Well, there was a notorious situation in Ancient Rome where a private fire service would respond to fires and the owner of the fire service would bargain with t

Well, there was a notorious situation in Ancient Rome where a private fire service would respond to fires and the owner of the fire service would bargain with the owner of the house. If the house owner was willing to sell him the house for a low price, the firefighters would be allowed to extinguish the fire. Otherwise, no. I don't think modern societies would tolerate that, but it is interesting to contemplate the idea that something like "surge pricing" was used in times when people didn't know what "zero" or "America" was.