The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Service [pdf]
inthepublicinterest.org
inthepublicinterest.org
Ellen Brown's has written a copy pieces advocating for postal banking.
What We Could Do with a Postal Savings Bank: Infrastructure that Doesn’t Cost Taxpayers a Dime - https://ellenbrown.com/2013/09/23/what-we-could-do-with-a-po... (2013)
This piece concludes by suggesting the postal service is being looted so its property portfolio can be sold off.
The more I learn about Feinstein the more unhappy I become.
https://lawandcrime.com/politics/feinstein-once-pushed-for-t...
I don't think Feinstein is that politically craven. She has a spine, and a relatively rigid one at that. Rather, her poor judgment, such as it is, is all her own.
The Koch brothers and other anti-government radicals bank on the political disaffection that such historical revisionism generates. If every politician is a stooge, then there's no virtue in politics or government. Feinstein is no stooge, and while I wouldn't vote for her in most years, IMO she deserves respect as a strong, steadfast, and effective leader who almost incidentally blew--and continues to blow--many stereotypes of women out of the water. (And you can be all of those things, BTW, while also having flaws and a history of mistakes.) She definitely doesn't deserve a cheap character assassination.
I do think there is still some debate about the timelines involved, though. A 1984 article in the Harvard Crimson indicates that the Fort Sumter flag was raised prior to the California 100 flag: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1984/5/9/a-viable-alterna...
But the Snopes article indicates that Bradley brought down the California 100 flag in favor of the Fort Sumter flag.
I didn’t intend to “revise history” by my post. Hopefully no one takes it that way.
Actually, the banking service is also "universal" (every post office provide the service), allowing very remote places to have banking and postal service in one place. So even in remote places where it is not profitable for <bigBank> to open an office, there are always a post office around. The financial services are broad, bank account, checks, loans, credit cards, stocks/bonds, currency exchange, etc.
Another service is notary (the postal office can certify some official papers), civil services (the postal office can process ID/passport renewal), and you can pay your taxes or fines too :)
Combined with a solid IT infrastructure, a tiny post office can do a lot, with few employees. A lot more than just delivering spam or even parcel.
USPS becoming a bank could happen in the US and it would be great for the company, because the Antitrust system in the US is a joke and it would never stop it, IMHO.
I mean, I can't because I sold some bitcoin via Bank of America 4-years ago. Someone stole my info, I reported it as fraud and BoA reported me for fraud -- and all my bank accounts closed. And they refuse to fix it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-owned_enterprises_of_the...
Even libertarians and conservatives will I believe find something to agree with here as your city and state tax dollars probably go towards servicing private bank fees which could be eliminated by your city or state chartering their own bank and could be further reduced by them offering traditional "meat and potato" style loans to small main-street style businesses at reasonable rates.
The city making a few honest dollars in an open capitalist marketplace to reduce the citizen's tax burden I think would be welcome by by ideological libertarians, conservatives, liberals, socialists, all the major branches. No coercion, no obligation, just more competition, this time to the benefit of easing your tax burden.
- It's unlikely that the government will regulate itself and its competitors fairly, and it's generally unlikely that the government will hold itself to account (as it often does for private entities).
- The government is likely to set up barriers to entry, to prevent competition. This is the case for the postal service, which has a monopoly on first-class mail.
- The government is likely to subsidize its 'option', either directly or indirectly, such as by having the government 'sole-source' services from its 'competitor'.
This isn't reality, it's just some artificial classification system placed upon society. It's a hypothetical thought experiment based on fictional categories. For example, The Irvine Group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine_Company) is a Private For Profit company that Governs the City of Irvine - the distinction between the two groups are totally imaginary and fictional. They only exist on a chalkboard.
I'm talking about people who call themselves libertarian who do not participate in this classification dance
There's a historical reality of actual real world public banks and there's been consistent and nearly universal support for their continuation across party lines. Theoretical thought experiments aren't needed - we can simply look at observed reality.
Maybe you should actually read Mrs. Brown's material as I suggested before forming an opinion on her work. I dunno, just a suggestion.
Municipalities organized as corporations are not unique to California, but the "inc." at the end of the name doesn't change anything. A government is an organization granted a monopoly (or oligopoly) on the legitimate use of force in a designated geographic area. For a discussion on the philosophical problems with governments as such, I recommend reading "The Problem of Political Authority" by Michael Huemer.
explicit, implicit, loose, tight, chartered, unchartered, natural?
> granted
by whom, to whom, under what authority, given by what, enforced by what and applicable to what and whom
> a monopoly (or oligopoly)
determined and defined by whom? enforced by whom?
> on the legitimate
same question
> use of
arbitrary, restrained, indefinite, transparent, accountable, proportionate? what are we talking about here?
> force
define force. is it physical force? psychological? threats? persuasion? What about the physical force in the seizing of property?
> in a designated
defined by whom? universally acknowledged? how? by what mechanism? where?
> geographic
physical? virtual? what types of legal fictions?
> area
contiguous? porous? uniform in space and in time?
I can use that and make it apply to just about anything by answering those questions differently. That's why it's utterly arbitrary.
I've read your authors - they use superficial theoretical chalkboard constructed non-realities to scaffold up their taxonomies. It's not real.
That's why this style of libertarianism has exactly zero agreed upon historical examples. Because they aren't describing reality. Their supposedly "concrete" definitions conveniently move and morph based on the context.
The liberals look at europe and say "yeah, that's pretty much what we mean"
The socialists look at cuba, ussr, and china and say "well, ok, we want things to be less brutal, but ok, yes this matches our definition (shameface)"
The anarchist look at the paris commune of 1871, the Seattle general strike of 1919, occupy wall street, etc and say "yes, this is what we mean".
The (honest) conservatives look at the middle east and turkey and say "yes, this is what we want, only with a different religion and more equality of opportunity"
But the libertarians are just there with their chalkboard because there is no agreed reality that undergirds it. The largest consensus I've found is Friedman's "The Miracle of Chile", which took place under a literal dictatorship, but because their terms are arbitrarily defined, this isn't actually a problem. A military police state that seized people in their sleep and rolled tanks through the street somehow gets shoe-horned into the examples section ... that's how free-floating the categories are.
There's a different form of libertarianism that doesn't have such issues: "When a choice need be made, always tend towards individual freedom". This one, although not free from issues, can't fall victim to the deck-stacking category dance and purely arbitrary construction of the force/monopoly/government style.
