One of the biggest areas of commercial book sales has been health and fitness, including diet and exercise books. The federal government may be notorious for producing barely comprehensible laws, regulations, and forms, but it offers published advice on How Plain English Works for Business: “twelve case studies describe how some business organizations have scored success by simplifying consumer documents.” Insurance and Risk Management for Small Business “provides basic information in selecting insurance and in reducing risk for the small businessman.” The GPO also publishes advice to the individual investor in A Guide to Individual Retirement Accounts, which discusses “the various savings and investment vehicles available.” In Managing for Profits readers are instructed in “production and marketing, purchasing and collections, financial management, taxation, insurance, and more.” Also in the financial planning area is Starting and Managing a Business of Your Own. Oddly enough, the debt-ridden federal government claims expertise in financial management. The Backyard Mechanic “can help you save money by doing simple auto repair and maintenance jobs yourself” and “discusses ignition systems and spark plugs and guides you through a tuneup, a brake relining, a brake system flushing and bleeding, a power-brake check. Consider the following examples from the January 1987 catalog. printer in the United States.” There are also ”more than 300 printing plants located in many government agencies.” Įven a cursory look at the GPO’s monthly catalog of publications reveals that the federal government competes on a large scale with private publishing companies. 33 acres under our roof, 6,200 employees, of which over 5,000. According to the director of the GPO: “We have. The Government Printing Office (GPO) is the largest Federal publishing facility. Although much government printing consists of publishing congressional hearings, executive branch memoranda, IRS tax forms, and other tools of running the government, much of it is commercial and, therefore, competes unfairly with private printers. Such services are also provided by private firms.Īs one example of unfair competition by government, consider the Federal publishing business. Federal agencies enter businesses as mundane as laundry work and as sophisticated as engineering and computer programming. The reason probably has something to do with the desire to supplement agency budgets with commercial profits. Hayakawa of California stated in 1981: “Federal employees are currently operating over 11,000 commercial or industrial activities that the private sector also performs.” The Senator added: “Since the business of government is not to be in business, I ask myself why.” The federal government provides what many consider to be public goods, such as national defense and the justice system, but it also provides thousands of purely private goods and services. Unfair Competition by Federal Government Enterprises Thus, competition between private businesses and government enterprises is unfair. Their capital and operating costs are subsidized by tax revenues and, perhaps most importantly, they are often granted monopoly status by law. Government enterprises can also exercise the power of eminent domain and borrow at interest rates considerably below those paid by their taxpaying competitors (especially small firms) because of tax-exempt interest payments. They enjoy exemption from Federal, state and local income, sales, and property taxes and immunity from minimum wage, securities, bankruptcy, antitrust, and myriad other regulations. provide literally thousands of goods and services in direct competition with private businesses. In theory, the goods and services provided by federal, state, and local governments are public goods-goods that will not be provided in adequate quantities by the market system because of “market failure.” But in reality, most of the goods and services provided by governments are private goods. Bennett Unfair Competition: The Profits of Nonprofits (Hamilton Press, 1988). This article is partly adapted from his book, coauthored with James T. Probasco, Jr., Professor of Free Enterprise at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
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