Oh that's a good one, private fire service.
I'm assuming that you split the country into regions with their own franchises put out to tender. I'm assuming that a bidding company *has* to cover the whole of its franchise area, and cannot simply refuse to put out fires in areas that are "too expensive to service". By stipulating this, however, you are interfering with market forces and imposing "the will of others" via regulation. Because the "will of the company" will be to only service those areas that are most profitable, and let the extremely rural houses burnDue to this interference the costs of the company will rise and thus the charge to the end user. This is a form of indirect taxation, no? Unless we choose to let some houses burn to keep costs down. Your call on that one.
Now take an area with low population density and a large area to cover. Say, Cornwall. An area that also has very depressed wages.
You mentioned morality earlier. How "moral" is it to expect low-paid Cornish people to pay the most for their fire service? Or should we say to all these low-paid Cornish people that they should move to London. Leaving only retired people inhabiting Cornwall, and work-from-home types. So now there's no supermarket staff in Cornwall and no care workers, etc, because they couldn't afford the costs of the private fire service, private police force, private....
Or.... you could "immorally" tax the whole country, and use this shared tax burden to finance a country-wide police and fire service.
I'm not sure how you conclude that this is immoral. It just seems to make more sense than the alternatives.
I think you just solved the problem of London house prices being so out of whack with the rest of the UK. Now cities are effectively getting a counterbalancing force to their cost in the fact that fire insurance is cheaper in cities than in the country. Nice one!
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