Singapore's postal service, SingPost, is a publicly traded company[1].
The UK's postal service, Royal Mail, is a publicly traded limited company[2].
Germany's postal service, Deutsche Post AG, is a publicly traded company[3].
Japan's postal service, Japan Post, is a publicly traded company[4].
I'm also yet to hear a convincing argument as to why the USPS enjoys a monopoly in first class parcel mail. That is to say, sure let's keep USPS state owned / public, but why can't FedEx/UPS/Amazon/DHL compete with the USPS?
[1] https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/quote/S08.SI/
[2] https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/rmg?countrycode=...
[3] https://www.boerse-frankfurt.de/equity/deutsche-post-ag
[4] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/6178.T?p=6178.T&.tsrc=fin-sr...
The legacy system is based on the fact that it is public service, equally offered to all citizens, regardless of their gender, race, religion and location. So, it is not a business. A business would focus on the most profitable aspect of the postal service. It would likely not serve some areas, or even discriminate against some people.
I believe, the reason why USPS still has a monopoly in first class parcel mail, it is to satisfy people we claim that USPS should make money. Now, if it was clear for everyone that USPS should not be profitable (like military or education are not profitable), then it would make sense to break all USPS monopolies. Actually, I would argue the other way around, then let's USPS compete also with banks (account, loans, credit cards, stocks/bonds, CDs, etc.), title companies, check cashing business, etc. Which I believe USPS cannot currently. USPS could leverage its geographical coverage to bring banking services to remote areas. I would suggest to combine some services like DMV, so we could renew ID/driver/passports at postal office. We could pay taxes and fine. We could access notary services (titles), etc.
If you want universal postal service to rural areas (not profitable markets), then simply provide it and understand it has a cost like the military and education (as noted above)?
Having said that, having a universal postal service requires physical presence in lots of remote areas. And those remote areas not only lack postal service, but also banking, tax services, and even why not grocery shopping. I do not see why we could not let the postal service provide those extra services, especially in the remote areas. People in big cities would likely have a different bank, they have access to a DMV near by, or supermarket. But, in a remote area, how a retired person can cash his social security ? renew his driver license ? Maybe there is a "service" opportunity that would make those remote post office more sustainable. I do not see why the postal office could not provide other services especially in remote areas where they lack. The physical location of the post office becomes a more valuable asset.
The structure also hints at problems with government run businesses- the PX system avoids all sorts of sales and property taxes and gets reduced or free rent. The commissaries do that and get direct subsidies as well.
Before any service members (or their spouses) go after me, no, I am NOT arguing for any change to the system, just pointing out how existing examples look and work.
So in essence, residents of "profitable areas" are overpaying for mail to subsidize mail service to those in unprofitable rural areas.
But then the next question is: why go through this roundabout subsidization? Why not just subsidize rural first class mail delivery by the state directly?
This also ignores the fact that the USPS does not have a monopoly on sending packages, and is still able to serve package deliveries to rural areas, aren't they?
The conclusion does not follow. If it is important that the price of delivery to remote Alaska be cheap, then why not just subsidize it directly?
If I reside in Florida/Hawaii and send mail to Alaska I am presuming that it would get re-routed through intermediate stops. Also people move and mail traffic ebbs and flows through the seasons. So I don't understand how this subsidies would work unless we look at the network as a whole and budget accordingly.
The result would be the USPS would not have the revenue to serve the unprofitable regions, and would either be forced to end service in the unprofitable regions or simply collapse.
The problem is that the USPS monopoly is not as valuable as it used to be as less and less business is conducted by mail. In the long term the government is going to have to subsidize its necessary services, because those services are not and cannot be competitive advantages.
Sounds like if the problem is that rural mail is socially important, we ought to subsidize it directly.
OTOH, FedEx responded to MAP-21 and similar pension funding laws by getting rid of their pension fund which I suppose isn't something USPS can do as easily. On the third hand, UPS is still able to afford pensions for union employees.
It seems that most observers agree that this is not the case, so it is unclear how you came to the exact opposite understanding. E.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-04/congre... mentions
> The law requires the Postal Service, which receives no taxpayer subsidies, to prefund its retirees' health benefits up to the year 2056. This is a $5 billion per year cost; it is a requirement that no other entity, private or public, has to make.
Is Amazon going to run ships around the Great Lakes to deliver mail to vessels moving between ports?
Is FedEx going to send a truck an a four-hour round-trip to deliver a single letter to someone on an indian reservation for 50¢?
Is UPS going to charter bush planes to deliver mail to remote outposts in Alaska, Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands?
There are post offices so far out in the middle of nowhere that while they have a concrete pad for handicapped parking because it's required by the ADA, no customers ever arrive by car, so there's also hitching posts for people's horses, which is the primary mode of transportation. I don't see Amazon doing that. It'll just say, "Wait 20 years for your mail while we work the bugs out of our super-cool drone delivery service!"
No, because using planes to deliver to regional distribution centers is much more efficient.
> Is FedEx going to send a truck an a four-hour round-trip to deliver a single letter to someone on an indian reservation for 50¢?
The USPS does not deliver mail directly to the majority of reservation residents. Most have to fetch their mail at the closest office, which could be upwards of 1 hr away from them. This is because most reservation residences don't actually have an address (which also prevents them from registering to vote, which is another related issue).
> Is UPS going to charter bush planes to deliver mail to remote outposts in Alaska, Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands?
The USPS doesn't either. The USPS's Alaska Bypass has a minimum order weight of 1000 lbs, it's designed for retailers. The USPS does not serve normal consumers in very rural areas with standard mail features.
How do planes and distribution centers get mail to people at sea for months at a time?
The USPS does not deliver mail directly to the majority of reservation residents
You're not wrong. But there are plenty of people in remote places on the rez who do get mail hours from the nearest trading post. Just because they're not the "majority" of people doesn't mean they don't deserve to be served.
The USPS does not serve normal consumers in very rural areas with standard mail features.
Either you and I define "rural" differently, or you haven't spent as much time in rural places as I have.
It's possible to half agree with those political factions while still wanting to keep government subsidized public mail.
For example, if they want access to consumer mailboxes in an area, they need to cover 100% of the addresses USPS covers without routing packages through USPS. That way, they don't have the ability to surgically cherry-pick the most lucrative aspects and leave USPS with the crappy bits due to its mandates.
