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> It's different quality of service.

I think that’s only true until it arrives in the US though and USPS delivers the package to your door. Sure, total time is long, but the cost to USPS seems similar?

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I'd bet this has to do with capacity, similar with network equipment. If you operate below capacity, it's hard to tell apart a high priority packet from a low priority one. You will start noticing delays in low priority packets only when you start saturating your network capacity.

Actually it has to do with how international shipping rates are arbitrarily set by committee every 4 years.

Here’s a planet money episode on the topic.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...

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