[LyndsySimon]

Are you from an urban area by chance?

Where I live, firefighters are almost exclusively volunteer. They provide their own vehicles and much of their own equipment. There are grants and subsidies, but it’s still a huge investment. They are paid from those grants, which after department-level expenses are disbursed to individuals proportionally to the number of incidents they responded to.

If I call for law enforcement, there’s a decent chance I’ll get a “Justice of the Peace” or a Constable instead of a government employee. These are elected positions, and either unpaid or offer so little compensation no one would ever choose it as a career.

Mail is delivered by rural carriers, who are contract workers. They provide their own vehicles and equipment as well.

All of the above is pretty typical for most of the US (geographically). I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a free market system - after all, what funding there is for these services comes from the government - but I also wouldn’t call it “socialized”.