Given that USPS and FedEx are roughly $10 for a 3-day letter, I don't know which carriers would even want to deliver paper mail.
The UK is the size of the state of Oregon and about five times as densely populated. The UK also has a much more powerful central regulatory apparatus -- there is no US body that has as much power over private carriers as Ofcom has over Royal Mail.
Exactly.
> there is no US body that has as much power over private carriers as Ofcom has over Royal Mail
I thought regulating inter-state commerce and especially mail was something the US federal government has historically done?
In fact isn't there even a federal law enforcement agency specifically for it?
What's also significant is that Royal Mail privatization is less than a decade old. From a policy perspective, it's still an experiment. It doesn't actually have any competition for letter delivery. That Royal Mail has survived despite the lack of a statutory monopoly does not mean that the same would be true of USPS.
US - 87/sq mi
Germany - 603/sq mi
UK - 725/sq mi
Japan - 862/sq mi
Singapore - 20,446/sq miDoes a pricing system and private enterprise break down in sparsely populated markets?
Clearly things seemed to work when going from 20,000/sq mi to 862/sq mi (2 orders of magnitude). Is the argument that there’s a magical breaking point somewhere between 603 to 87/sq mi?
My whole argument is that the utility of keeping the USPS as it sits now with equitable pricing outweighs any potential efficiency or profit gained by private actors. If you disagree, that’s fine. I’ll disagree with your position that we should privatize the USPS, it will fuck over rural people to the benefit of ... who now? Are you heavily weighed down by purchasing .55 cent stamps? Because market rate first class mail would fuck over poor rural people pretty hard for almost no gain. The utility outweighs any efficiency or profit gains offered by private companies.
Not every damn thing needs to be privatized, some things are better left as government entities because the benefit to the public is greater than any profit motive. Letter delivery is one of those things.
This is a bold assumption that needs backing, because it would suggest that Germans or Britons would be paying 2 orders of magnitude more on sending paper mail than Singaporeans. It also presupposes that private corporations must absolutely turn a profit on every piece of mail that they deliver to every destination, but that’s not how most enterprises work — there can be sustainable loss leaders. It also presupposes that we ought to subsidize rural paper mail delivery rather than charge the true price, which is also debatable.
> I’d bet there’s a threshold somewhere in that range where it wouldn’t be possible to deliver a mail anywhere in the US by a private company for similar rates that everyone currently enjoys now.
“I’d bet there’s a threshold”, how do you know that the US isn’t above that threshold?
> equitable pricing
This is also debatable, because the USPS is essentially charging higher rates in denser markets to offset the subsidized rates in sparser markets, which imposes a regressive price increase on poor urban USPS customers. Higher prices mean nothing to rich people. If there’s some social utility to having rural (and not urban) Americans enjoy subsidized first class mail, then why not just subsidize it directly through taxes as opposed to selective price increases, which can be regressive and un-equitable?
> Not every damn thing needs to be privatized, some things are better left as government entities because the benefit to the public is greater than any profit motive. Letter delivery is one of those things.
Is food one of those things? How about clothing and shelter? The profit motive is just an incentive for private entities to provide goods & services. The strongest argument in favor of the profit motive is that resource allocation is superior among private entities relative to government central planning. There are obviously exceptions, like externalities, but those don’t really apply here.
And even if we did decide that there’s a public benefit to providing subsidized mail to rural areas, that’s an excellent argument in favor of keeping a taxpayer subsidized USPS, but not a sufficient one in favor of maintaining its monopoly on paper mail. Especially considering that private corporations already deliver packages to low density rural areas alongside USPS just fine.
No, it’s not. Singapore and the US are both an order of magnitude outside the range of the other 3 countries. I would imagine delivery is cheaper and/or more profitable in Singapore, considering it’s a densely urbanized city-state comprised of multi-tenant housing. Germany, UK, and Japan are all roughly similar in density, and I bet it costs a bit more to mail a letter in Germany than Japan. I also bet it’s profitable in that population density range. It clearly is, since they’re operating private companies!
The US is also vastly larger than any of the referenced countries, and has some huge areas with extremely low density. The population density of all of the land area of the US excluding the Northeast region has a population density of 50/sq mi or less (excluding islands). The US has unique geographical and size challenges that none of the countries listed that have privatized their post offices have.
Clothing, food, and housing haven’t been strictly government provided services ever. This is not a good analogy or argument, sorry.
Also, 55 cents is a not a regressive pricing scheme against the urban poor. 55 cents to mail a letter isn’t going to inconvenience anyone. You’re getting disingenuous here, I’m going to disengage.
One last thing, USPS ends up doing last mile delivery for a lot of rural address UPS and Fedex packages. You’re not arguing in good faith, I’m done.
And on what basis are you betting that an operating private company in America can’t achieve the similar pricing outcomes? Is it pure conjecture?
> Also, 55 cents is not a regressive pricing scheme against the urban poor
Sure, and if that’s your argument, then why can’t a private corporation charge the same and maintain a national parcel mail network if it wanted to? There are loads of industries (airlines, payments, ridesharing) where margins are razor thin, but because of high revenues, there is plenty of incentive to serve remote areas.
> One last thing, USPS ends up doing last mile delivery for a lot of UPS and FedEx packages
While that’s true, this services represents the minority of UPS and FedEx’s total footprint. UPS/FedEx/DHL/Amazon still directly deliver the majority of their packages, even to remote addresses.
- Australia Post is a government owned entity.
- Australia Post has a universal service obligation.
- Australia Post is allowed to sell whatever it damned well pleases.
- But, it has a monopoly on only one thing, letters.
- The combination of universal service obligation is a liability of course, but being able to sell whatever it damned well pleases ameliorates it somewhat. Many firms (like banks) farmed out otherwise unprofitable branch functions to Post Offices.
- Australia Post is, and as far as I know has always been profitable.
From what I can tell, the idea that a government run entity is more poorly run than a private one is myth. If the area has open competition, and the government run business makes a profit (this is generally the case in Australia), then it really makes no difference if it's privately run or government owned.
Differences only arise in non-competitive environments. A monopoly owned privately owned business charges like a rent seeking wounded bull. A subsidised government run business could destroy more efficiently run private equivalents, but can be a fine balance - it can also be a way to efficiently subsidise a service that was never going to be supplied privately. Doing it by subsidising private operators is equally fraught - regulatory capture is a thing, privately owned prisons being a poster child for what can go wrong.
