He is talking about whether we people should take their services and products from businesses or from government.
Excerpt:
Compare our level of satisfaction with the services of those “in it just for the money and profits” to those in it to serve the public as opposed to earning profits. A major non-profit service provider is the public education establishment that delivers primary and secondary education at nearly a trillion-dollar annual cost.
Public education is a major source of complaints about poor services that in many cases constitute nothing less than gross fraud.
If Wal-Mart, or any of the millions of producers who are in it for money and profits, were to deliver the same low-quality services, they would be out of business, but not public schools. Why? People who produce public education get their pay, pay raises and perks whether customers are satisfied or not. They are not motivated by profits and therefore under considerably less pressure to please customers. They use government to take customer money, in the form of taxes.
The U. S. Postal Service, state motor vehicle departments and other government agencies also have the taxing power of government to get money and therefore are less diligent about pleasing customers. You can bet the rent money that if Wal-Mart and other businesses had the power to take our money by force, they would be less interested and willing to please us.
The big difference between entities that serve us well and those who do not lies in what motivates them. Wal-Mart and millions of other businesses are profit-motivated whereas government schools, USPS and state motor vehicle departments are not.
Businesses can only make money by pleasing customers. Customers who freely choose to trade money for products and services. But government can make money by raising taxes. All they have to do is tell lies, win popularity contests and buy votes.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
By and large, I agree; however, we should keep in mind that private companies can go astray too. (We do not, after all, live in the “best of worlds”.)
For example, Sweden deregulated its school system roughly twenty years ago. This has lead to an explosion of private schools and competition about the students. This, in and by it self, is good; however, there are some considerable signs that these private schools are being increasingly generous when setting grades—exactly in order to please their customers (respectively, to attract new ones). The result is grade inflation. (The same phenomenon appears to be present in the US too; in particular, at expensive colleges.)
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That’s a great point, Michael. Perhaps government can have a role in standardizing aptitude tests or something like that, or parents will have to take a greater role.
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sure it’s good… except if the market thinks the American people earn too much and go to China, where’s cheap labour…
Again this would all be good if this was a globalized world and Chinese people could come to the US freely so they too could earn more!
But no… only corporations have open borders and flexible rules… not a perfect world indeed, and sure not globalized… at least not for everybody!
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There’s a chap called Daniel Pink who has come up with some interesting ideas on motivation. There’s a cool video on Coding Horror (geek site, for those who are unfamiliar with it) which summarizes it nicely in a short whiteboard presentation. I think he also gave a lecture for TED Talks. And there’s a New York Times article from June 18 which draws on his ideas. His book is called “Drive: The Suprising Truth About What Motivates Us”. (Sorry, can’t link these in right now, but Googling it will do the trick.) Anyway, his idea could be summarized as follows: Yes, we’re motivated to work by financial reward. But we’re also motivated by the intrinsic pleasure we derive from work we enjoy. Financial reward only goes so far to producing good work. It’s what old Maslow would call a hygiene factor: i.e. if it’s not there or inadequate, we’re miserable. However, too much emphasis on pay as the chief reward produces shoddy work for those jobs that require creativity. For such work, the financial reward needs to be supplemented by pleasure derived from doing the job itself and factors which address needs higher up in Maslow’s hierarchy . This doesn’t disprove what Williams is saying, but it does make things a little more complex. [Caveat: Apparently Pink used to write speeches for Al Gore. So he’s probably a raging liberal. I do not endorse any liberal codswallop he may come up with. ;-) However, sometimes even liberals have good points to make.]
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