Government Establishments vs. Private Enterprise: Thoughts by Lysander Spooner, 1844
Libertarian, Lysander Spooner, attacked the government's monopoly on mail delivery in his 1844 pamphlet, "The Unconstitutionality of Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails." In said pamphlet, he made an interesting contrast between government establishments and private enterprise.
August Glen-James, editory
“Universal experience attests that government establishments cannot keep pace with private enterprise in matters of business (and the transmission of letters is a mere matter of business). Private enterprise has always the most active physical powers, and the most ingenious mental ones. It is constantly increasing its speed, and simplifying and cheapening its operations. But government functionaries, secure in the enjoyment of warm nests, large salaries, official honors and power, and presidential smiles—all of which they are sure of so long as they are the partisans of the President—feel few quickening impulses to labor, and are altogether too independent and dignified personages to move at the speed that commercial interests require. They take office to enjoy its honors and emoluments, not to get their living by the sweat of their brows. They are too well satisfied with their own conditions, to trouble their heads with plans for improving the accustomed modes of doing the business of their departments—too wise in their own estimation, or too jealous of their assumed superiority, to adopt the suggestions of others—too cowardly to innovate—and too selfish to part with any of their power, or reform the abuses on which they thrive. The consequence is, as we now see, that when a cumbrous, clumsy, expensive and dilatory government system is once established, it is nearly impossible to modify or materially improve it. Opening the business to rivalry and free competition, is the only way to get rid of the nuisance.”
The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails (New York: Tribune Pub., 1844), 24. Reprinted in The Collected Works, vol. I. Quoted from: Smith, George H. ed. The Lysander Spooner Reader. Cobden Press, Arizona. 2010. PP X-XI.