This is a state of affairs we need to consider rolling back, not expanding.
If you actually drill down into every tangible thing that’s wrong with America, you’ll find that root causes are actually pretty complicated.
That is a fine thing and I am grateful for it.
Consider any tangible thing that's wrong with America - government mismanagement and regulation are likely to be a part of that equation.
This is a state of affairs we need to consider rolling back, not expanding.
But also regardless of which is better, why is it all-or-nothing? Why can't UPS/Amazon/FedEx/DHL ALSO co-exist with the USPS? Today, they are prohibited from delivering any first class mail to a mailbox, by law.
Now, why does it have exclusivity for letter service? I don't know the history.
I'd rather look at how it can do an already pretty good job, better. I know I go to USPS when I ship anything.
Why isn't it in the banking business? Why doesn't it operate an official email / Identity Provider? Among other services that a correspondence service, a federal service with the most physical public spaces, could offer?
It specifically grants Congress the power to operate a postal service. Just because they have the power doesn't mean they have to do it.
> I'd rather look at how it can do an already pretty good job, better. I know I go to USPS when I ship anything.
When it comes to packages, USPS vs UPS vs FedEx have their pros/cons, but the options mean that most end user's needs are met, whatever they are. The question is why USPS enjoys a state sanctioned monopoly on paper mail specifically.
I'm curious -- can you link to more detail about this? I've never had trouble sending paper mail through UPS or FedEx. What does the monopoly cover, specifically?
By law, private corporations aren't allowed to deliver anything to your mailbox, only the USPS can.
On the one hand, it seems unfair. On the other hand, since they don't have any cost-competitive offerings, it seems like a non-issue. I'm a big fan of the USPS, but if it looked like FedEx could help push the letter rate down, I would be a fan of revoking that law. (If a private carrier committed to serving 100% of the USPS coverage area.)
It doesn't have exclusivity for letter service. UPS, FedEx, and DHL (among others) will carry letters across the country for you.
Yes, it's going to cost ~$10 to roughly match the service speed of a USPS first-class stamp. But it's available.
It’s similar in Canada - a number of previously run public services were privatized (DMV equivalent, liquor stores, etc). And the level of service improved dramatically. I remember how awful the DMV was - crappy customer service, limited locations, terrible hours. Now I can go and register my car at 8pm on a Wednesday with a 5 min walk and no line. Many of the Canada Post centers are privately run as well - the big box stores use their employees to run it.
I was kind of shocked to come to the US and see how they’re still stuck where Canada was 30 years ago.
Privatization of the postal service has led to much worse service, closure of postal offices, long delivery times in less densely populated areas (read non profitable), and Loss of mail; to make profit, the companies hire the lowest grade, temp-workers they can get their hands on. Sometimes these people figure it is easier to burn or throw away mail rather than to do the actual work of delivering it.
I disagree. At best, it has been hit or miss. Alberta used to have Alberta Government Telephones (AGT). It was later privatized as Telus. Saskatchewan kept SaskTel a crown corp. The level of service and prices are so much better in Saskatchewan as a result that some Alberta residents pretend to live in Saskatchewan so they can get a Sask mobile plan.
And don't get me started on 407.
They could have been the email address of record for everyone in the US if they just set up a forwarding address for anyone who wanted it.
Heck, they could even do it now.
Imagine having a free foo@me.us email address that someone could only send to if they paid for it, like the way mail works now.
That is the business they should get in to, along with killing all the check cashing places by being a bank for unbanked like they used to be.
But they couldn't keep up with more modern services. Their webmail and storage was laughable compared to Gmail and others, and people moved on. They still operate, but it's basically just for older people who never changed now.
Post office companies can't compete with tech giants on email services.
It's quite astonishing how unreliable USPS is. We frequently see packages get routed to a totally incorrect part of the country, derailing shipments for several days.
Also, it seems like even USPS doesn't know when their packages will arrive. The estimates they give are worse at predicting arrival time than just inputing distance into a simple regression!
It doesn't have to turn a 'profit' in the literal sense, but it needs to make more money than their current spending because they have to pay future pensions.
For instance, my family's street recently got a public sewer system (to replace septic systems), and the city charged homeowners one-time and recurring fees to cover the expenses of both installation and operation. If the city could not get the homeowners to pay enough to cover the cost of the sewer system, which was a real risk, the system would have been considered a mistake (and a project with similar economic prospects would likely been avoided in the future).
The big-ticket items I pay for as a taxpayer include schools (via local taxes), defense, retirees, and healthcare. None of those cover their expenses, and basically everything else combined is a tiny minority of government expenditure.
(I believe we should more fully fund the non-defense parts of the budget, but let's not pretend they net out in the in-years.)
Though, overall, this has been a long arc of slowly trying different ways to gut or kill the program in the last ~40 years.
[0] https://mailingsystemstechnology.com/article-4596-The-US-Rem...
The best way to help USPS is to use them as your default shipping method: do so.
At some point the wealthy and political in the US might have somewhat acted in the interest of the American people. But now it feels like almost every move is to the detriment of the average person.
If things continue like this, America is in real trouble.
The family has been fucking the US and world long before Trump was elected. They have a history of funding fake climate change science in order to push favorable legislation for the O&G industry.
Anything that might benefit society (healthcare, social support, ...), they have fought against or funded a PAC to do their dirty work.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30011020-democracy-in-ch...
[1] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jel.20181502
[2] https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/jack_rakove_reviews_dem....
[3] https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/7/14/15967788/democrac....
/s
Imagine we had to deliver a vaccine to everyone within a week. The USPS knows everyone's address and where people live. They would be the go to institution to do this.
>The federal agency plays a crucial role in U.S. supply chains, commerce, and basic communication—which email simply cannot replace—by processing and delivering nearly 500 million pieces of mail on an average day.
But I did have a number of questions like,
Wouldn't it be bad if we abolished the post office since there's always been one in my neighborhood?
Why does this person have a particular issue with a quasi-governmental agency that is a rounding-error in the federal budget? What about the trillions in defense and deficit spending?
Isn't 90% of what comes to my mailbox spam that I just forward on to the landfill?
Do most other countries have a public postal service? Why or why not.
Don't I avoid the post-office at all costs unless there's an automated kiosk that happens not to be out of service?
