
American Letter Mail Company - kick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company
======
kalleboo
The fact that the USPS has a postal mail monopoly has always confused me.
Other countries like Sweden have a plethora of competing mail delivery firms
(including dedicated "junk mail" firms that only deliver junk mail. Delivering
junk mail is a popular job for teens to do on the weekend)

~~~
alistairSH
FedEx, UPS, Amazon, and private couriers are all active in the letter and
package delivery business. The USPS doesn't have a monopoly, at least not in
the strict text-book sense of the word.

USPS just delivers letter mail at much lower rates than the others. And does
so at a fixed rate to any address within the US, whether that's a neighbor
across the street or a family member in a tiny town in the mountains.

~~~
jessriedel
The USPS absolutely has a legally enforced monopoly in the textbook sense of
the word. It's just not over the entire market of letter and package delivery.

> The USPS actually has two legally enforced monopolies, as per Title 39 of
> the US Code. One is over the delivery of anything defined as a “letter,”
> which is within certain size and weight limits. The second is over the use
> of your mailbox...there are criminal violations if anyone puts anything in
> your mail box that is not US government approved “mail.

> ...parcels were never subject to the delivery monopoly. Indeed, UPS was in
> that business first, and USPS entered afterwards. ...This is why DHL, FedEx,
> Amazon... and others are free to enter and exit the parcel business. It is
> defined as a different market.

> FedEx is another fascinating story. There was a need for express document
> delivery among professional services, such as law firms (this was of course
> long before e-mail). The USPS was too slow and unreliable. FedEx and Fred
> Smith threatened to litigate the issue to death...so the USPS allowed an
> exception in the delivery monopoly for “extremely urgent material.”

[https://fee.org/articles/an-expert-explains-the-postal-
monop...](https://fee.org/articles/an-expert-explains-the-postal-monopoly/)

~~~
Rebelgecko
Is that law ever enforced? I get packages from Amazon couriers and FedEx in my
mailbox all the time and I've never heard of anyone going to jail for that. I
can only imagine how much I'd get laughed at if I called the cops about a
delivery person dropping a package off in my mailbox. Maybe I'd need to call
the USPS Inspector General

~~~
kick
The Wikipedia article is literally about the USPS monopoly being enforced.

~~~
Rebelgecko
The company in the Wikipedia article went out of business nearly 200 years
ago, so I don't think the legal situation is necessarily the same (backed up
by the anecdotal fact that I can send a letter via Fedex). The Wikipedia
article also doesn't mention anything about how the government apparently has
exclusive access to MY mailbox, which is a big surprise to me.

~~~
kick
_about how the government apparently has exclusive access to MY mailbox, which
is a big surprise to me._

Enforced where I am.

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hamandcheese
Why was postage so expensive at the time?

According to an inflation calculator I looked up, the $0.18 postage mentioned
in the article is equivalent to about $6.00 in today’s dollars.

~~~
ryacko
Horses are still just as expensive as they were. Railroads are faster now, and
more efficient through diesel-electric engines.

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anonu
Early disruptors. Pretty amazing story. Wonder what the pitch looked like back
in 1844.

Today's first class postage costs 55 cents. And almost 180 years ago the cost
to send a letter from NYC to Boston was basically half that at 26 cents. Feels
like today's price hasn't kept with inflation.

Can we conclude that this disruptor company affected prices for over a century
and a half by simply introducing a little competition?

~~~
quickthrowman
I think we can conclude advances in transportation technology made it cheaper
to deliver the mail. Trains, trucks, planes.

~~~
anonu
Sure - thats certainly one reason. But why would a near monopolistic business
(USPS) cut their prices?

~~~
mattmaroon
Because they aren’t a business and most years they don’t turn a profit. They
were effectively government subsidized for most of their existence.

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klodolph
This page is probably a good place for someone who wants to practice their
editing skills. The article has the facts, but the style is lacking (it has
awkward phrasing, unnecessary passive voice, and sentence fragments).

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gojomo
Spooner is also the author of 'No Treason'/'The Consitution of No Authority',
essays refuting the legitimacy of the U.S. Constitution:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Treason](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Treason)

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andrewl
This reminds me of IPSA (Independent Postal System of America) which I have
vague memories of. I think they lasted until some time into the 1970s.

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skrebbel
According to wikipedia, ALMC founder Lysander Spooner "considered government
monopoly to be an immoral restriction". Also according to wikipedia, he was a
socialist and a member of First International.

Can anyone more familiar with US history and/or political science explain this
to me? How can you be both a socialist and against government regulation of
business?

~~~
syshum
Lysander was a Libertarian, and Anarchist, and a Socialist.

His polital opinions were (and are today) very rare in that he was Left
libertarian, where most people that label themselves libertarian are Right
Libertarians.

Also most people that label themselves Socialist, are Authoritarians
Socialists (meaning socialism via government violence)

Lysander Spooner is one of my favorite philosophers, his work No Treason the
constitution of no authority was one of the first things of his I read, and
still find it fascinating

~~~
int_19h
It should be noted that the word "libertarian" was originally invented by left
libertarians of the most extreme variety (anarcho-communists, who deny private
property altogether) to describe themselves. From there, it quickly became a
catch-all self-identification for pretty much everybody on the anarchist and
minarchist left, covering anarcho-socialists, mutualists etc. There was no
"right libertarian" as a commonly understood term until the 1950s.

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virgakwolfw
Did the ALMC deliver letters to every single address in the United States? I
don't think they did. They weren't trying to "compete" with the USPS so much
as skim off the profitable routes.

~~~
amluto
The USPS does not deliver to every address in the US.

I don’t know what specifically causes the USPS to deliver to a specific area,
but there are entire incorporated cities, some with reasonably large
population and density, that don’t receive mail _at all_ except to the local
post office. Even UPS and FedEx’s low-cost all-but-the-last-mile services
regularly lose packages because they hand them off to the USPS.

~~~
macintux
I was surprised to discover you're correct. Here's a look at that:
[https://www.serviceobjects.com/blog/service-not-available-
us...](https://www.serviceobjects.com/blog/service-not-available-usps-mail-
delivery-limited-may-think/)

