

The Imminent Death of the U.S. Postal Service? - mhb
http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=614

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quoderat
FedEx and UPS take the most profitable business from the USPS, while the post
office serves everywhere and everything, very nearly. If it weren't for the
universal service requirement, the USPS could operate like the private
companies. But personally, I like getting my mail no matter where I live.

You do the math on that universal service vs. choosing the profit maximization
thing.

Talking about the post office's losses without citing that context is
disingenuous.

Also, from having worked at a mailing house, I can tell the author doesn't
understand much about how the post office actually routes mail.

~~~
colins_pride
_FedEx and UPS take the most profitable business from the USPS, while the post
office serves everywhere and everything_

That is an awesome insight, it really cuts through all of the noise.

 _If it weren't for the universal service requirement .. But personally, I
like getting my mail no matter where I live._

This part I question .. shouldn't people who live in expensive to serve places
and/or people who want to send mail to those places pay for the costs that
they're imposing on the system?

~~~
sachinag
There's a long-standing tradition that communication between any two of a
country's citizens is important to protect as it is a public good. Postmaster
General was a cabinet position for many years because of this. The desire to
impose market pricing on market costs for everything is unsettling to me.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Postal communication between citizens is a classical private good. It is both
rivalrous (my letter takes up space in the mail carrier's bag which your
letter can not occupy) and excludible (if you don't pay, they don't deliver).

A public good is not just a good you want the government to provide, the term
actually has a meaning.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good>

~~~
sachinag
You're only looking at it from the shipper's perspective, not the receiver's.
The postman is a romantic figure because of the recipient, not the sender.

And, frankly, the idea that my letter excludes your letter from the carrier's
mailbag is laughable. No, they cannot fit in the same physical space, but
there's room for more than one letter in the bag/carrier/truck.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Carrying letters is rivalrous. As more people send letters, the bag will fill
up and more mail carriers will be needed.

Compare this to a real public good, e.g. national defense. National defense is
non-rivalrous because me enjoying living in a non-communist country does not
hinder you enjoying the same thing.

As for the postman being a romantic figure, not sure how that fits into the
question of whether mail delivery is a public good or not.

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rsheridan6
I used to work for the post office, and I think their big problem is universal
service, unionized labor, and lack of investment in labor-saving technology
(for whatever reason). They also can't just adjust prices as needed.

If they're not responsible like a real corporation, nobody told their
management that. The work environment there is like a pressure cooker, and
they chew out carriers for going 5 minutes over their allotted time. But
there's really nothing else they can do besides acting unpleasant because it's
almost impossible to fire a carrier after they've passed their probationary
period.

I doubt that a private corporation would do much better with the same
constraints. Of course, in the age of the internet and telephones 6-day/week
universal service may not be as important as it was in the 19th century.

Also, what's this BS about calling the post office a "ponzi scheme" because
they rely on advertising and we're in a recession? Are google and broadcast TV
also ponzi schemes? Is the recession going to last forever?

~~~
lliiffee
It seems that these days "Ponzi scheme" == "Anything I don't like that
involves money"

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whatusername
Do you truly have _universal_ service? I know that some of our (Australia)
more remote locations get less than the 5 days per week we get in the cities.
Even in some of the outer outer suburbs of Melbourne (I'm talking Cockatoo) --
I know there are some roads/areas that the postie wont deliver to - instead
the residents have to pickup from the local general store/"post office".
(remembering that we have 21 mil people in an area almost the size of the
lower 48 states - and one of the highest urbanization rates in the world - so
it's big big cities with lots and lots of open space in the middle)

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gojomo
I really like the tone of this article. While informed by the market-
liberal/competitive-economics viewpoint, it's not doctrinaire. It's respectful
of the historical rationale for the USPS and realistic about the political
environment for reform. It makes practical suggestions with examples of the
companies and other countries that have succeeded with similar policies.

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sho
Here's where I stopped reading:

 _[..] some 20 percent of direct-mail advertising volume is comprised of
credit card, mortgage and other financial offers. So yes, the USPS has
contributed in a subtle yet very real way to our burst economic bubble._

Ludicrous. If that's the level of the author's insight, why bother reading the
rest?

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gojomo
Then you missed a lot of meaty info because of a throwaway line.

Compared to other subsidies the government has been giving bad actors, this
USPS subsidy to the credit industry is minor, yes. But it's surprising how
merely mentioning it closes your mind to the rest of the analysis. It's almost
like you've got a post-hypnotic suggestion preventing you from questioning
certain monopolies!

~~~
sho
Hardly. I don't live in America, in fact I'm in a country mentioned as an
example of a "good" post office.

The assertion that a subsidy on direct mail somehow contributed to the ongoing
financial crisis is just stupid and calls into question the author's basic
understanding of the subject and ability to identify relevant information. You
might as well say that coffee contributed to the crisis because it enabled
bankers to stay up later and write more bad contracts. Hell, name anything you
want and I'll connect it to the crisis using some bullshit six-degrees-of-
separation methodology like the author used for direct mail.