Why is this on Hacker News?
No one knows for sure. This person also has issues with other tiny pieces of the federal budget, such as the CPB.
Various theories are advanced, such as political strategy (kill mail-in-ballots, NPR is seen as leaning slightly left) or profiteering (the USPS has a large pension fund, perhaps an appealing target for a corporate raid).
It's an interesting topic. It's generated a few 100 comments already proving that. If HN were just about the latest Rust release and some new startup CEO's deep thoughts, I probably wouldn't come here 5x a day
The USPS could be improved but struggles primarily due to active efforts to kill it off. But it's a wonderful idea of a service that definitely should exist and be improved. What's next to kill off? Libraries? Public schools? The USPS, libraries, public schools provide basically guaranteed service to anyone, anywhere. They're wonderful institutions. Are they perfect? No. But very few institutions are, and these provide a helpful service to people. We should focus on improving them instead of spending so much money to kill them.
I've learned that the USPS has free package pickup since someone is basically guaranteed to be in your neighborhood every day, which has been a wonderful service during this viral breakout. By having USPS pickup my small packages, it keeps me out of their stores away from other people and employees. I simply purchase a label online and schedule the free pickup, next day if it's a weekday. It's a minimum of $11 for UPS to come pickup your package at a residential address, even if they're already coming to your address for another delivery that same day.
In US the rules are per state and complicated also while mostly paid poll workers are really volunteering for the job .
The second part surprises me all the time , US May have lesser polling booths if they have lesser people volunteer to be poll workers . Despite collecting so much tax and have so many government employees , Election Day in the US depends on so much on volunteers
Election Day is also not a national holiday . I am sure the country can afford a single day off every 2/4 years so people can vote . You don’t even need an extra holiday, Keep it on 4th July if you have to, what better to celebrate independence than casting your vote ?
Free and fair elections is the foundation of democracy, with all the gerrymandering , ID rules , mail-in ballot issues, voter suppression I am not sure how free and fair US elections truly are and how much of the population they truly are represented
Moreover, it's a completely neutral service - a ballot from Berkley, CA is treated identically in terms of priority as one from Amarillo, TX.
In a world where UPS gets to serve however they see fit, it's perfectly legal for the company to prioritize one over the other in terms of prompt delivery or to prioritize care that the mail arrives unmolested.
Well sometimes a lotto game ends up with a flaw that allows an arbitrage opportunity - you can fill out every combination and walk away with a few hundred thousand or a few million. A small group of people spend incredible efforts, seemingly irrationally, to fill out every possible lotto combo...
Now imagine that lottery is for president of the United States.
Effectively if you can intercept and alter ballots, you only have to change the 'right precincts' to flip an election.
If you make money this way, untapped resources don't necessarily look like untapped oil fields, instead they might look like entire industries that (with friendly legislators) can suddenly be opened up private profit (especially yours), or industries that can be captured into monopolies, or nations whose current economic situation can be exploited in ways that put large amounts of money into your pocket.
Not sure if a charitable interpretation is warranted but I can imagine good intentions leading to the same actions.
This doesn't work out though in rural areas where it's unprofitable for a business to open a branch or provide service. This would be the case for postal service in large parts of the country just like it's the case for Internet providers.
I assume they feel the same way about libraries and every other government service, but not sure if they've made any headway there.
It isn't- for most, it is about preventing the waste that tends to happen when organizations (be they corporations or government bureaucracies) become complacent and uncompetitive.
Whether corporate raiders or rubber rooms for bad union members, any system can get taken advantage of. That doesn't mean that you should assume the worst from the people you disagree with.
These services were designed to help make things affordable to people who could not afford the private version.
Maybe instead we should have just made sure everybody could afford the private version, by directly giving them money!
Edit: I am not saying it’s a right thing to do, I am just trying to list a possible reason why billionaires might try to fight against it, per OP question
fuck the post office.
So food is really important and vital. Should the government be in charge of growing and distributing food?
Of course not. This experiment has been tried with horribly deadly results. The basic fact of the matter is that the market is far more effective at fairly distributing goods and services. If you look at the major sources of inequalities today in our society, they are in education, policing, and the justice system, all of which are under public control. Interestingly enough, the tort system, which is partly under private control, is far more fair than the criminal justice system that is under public control, which is why killer cops never go to prison but their victims get million dollar damage payments. (as the old axiom goes, if the king controls criminal punishment, the kings friends get away with murder).
The point is, it's a total non-sequitur to assume that just because a decentralized system is the primary means of distributing something therefore implies that it only exists to make corporate profits at the expense of us poor people. Individuals like myself who are for wider privatization believe so because we care about people. I think people will be better off if the government isn't in charge of growing food, and I think people would be better off if more systems were privatized. It's not because I have a fetish for companies, it's because I think the general welfare would improve.
Theres a middle ground here, ya know? At the end of the day we need companies that turn a net-profit by offering goods and services that ultimately lead to the tax revenue to fund those libraries, post offices and schools.
> So what if it's harmful to competition?
Again, it's a ideological positon. In the mind of people like the Koch brothers, it might be post offices and libraries today, but it might be [insert industry here] tomorrow. And that industry might be your industry. I don't share that view, but i see where they are coming from.
Btw, I don't support privatised education either, and the evidence on various programs where it has been tried (charter schools in the US, academies in the UK, etc.) are fairly mixed. Are they better than the status quo though? Yes. No question. Not even close (the implication often is that teachers are able to just do great work without being incentivized...this doesn't reflect reality).
Also, I live somewhere that had a monopolised last-mile provider. Since privatisation, there has been real improvement in service quality and...amazingly...actual innovation. Is the service good? No. It is still more expensive (somehow) than providers with 1/10th of the infrastructure/network. And the "innovation" is largely copying those other providers. But it is actually getting better (and yes, the main issue is a unionised workforce are holding the company to ransom whilst their market share falls through the floor).
But once an idea is validated smaller competitors come in and start picking off verticals. Shopify and it’s 100,000+ stores are around in large part due to Amazon not only validating and producing best practices for the e-commerce model but also in building the foundational infrastructure (AWS) for smaller companies to leverage.
There are major benefits to having mega companies and billionaires around, and particularly having them in your country. Albeit, I agree, we do need to come up with a better tax strategy for the ultra wealthy.
