Uncle Sam, the monopoly man

By William C. Wooldridge

Review: Uncle Sam, the monopoly man Editorial Review - Kirkus Reviews This book signals that growing merger between the forces of conservatism and radicalism in the face of an unwieldy bureaucratic... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870001000
• ISBN13: 9780870001000
• Release Date: January 1970
• Publisher: Arlington House
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Funeral for Public Goods and Services

There is no more persistent and obnoxious issue in all of politics than public goods and services. People will grudgingly accept taxes, the draft, or any number of measures, but bring up public goods and services, and all discussion is out the window. The mystical phrases like "the common good" or "for the children" crop up. People who were otherwise sober revert to platitudes. Anyone who would oppose them will lose by default. To those who have lost, fear not. William C. Wooldridge turns the tables on those calamityites. We have always assumed that things like firefighting, policing, schooling, money, roads, civil courts, the military, right on down to the space program were public goods, to be served by an impartial ENLIGHTENED STATE. He shows in this short, punchy, and wryly funny book that "the common good" is not even a wrong answer, it's an irrelevant one. Page after page shows objective, verifiable-- yes, there's a bibliography-- evidence that if the government doesn't provide it other people will. The mechanisms of self-interest, charity, and profit do not necessarily conflict when servicing people. They check whatever excesses exist. What people do not want, they do not get. The real drawback to this book is the writer's initially disbelieving tone, bordering on giddiness. It seems to be the rule that when talking about libertarian things, one cannot be serious. He really cannot believe himself at times. However, he carries through to the conclusion of these ideas: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PUBLIC GOOD OR SERVICE. "Uncle Sam" is the kind of book that seems to be written in a fit of inspiration. Informed, funny, but brief, the work is essential to any political wonk's library. It also has the added virtue of rendering almost every other book on the subject obsolete. (The review and the book itself sound stilted, but how many different ways can you tell someone that water is wet without becoming exasperated?)

Why Monopolies are Bad, and What To Do About Them

Bill Wooldridge is a Harvard graduate with a Juris Doctorate from the Univ of Virginia. He penned his critique of government services while in the employ of a government entity, namely the U.S. Army, but the impetus came from his experiences of British socialism after he won a Richard Weaver fellowship for a year's study of medieval history at St. Andrews University in Scotland. British government services were so slow, especially in telephone services, that he simply had to do without. "Nevertheless, the experience rankled", he wrote (p 7). In the spirit of his first horrific encounter with socialized telephone service in Scotland, he exams several U.S. socialized services and asks would they do better if they were privatized? The book's eight chapters after the Preface are 1) The Post Office; 2) The Independent Postal System of America; 3) Every Man His Own Mintmaster; 4) An Education of Choice; 5) Voluntary Justice; 6) Protection Money; 7) Paying for Roads; and 8) The Public Interest; followed by a Bibliography. He looks at the Postal Service, which the government had recently transformed into a corporation - but a monopoly still. Far more beneficial, Wooldridge shows, would be the repeal of the government's ban on private mail carriers. Wooldridge doesn't grasp the fact that the majority of the U.S. mails at the time he was writing were moved between post offices by private carriers - i.e. postal contrators. Nor is he aware that UPS and Federal Express also use the Postal Service to expedite certain overnight deliveries that would be cost-prohibitive otherwise. Lastly, he does not address the military or national security issues that necessitate the state's monopoly. Nonetheless, he does a nice job of advocating the privatization of postal services. Wooldridge advocates the privatization of government services such as private money, voluntary justice, private schooling, private police and fire companies, and private roads. In all these areas, Wooldridge champions the benefits of private enterprise. He finds that all public monopolies justify themselves on the basis of the public interest. But there is no "public interest" he says, only a constantly changing multitude of particularized "publics" (customers) with particular consumer needs. Free enterpise can serve them better, he claims. The only caveats are his skipping over the privatization of the military and not addressing the corporation as a creature of the State.

Uncle Sam The Monopoly Man, Major Libertarian Effort

William Wooldridge's "Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man" is a must read for all those exploring the ideas of liberty. The reason is quite simple. He makes the case for liberty totally reasonable by removing it from the notion of THEORY. He gives us a history in the US where minting money, running schools, moving mail, police and other activities which the government currently mopnopolizes, have been done perfectly well by private individuals! And he shows why. He writes with a smooth, clear style and when you are done, you come away convinced that the US government school system has cheated you of important history. When read in conjunction with Rand or Rothbard, you have a terrific intellectual punch. Plus it's packed with light humor. Sincerely, Fred James