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Comment by rtkwe | Hacker News Reader

Why? The goal is to incentivize property owners to fix broken systems not to pay for the actual cost of responding to a real call. That's covered by taxes.

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I'd interpret the "minus first N per year" to mean that you get a few "free" fires per year - but after that your habits filling your closets with oily rags, overloading electrical extension cords, and smoking in bed will start to cost you.

Fire is one of those things that really sucks for you - but also really sucks for your neighbors.

You never want to supply any reason for someone to demur about reporting a fire.

I'm sure someone somewhere will interpret it a 3 free demos of firefighters at home for their kid, with sirens and light, pretty entertaining (It's a reference to the Freakonomics study that, if you make parents pay by the minutes for being late getting their kid, they basically take the fine as a slightly expensive childcare facility).

Depending on who is paying and how much, someone might light a small fire to avoid the fine.

Arson when the fire department is already on the way. Great idea! Firefighters hate this one simple trick.

> [...] not to pay for the actual cost of responding to a real call.

Not true for all places. There are places where the callee can be charged for the costs of a call and the owner of the building has to pay the firefighters (well, his mandatory government-issued insurance will pay). It's moving bills from one stack to another, but it's not free as in beer.

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