I think the happiest rich people have a "wall" to push against and a "chair" to sit in when they're tired. Bill Gates has the health policy stuff to work on during the day, and his family to come back to in the evening. Jeff Bezos has Amazon to run, Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey have their companies and people to be around, average people have a job.
If you don't have that "thing" to chew on, if you just sit in on a board meeting and sip cocktails on a beach, it's easy to become lonely and feel like life is meaningless. You become like Notch and end up in a depressive spiral where you simultaneously have everything and nothing.
Not a psychologist or anything, just an interesting observation. No man is an island. Until he is, then he's Robinson Crusoe.
Markets are phenomenal things for the majority of goods and terrible things for a few goods (like common defence, the judiciary and pollution control). The post office is in the latter case - some people need to subsidize the system in order for (say) rural deliveries to take place.
The benefit of having a single universal system is important in a world where an enormous amount of things that are necessary to a functioning society (say, jury summons, or voting pamphlets or other government paperwork) need to be accessible to every single citizen in the democracy.
Eventually the Internet can replace most of these things, but then the government of a democracy needs to ensure that literally every citizen has free and reasonable access to the internet without meaningful burden, lest it disenfranchise the poor and the rural.
Oddly, the whole "defund the post office" thing seems to be mostly a Republican issue. I say oddly, because the Democratic base tend to be from more densely populated states and from larger cities in those states. These people are least likely to be affected by a lack of post office as commercial delivery services can supply the majority of their mailing needs in a pinch. The people most affected are people in large states like Texas, especially those outside of the cities, where it's less economical to deliver to.
Not to mention all of the other federal services that post office provide that would ultimately go away if the post office did. Things like passport processing, for example.
Honestly, I'm still kind of amazed at how people can be convinced to so consistently call for things that are against their own interests in the name of some abstract idea like "religion!" or "the market!.
Because they believe it’s bad for the public welfare. As you acknowledge, they have no other reason to care.
Edit: I failed to mention that the libertarian groups, at least in the US, are also a consistent reservoir and breeding ground for reactionaries. Another plausible explanation is that a lot of (ultra-wealthy) people have even worse politics, but launder their views through "free minds, free markets."
And what is "worse politics" but a begging of the question? Ok, privatizing the Post Office is worse than keeping it public; I agree. The question is why they believe that.
It can be seen with the reduction to these functions to expand the police departments.
I would vote for this. Whatever we spend on public libraries, that money could be used to bring every residence land-line high-speed internet access.
I would also defund all public schools. Charter schools seem to be the future, but the legion of bureaucrats don't want to let go of their communist indoctrination pipeline.
As a tax payer, I don't want to subsidize people sending letters or packages. Much of the back haul and distribution has already been contracted out anyway.
> It's a minimum of $11 for UPS to come pickup your package at a residential address
Yeah, that's the real cost of that service. The fact that it's free for the USPS doing it means you're using other people's money.
Librarians also provide expertise in sourcing knowledge that isn't available online; particularly with the way that Google search has evolved.
Larger libraries also provide archivist roles and even small libraries may serve to archive local news and history.
There's already unemployment agencies. Maybe they can setup computers to assist the homeless. Or you know, the homeless shelter could have a computer for job searching.
Just because the USPS works as is does not mean it couldn’t be better. This is a classic “I like things the way they are” problem. Where the other possibilities are unknown and inexperienced and so are not given equal weight to a decision.
I don’t particularly care whether the postal service is privatized or not. But the more we keep failing at things like public schools the more I’m inclined to align with privatization. Everything can be regulated to a degree that requires basic service levels.
But you can’t fake incentive. What is the USPS incentive to do better?
When companies get big enough to serve the entire nation, a few million USD in fines won't make them stop.
> But you can’t fake incentive. What is the USPS incentive to do better?
It's an intrinsic goal, set by those who truly do want to serve better. You can hire for that. USPS would have an easier time hiring the right people if they weren't hamstrung by billionaires weakening their foundations.
True. Intentional dismantling of an organization that can’t protect itself seems slightly out of bounds. However, that’s exactly what you would do in the private sector.
But regardless, people are driven by incentive. Appealing to humans with the notion of doing good but not being paid market price (through monetary or other tangible means) is ensuring that you will not attract top talent. You can trace it all the way back down through the evolutionary rabbit hole: incentive = security = procreation = genes that carry on.
That’s our basic human programming.
We should ensure access to a level playing field but we shouldn’t ignore our basic nature when constructing it.
For example, current day drones would excel at rural mail delivery. Bread and butter business opportunity for someone so inclined.
Just because one method is removed does not mean the product ceases to exist. If it’s valuable a provider will find it.
And some day you may ask why wealth should be a barrier to entry to anything.
The idea of privatization and inclusion are not mutually exclusive.
This fostering competition business is often a false narrative. If the USPS was dissolved, there would be hardly anything compelling UPS or FedEx to pick up its services. If they did, they'd be at an increased cost to consumers.
> Just because the USPS works as is does not mean it couldn’t be better.
In my original comment, I explicitly said "The USPS could be improved but struggles primarily due to active efforts to kill it off. But it's a wonderful idea of a service that definitely should exist and be improved." The problem is that the USPS is in a chokehold by politicians, starving it of funds and increasing its costs, yelling at it "why can't you do better?" Talk about "fair" competition. Of course public services should be improved.
> But the more we keep failing at things like public schools the more I’m inclined to align with privatization.
As I mentioned in my original comment, we should focus on improving these things. Public schools are poor for a variety of reasons, primarily political, and their problems are not inherent to their existence as a public service. My mom was a teacher for decades, as were her family members. I've seen why schools struggle, and it's not simply because they're a public service.
> But you can’t fake incentive. What is the USPS incentive to do better?
What is UPS or FedEx's or any other company's incentive to do better? More capital and more money. Their incentive isn't to make people's lives better. It's to earn more money. It just so happens that these can overlap, but company's have few incentives to provide services to people. That's the entire point of public services. It's because there isn't an incentive for companies to provide them in a way that's beneficial and cost effective for the common people.
If it is failing, which it is not, it is for the same political reasons as the USPS is “failing”, which it is not.
Now some of that is a familial issue but not all of it.
Has public schooling been a net positive? Oh wow yes, by many miles. Could it be better? By many miles, yes.
Saying it could be better does not negate past contributions.
Regulation doesn’t seem to have helped in terms of bang for buck.
