Lysander Spooner tried offering letter services cheaper than the postal service in the US, and by most measures was better and cheaper at it. As it turns out as soon as you can do it cheaper, they just did what government does and used their monopoly on violence to put him in a tiny cage.

  n 1844, hearing from citizens from every party and under pressure to reform the postal system, Washington lawmakers and the Postmaster General had no intention of sitting still for any of "that Spooner's shenanigans." Suits against Spooner and his cohorts began. Railroad heads were given full warning that contracts for government mails would be removed and fines imposed unless space and passage were refused to private letter carriers. It was "round one" for the government when an agent of Spooner's company in Baltimore was found guilty and fined for transporting letters in a railroad car over a post road of the United States. Spooner himself was arrested in New York on March 7 on three charges by special agents of the Post Office. Another of his agents, Calvin Case, was held to bail for $100 around March 23 for carrying letters on the train.