Even like that article said, that's what we used to do. Pay for for fire departments as an individual service. But it doesn't really work once you start to scale to a city population.

Like, if my neighbor doesn't feel like paying for a monthly fire dept service. They've never had a fire, so I guess they don't see the point.

They go on vacation for a week, and their house catches fire. There's no service for them, so it burns to the ground - but while it burns, the wind catches just the right way to blow it over to my house. I do pay for a fire service, so it gets put out. But now I have property damage to cover because there was no preventative public good to handle it.

I'm not going to be able to recoup costs from my negligent neighbor, his house burned down. He's probably out everything he's ever owned.

Some services tend to be put in place because we've tried not having them and it doesn't work.

Taxes can and do go too far. Privatizing some services just doesn't seem to work though.

Trying to be on the phone arguing with your fire department rep about them denying your coverage for some reason while your house burns down isn't going to work for a number of reasons.