See: Health insurance industry
Also see: Internet service providers
Also also see: Publishing
We need to do better on healthcare. However I think we can all agree, the complexities of healthcare are far from those of the postal service.
ISPs are constantly under threat of new players, see SpaceX. The only way they can stick around is by adding value to their products. When was the last time you couldn’t get on the internet by two or more means? Cell phone and WiFi are almost always.
Publishing in particular though, this one doesn’t hold water. At no point in history has it ever been 1) easier to publish but also 2) easier to gain a audience. Publishing is fully democratized due to permissionless platforms enabled via the internet.
But have you considered that they _genuinely_ belive that minimal government and more privatization leads to overall better results? It might just be that they have good intensions, that they really wish for a better outcome for all.
I don't share that view, but i do think that there is a fraction of hardcore liberterians that truly believe we'd be better of without many of the government-founded services such as libraries, schools etc. - and while i do not agree with that, those people are still entitled to their opinion and are allowed to lobby for it.
Yes, and that makes it even worse. They’re so out of touch with common people and so insulated from routine everyday life, their opinion shouldn’t count for anything.
I don’t care if joe programmer on HN or Jeff the General Contractor at the bar are advocating for dismantling the post office because of libertarian ideology, because they have neither the power nor resources to affect change.
I do care when insanely wealthy billionaires who are completely insulated from the rest of society argue for horseshit like this because they have power to change it, and it’s for ideological reasons.
It’s pure narcissism to argue for a position that would negatively affect millions of people when the one arguing for change wouldn’t suffer one damn bit and in effect disregard everyone else’s suffering for their ideological bullshit position.
The existence of billionaires combined with Citizens United is an actual problem, the post office is not.
So while in theory I agree with your premise that they are allowed to lobby for whatever they want, the reality is that their influence on society is way overboard and should be limited (limited political contributions!).
Why would I care about Koch's views towards government?
Would I ask Harvey Weinstein about sexual assault and harassment?
Would I ask a creationist about evolution?
Would I ask a pro-lifer about women's reproductive rights?
Would I ask an Iowan farmer about agricultural subsidies?
Would I ask Coca Cola about diabetes?
Would I ask a reality TV star about presidential powers?
Would I ask Rupert Murdock about journalism?
Would I ask The Sinclair Group about media consolidation?
Would I ask a white supremacist about race relations?
Would I ask members of John Birch Society about voting rights?
Would I ask members of The Federalist Society about balance of powers?
Generally it seems like they think that minimal government leads to better results in a social Darwinism or "get rid of the parasites" sense.
I've also never really seen them seriously recon with the question of what you do with people who cannot compete, and at some point I feel like that crosses the line into intellectual negligence.
Again, I don't want to try to demonize the other side and I really wish I could think of a good example, but I really cannot.
Just to be clear, we don't have any problem with schools or libraries. We just think the model of having governments collect taxes and then pay for those things is broken. In consequentialist terms, it's broken because it removes competition from the equation, and competition generally leads to progressively improving products and services, and/or lower cost goods and services. In deontological terms, it's broken because taxation is theft.
To the people that run marketing and political campaigns, and utility companies.
Over 95% of all mail is not personal correspondence. ~50% is advertisements.
The UPS price probably reflects the fact it’s only allowed to compete with the USPS on an rigged, uneven playing field, through a legal loophole for “extremely urgent letters”.
And I wouldn't mind “killing” my local public library (despite spending hours playing Minecraft and Roblox there in my youth) in favor of the Internet Archive et al.¹, and public schools in favor of private schools that prioritize customer satisfaction over union agreements². And deunionize the police while we're at it: many of the violent acts and actual human killings BLM and others protest were perpetrated by repeat offenders kept in the force because of unions. After unionizing, police are 40% more likely to use violence.³
Camden, New Jersey fired their entire police force, hired a new union-less one, and decreased there murder rate while saving money that could then be spent on libraries, schools, etc. Private police have successfully served many communities.⁴
1: Edit: My area has private little lending libraries the size of large newspaper dispensers scattered around it, which work great because the area's dense and walkable; other less dense areas have libraries on wheels in the form of trucks and vans.
2: One of my favorite high school teachers was fired for lack of seniority because of union rules, and private and charter schools seem better by every measure I know of.
3: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=3095217
4: https://reason.com/video/dont-abolish-the-police-privatize-t....
Libraries are a public service. They're free. The people who use them don't have to pay anything for it, which is a boon to those who otherwise couldn't afford it. It's basically a public subsidy for access to books.
The postal service is a business. There isn't supposed to be any subsidy, you pay for it through postage, and they're not doing anything that UPS or FedEx couldn't do just as well. Public libraries don't need a law prohibiting private libraries to keep everyone from abandoning them, but the USPS needs a government monopoly on carrying letters? If the post office was so great then they shouldn't need that -- but then they'd likely fail, because private competitors would do it better and people would stop using USPS.
It's the same thing with public schools. The benefit is that the government pays for them, so no one can say they can't afford to send their kids to school. But that doesn't require the subsidy to go only to schools operated by the government. Give the parents education vouchers and let them choose their school. If the public schools are so great then they'll choose them anyway. The opposition to this comes from people knowing full well that they're not.
Or the price of delivery would be so exorbitant as to be prohibitive. UPS and FedEx only offer delivery to these locations because they see it as a required feature to remain competitive with USPS.
Or is it more likely that the private carriers would expect and demand a rump Post Office to carry the mail they find unprofitable?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause
Whether it operates like a business now, it was absolutely intended to be a function of government.
From those figures it looks like > 90% of the USPS throughput benefits the marketing operations of private companies and scammers.
I'm speechless.
And a future where I don’t have giant boxes “delivered” into my tiny mailbox that could fit maybe a stack of 25 envelopes.
And a future where 20% of packages don’t arrive.
I can see why people want to avoid this.
Every aspect of my experience with USPS is dissatisfying - they can't be defunded soon enough.
See:
https://www.insidesources.com/outbox-vs-usps-how-the-post-of...
The USPS has to be reformed and it needs a new purpose in life, other then stable government job for people. There needs to be significant value that others cannot meet. The reformation that is needed is being blocked.
For example, how about allowing me to pay $5 a month to not have you deliver crap into my inbox? Or to fully digitize the process, so I don't have a recycle bin full of crappy products, alumni magazines, and pizza coupons that I don't need or want.
