It's called society.
I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of people paying taxes for school have actually enjoyed the benefit of free schooling. It can be helpful to think of things that way... (another example: people complaining about kids being loud in planes, restaurants, etc - remember that you were that kid once too).
as for schools, to the extent I support their funding (which is more limited than I suspect you do) it is generally ethically justified because I too attended schools paid for by taxation, so in that manner I paying off a debt vs paying for others. Granted it is a debt I did not consent to, and had no option to opt out of but still there is that ethical foundation
None of that exist for what we are talking about here
and I absolutely reject the idea of a "social contract"
The problem is that then some people opt out. If enough people do that, it's no longer financially viable to have a fire service.
> I absolutely reject the idea of a "social contract"
Which is fine, but then don't live in the society. As a society, we have decided what is important for the benefit of the society; fire departments, law enforcement, schools, roads, etc. We then attempt to gather money from everyone in that society to pay for those things, because that's the only way it's realistic. Not everyone in the society agrees to all the details, but (in theory) the majority of people agree to them.
It's not all that different than living in an apartment with a few other people. If most of the people agree that everyone has to split the electricity bill, but one person says they don't want to... then it's reasonable to have that person leave, and replace them with someone that is ok with the rules set by the group.
Aside from the fact that since most homes are covered by a mortgage and mortgage companies would require that as a condition of a loan, no where did I really say to make it optional. I simply said I wanted an itmized bill for the service
I am required to have water service turned on as part of occupancy, I can not turn off the water service to home even if I wanted to live completely on bottled water, it would be against local ordinances. I am required to pay that bill monthly, if I turn it off I would get fined by the city, and at some point they would take my home
I am also required to mow my grass, and other such things, I fail to see why fire services would be any different.
>It's not all that different than living in an apartment with a few other people.
You are correct on that front, I despise apartment living and I also despise HOA which is why I took great care to avoid both in my life.
If star link or a competitor proves to be very successful and gets to be cost effective then Rural living may even be in the cards for me, one the only reasons I moved to where I did was because of the availability of high speed fiber optic service.
As is quite common in the US, my fire services (as well as part of education costs--the state also contributes) are paid for out of my quarterly property taxes and my town budget is right up on the website to look at. So it's not really obfuscated. And I don't really want to get 20 different bills from my town rather than a quarterly property tax (and water) bill.
That would have to be mandatory service though (remember, firemen can perform inspections, fine people etc. - they're not there just for fighting fires), at which point it's just simpler to pay for that through taxes.
(Which isn’t to say we should make them work less, but we should get them smaller trucks like other countries have.)
The very definition of a sociopath.
Which the vast majority of America doesn’t do either.
