Public utilities, police and fire are not "socialism".

Here in Tennessee, I pay a company called “Rural Metro” for fire service; it’s around $500 a year. If you have a fire, they will come and put it out, to the best of their ability, and you will not be charged additionally. If you are not a subscriber they will still come and put it out, but you will be charged a usurious rate for the people involved, the rental of the trucks, the water consumed, and so on. The bills can be small: $5000 or so, or quite large, I have heard of some over $50,000. (This mechanism is by law; you don’t negotiate with them in the driveway while your house burns.) You get to argue with your insurance company whether they will pay for the destroyed house as well as the bill for extinguishing the fire.

So yes, there is a “private market” solution for Fire Department. If you do not have that, then you have a form of socialism, where government owns the “means of production” and charges you for your share of this common good, whether you use it or not.

Here in Tennessee we get our power from TVA, although not directly. There is a sub-unit called KUB (Utilities Board) which provides electricity and water, and to some households natural gas and as of a couple years ago, high speed internet. They are in competition with the private companies Comcast and AT&T for the fiber component. The rest are a direct result of the FDR program which took the Tennessee Valley from extreme poverty and disease (malaria, mostly) to 20th century standards by constructing 50 dams and channeling and controlling the Tennessee River through seven states (Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia, Virginia) which had prior regularly flooded and stagnated, disrupting possible agriculture while simultaneously promoting mosquito-borne disease. No “private company” could have or would have taken on this challenge, it’s a government function.

The Federal Government “owns” TVA, so in a sense you own part of it too, as do I. But you cannot cash it in nor profit from it (although living here I have some of the cheapest energy costs in the country), so it is certainly “socialism.” By the way, all of those utilities across the country with “Coop” in the name (some known as “Association”) began life as a purely socialist function, although many have since transitioned to private, not-for-profit structure. Some are still owned or controlled by local government, particularly in rural areas. More then 33% of the total electric utility industry are coops, associations, or other non-for-profit enterprises. (They began when individuals and businesses pooled capital, often with local government support, to build a utility - sometimes water, sometimes electric - and if you didn’t chip in, well you still got the benefit. It was not an “owned” corporation, however, as it was a “public good”, and the “free rider” problem existed long ago!)

As for police, there are lots of neighborhoods where a “private security force” reigns, largely in upscale areas. As for the rest: yeah: that’s government (it’s socialism) where it is not a private enterprise , where you can’t buy it, and where common dollars provide a common good.

It’s *textbook* social enterprise.