Oh. And stop selling my data to third parties as well. Looking at you NCOA database.
"irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients."
A non-trivial percentage of "first class" mail is actually spam. The difference is in quality of service (delivery times for first class is significantly faster in some circumstances then marketing).
I do agree that that there is value in daily mail delivery, but my point is that the value needs to be enhanced, rather then just continue in what it is today. Cut service where it doesn't make sense (go to every other day), encourage people to use email, which is way less wasteful, and less harmful for the environment, focus on rural routes.
The terrible thing - you CANNOT opt out of the junk mail, at least in the past (hopefully this has changed).
I have no interest in the USPS as a result. What type of business that is supposed to be providing a service FORCES its future and current customers to kill trees for junk mail that will go into the trash.
If the govt didn't allow for spam filters on email, email would be dying too.
Volume has nothing to do with revenue, which is precisely what the original poster pointed to and was being refuted:
> The USPS's primary revenue source is as a Spam delivery service.
And then those things are handed off to the USPS for "last mile" delivery to the millions of rural addresses that UPS and FedEx don't delivery to directly with their own vehicles.
USPS serves some very critical purposes, and ensuring mail 'works' for all citizens, even those with deep rural addresses, is one of them.
And the post office. The mail came every day. Sending a letter to anywhere cost $0.25, just like your were mailing it from New York City. It was, literally, a lifeline.
A secondary problem is that Congress will interfere with decisions to reduce service in unprofitable areas but not officially subsidize it. This makes the post office appear to be unprofitable because we see the cost of having service in rural areas but don’t directly record the costs to the people who live there and the business which otherwise would not happen without that service.
This is a common talking point, but is factually incorrect.
(1) The USPS hasn't made any of those payments since 2013. Their current financial woes aren't caused by the requirement since their not making the payments.
(2) Pensions are required to be fully funded. In practice that's a bit more theoretical than actual, but the USPS isn't being treated any different.
Hundreds of millions of people use first class mail to pay their bills, rent, etc. and for all sorts of other things where those other delivery services would be needlessly expensive. The "basic problem" is that the post office is not permitted to set prices for first class mail or vary them where they lose money with every delivery, and yet they're expected by some to be run profitably "like a business."
> The USPS has to be reformed and it needs a new purpose in life, other then stable government job for people.
Because what the country really needs right now is a greater number of unstable jobs.
I suggest doing some research before presenting guesses as fact.
Marketing email was 23% of USPS's revenue (53% of volume) in 2019.
[Edit: I had a double-not, hopefully everyone understood my meaning before.]
The elimination of money orders from the USPS alone would push more people to already-abusive payday lenders.
Advertising is a money maker and it subsidizes the other business. I don't really see a problem with this.
People in Barrow, Alaska deserve access to mailing services as much as people in NYC. Without that, there is no reliable way to contact everyone in the US for the purpose of the Census, Voting (where mail-in voting is available), Jury Duty notifications, Selective Service, etc.
There are critical government services that still must be run over "snail mail" and to pass that off to a private institution which will not be able to service all areas equally will lead to more inequality.
https://www.fedex.com/en-us/shipping/fedex-smartpost/network...
They ultimately found a way around it but shut down due to lack of sign-ups[1], so it seems like USPS saved themselves some time.
“[we] knew that the USPS would not be able to work out its own problems, so perhaps naively, we hoped to partner with USPS to provide an alternative to the physical delivery of postal mail to a subset of users, hoping this would spur further innovation and cost savings.”
Probably because as a chartered non-government company they have a politically appointed Postmaster General who takes their orders from the POTUS. No company is required to fund pensions for 75 years. No company has their prices set by Congress. And no company has been a bigger political football than the USPS.
> it needs a new purpose in life, other then stable government job for people.
I believe they have tried in the past, oh what's that, blocked because Postmaster General doesn't want it.
We could fund it ourselves through the government instead, but why?
USPS is by far the worst mail service I have ever encountered. It's so bad that there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that one can do a lot better, assuming one is allowed to compete. And even though they proudly say they receive NO money from the federal government, they do receive subsidies in the hundreds of millions.
My experience with other countries is Israel and Russia's postal systems, which are both notoriously bad at actually delivering mail. USPS doesn't ever seem to lose my mail, and stuff gets to where I send it in ~3 days, so I've always been a happy customer.
Not to mention consistently misdelivering my mail to other mailboxes. One time, I had to escalate all the way to the region supervisor before I found someone that would actually hear me out. The general attitude seems to be one of incompetence and total indifference.
This was a normal apartment, in a normal apartment building, in a fairly nice part of town. The only way I ever got a Fedex package (several were sent back as "undeliverable") was if I knew it was coming in advance, to go online with the tracking # and instruct them to hold the delivery for me at the local Fedex office. Then I could pick it up in person.
Fortunately, the local Fedex office was only 2 blocks away from my apartment on the same street.
USPS delivered 100% of my letters and packages on time.
My mailbox stuffed with junk mail all the time (even if I have permanent sticker telling them not to do so). I've even talked to the USPS delivery person and told her not to do so. Next week, same issue. Rinse, repeat.
I've never, ever, ever had a problem with Fedex or UPS. They've been 100% professional and everytime I had to interact with them either on the phone or in a store, I always got good service. With USPS, this was the rare exception rather than the rule.
Maybe they just need to reduce their footprint, and close underutilized sites.
In the US, I mailed something to my mom across town, and she got it the same day that I put it in the mailbox. I rarely saw a letter delivery take more than 2-3 days. Here in Canada, it may take over a week to send mail in the same province. Takes over a month when my mom sends me a letter from the US.
IMHO, they shouldn't get subsidies. They should be a public utility. They provide a necessary channel of communication between citizens and their goverment: taxes, passports, ballots, voter registration, etc. happen through USPS. In my experience (admittedly, I've been in Canada for a decade, so this is probably out of date) they've been much more reliable than any other shipping service, and I don't think any other private carrier does letter mail.
Also receive lots of documents, periodicals, and packages through USPS, never had a problem there either, always in the mailbox or right at the front door. Of course I'd like to skip the junk mail.
USPS seems technically up-to-date as well, more or less. I can schedule pickups on-line, as well as buy and print postage. No complaints.
Yes, it is subsidized. The reason is that being able to send and receive mail cheaply and reliably is the cornerstone of our society and our economic system.