Fire story does not work as an attack on libertarianism

John Stossel made this point on O'Reilly last night, and Dave Henderson makes a similar point over at Econlog. In terms of this episode demonstrating the problem with libertarianism, there is one major problem: the fire-department was a government-run fire department. If there had been a private sector alternative, most likely, a for-profit fire service would have been happy to put out the fire for say a five or ten thousand fee. Instead, the fire fighters were adhering to overly rigid, bureaucratic rules.

Dave Henderson writes:

It's bizarre for a statist to attack libertarians when his own statist alternative works out badly...What's next... blaming libertarians because government schools are so lousy?