picture and make simple decisions in their own self-interest.  -matc

needtherapy:greaterthanlapsed:

The bit that almost made me cry:

Richy Horton, 38, served almost four years at the Pre-Release Unit and reluctantly joined KBB about 6 months before he was released. “I was like, I’m not going to that thing,” Horton says. “And then I went, and you were actually speaking to real people. People can’t really understand [that in prison] you’re completely separated from anything normal or real in the world. You’re always told what to do and when to do it, so to have people come in and treat you like a human being means so much. They came in and they were like my mom.”