Friday, November 15, 2013

The Great Fire Alarm Crisis of 2013

The Great Fire Alarm Crisis of 2013

 
MiniLand house on fireThe biggest and most divisive issue facing MiniLand right now is the Great Fire Alarm crisis of 2013. It may just tear our small country apart.
First, let’s begin with some background. As in any country, fires are a problem. They can strike at any the time, and you never know when they will hit. They can hit young and old alike, and they can affect anyone regardless of race, class, or income level.
Many years ago, Mr. Mussberger created Fire Warning, Inc,  a company that makes and sells fire alarms. The idea behind the fire alarm is that when a fire is just starting, the alarm will go off and warn you. This will allow you to put the fire out yourself, before it does much damage.
Without a fire alarm, it is likely that you will not notice the fire until it is much too late. Your house will be burned to the ground, the Fire Company will have to drive their Fire Truck to your house, and put out the fire and help to clean up some of the mess.
The main selling point of the fire alarm is that it will save you money: by warning you so that you can put out the fire early, it will cost you much less money than you would have had to spend if your entire house burned down.
All of this seems fairly sensible. However, over time there began to be whispers that Mr. Mussberger was running his Fire Warning, Inc., company in a less-than-respectable way.
For example, he offered a number of inexpensive “low-end” fire alarms that turned out to be nothing more than cardboard boxes. A number of families paid for these “low-end” fire alarms, thinking that they would be safe, only to have their houses burn down without warning.
“Your fire alarm did not warn me about the fire!” Mr. Sanguine wrote in a complaint letter to Fire Warning, Inc. In return, Mr. Sanguine received a letter explaining that the specific model of fire alarm that he had purchased did not include the “warn about fires” feature, and therefore it operated exactly as planned.
Of course, this simply means that Mr. Sanguine was out the cost of the fire alarm, as well as being stuck with paying for a new house after his old house was burned down.
Moreover, the 10 households who live in poverty in MiniLand are not able to afford fire alarms at all. This means that they suffer the most when a fire hits, because without any warning the fire is able to do a lot of damage. The Fire Truck always has to come to put out the fire, before it spreads to other houses. However, these 10 families can’t afford to pay for that service, either.  As a result, the Fire Company has to increase their fees for their services to cover this cost, and stopping fires becomes more expensive for everybody.
It was clearly getting out of control.
So, to put an end to all of this trouble, our black president, Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue, decided to make a law that says that everyone must have a functioning fire alarm, and that fire alarms must meet certain minimum standards (for example: they must warn people about fires), and if a family can’t afford a fire alarm then the cost will be offset by tax breaks.
The idea was that by making sure that even poor people had fire alarms, big fires would be prevented, and the cost and damage of fires would go down for everyone.
As I’m sure you can imagine, people were outraged.
“Why should I have to buy a fire alarm if I don’t think there will be a fire in my house?” said Ms. Lackadackatonnywoo, who lives in the middle of a small stream.
“What if I really like my cheap cardboard fire alarm that doesn’t warn me about fires, and I don’t want to replace it with a fire alarm that meets minimum standards?” asked Mr. Yu, who is a father of 2 children and believes that Jesus was reincarnated as a bumble bee in 1793.
It truly is a political dilemma. After all, these people do vote…..
What in the world should black president Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue do next?

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