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Government Prohibitions on Volunteer Fire Fighting in Nineteenth-Century America: A Property Rights Perspective

WHY does government itself choose to provide goods and services (water, electricity, transportation, hospitals, and so forth) when private firms can produce them? The question has become increasingly topical as state and local governments reconsider legal constraints on "contracting out" with private firms or volunteer organizations for a host of municipal goods and services. Perhaps the hottest issue concerns the provision of municipal fire services. Today, different institutional arrangements are used to deliver these services: government, volunteer, and private forprofit enterprises are observed in different cities. The systems are occasionally mixed. For the most part, however, larger American cities are served solely by paid city employees, and private alternatives (either volunteer or for profit) are legally prohibited. Most smaller towns use volunteers, but several are also required to use paid civil servants. The dominance of government fire fighters is puzzling, given the