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.
My dad lives part-time in an unincorporated village in Alaska which has a population of 13 as of the 2010 census. Once a week, the USPS essentially charters an airplane to deliver mail there, for which senders pay the same rate they would to send mail anywhere else. The postage obviously doesn't come anywhere near covering the cost of delivery. Without this subsidized mail delivery, which is often used for groceries and other supplies, the full-time population would likely drop to zero. While it's likely that at some point in the future, if that kind of mail service continues to exist, drones will make it more efficient, it will always be much less efficient than delivering mail to people who live in cities.
It's reasonable to ask whether it's desirable to continue to subsidize people choosing such a lifestyle, and there's a good argument to be made that it is not. Many of the people who live in remote parts of Alaska have a rugged individualist mentality and a dislike for the idea of subsidies, but tend to get quiet when theirs are mentioned.
To be blunt, that's often true of rural culture in general these days.
The simple fact is that providing services to such communities is incredibly inefficient due to a lack of economies of scale. Without government subsidies, they would simply be unable to get services without paying exorbitant rates. That's not the market being immoral or whatever, it's literally just that the cost of providing the service is so high (same reason such communities often have fewer local government services as well).
They don't want to come to grips with the hypocrisy of claiming independence while actually actively choosing a highly subsidized lifestyle, and most other people are unwilling to call out the behavior because it's seen as bullying in some fashion.
Anyway, let's look at ways to make USPS more efficient. The pandemic has caused a 30% decrease in shipment volumes. If USPS wants to stay solvent they can furlough employees, lay off employees, and/or increase prices. Postal workers are unionized, so there's little chance of reducing employee expenses. That means they have to raise prices and/or ask for money from the government (which comes from taxes). Trump wants them to increase prices before he'll give them more money. This is because right now, Amazon (along with many other businesses) is shipping tons of packages via USPS. USPS loses money on each package they ship, so this is effectively a transfer from taxpayers to Amazon. Here's Trump quoted by Politico:[1]
> “The post office, if they raised the price of a package by approximately four times, it would be a whole new ballgame,” the president said during the signing ceremony for the latest coronavirus relief package. “But they don’t want to raise it because they don’t want to insult Amazon, and they don’t want to insult other companies, perhaps, that they like. The post office should raise the price of the packages to the companies. Not to the people, to the companies. If they did that, it would be a whole different story.”
Now let's look at the PDF. It mentions that Koch has funded a libertarian advocacy group called Americans for Prosperity. This group has come out against H.R. 6800, which authorizes $3 trillion of spending.[2] Of that, $25 billion goes to USPS.[3] That's less than 1% of the spending in that bill! Perhaps Americans for Prosperity aren't trying to kill the post office. Perhaps they simply don't want the government's budget to grow by another 15% of GDP, especially since much of that is likely directed towards special interests.
The bill also gives another $200 million to pay for salaries of workers in the federal prisons and it gives $187.5 billion to metropolitan areas (this money can't be spent outside of metro areas). Scanning through, I also see some stuff about discouraging the importation of drugs & medical equipment. It's a total mess.[4]
What I think is actually happening is that some people want to get another $3T of spending passed (mostly to enrich their constituents & ensure their re-election). To do this, they're using public support for the postal service (and public disdain for the Kochs) to try and sway voters. It's a sleazy tactic but it often works (as evidenced by how many upvotes this post has).
1. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/24/trump-us-postal-ser...
2. https://americansforprosperity.org/afp-issues-key-vote-alert...
3. https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamps-postal-history/heroes-a...
4. The full text of the bill can be read at https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6800...
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.
You have a much different experience with companies than I do then. I have been hung up on by UPS customer service. I have had to simply stop ordering from Amazon because they were delivering greater than 50% of books damaged, forcing me to waste time and money returning them despite numerous reports and complaints. There was nothing I could do and not a single person cared. It's because these companies don't care about providing a service. They care about making money. And my problems as a customer weren't enough for them to lose money on, so they weren't problems to them.
Does the USPS have problems? Yes. But at least in those cases I can actually find an actual person, usually local, to speak to. But that isn't the point. You're arguing that somehow companies aren't complacent when that is my exact opposite experience, especially with delivery companies.
> That doesn't mean that you should assume the worst from the people you disagree with.
Where did I do that? Especially in the case of USPS, the Koch's complaining about so-called unfair competition is exactly caring about companies more than people.
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
According to this report by they feds they've been operating at a loss for most years since 2008. $2.1B loss in 2018.
https://www.prc.gov/sites/default/files/reports/FY%202018%20...
No private courier would ever be saddled with a requirement like that. It's clear that this requirement was put into place by people who want to make the USPS look bad so it's an easier argument to kill it.
UPS on the other hand pays income tax, pays property tax, pays higher wages, fully funds their pension plan, and does not have access to the same zero or low interest treasury loans that the USPS does and still makes a profit AND delivers more parcels every year than the USPS.
Citation needed? A quick search suggests that post-pension-debacle, the USPS has lost money every year, to the tune of several billion dollars. Pre-pension-debacle, things were mixed; most years they made a decent profit, some years they lost some money, though much less than they do post-pension-debacle.
This comes back to voice vs. exit, which was being discussed on HN yesterday.[1]
It's greed, simple as that. These people are corporatists that believe if there's money to be made, they should be allowed to regardless of the ethical consequences.
There is no regulation for instance on the cost of soda, but it is not priced as high as the market can bear. Soda is incredibly cheap and requires no government interference to be cheap.
https://www.aeaweb.org/research/regulating-health-insurers-a...
fuck the post office.
Often the cost of metering can drastically outweigh the economic value of a simple, easy to understand/predict shipping service. This is why flat rate packaging is so popular across FedEx, UPS and USPS.
There is hefty price discrimination against high cost to serve customers baked into UPS and FedEx's model, and smaller couriers like DHL and Amazon Shipping happily blacklist large parts of the USA due to price.
you should educate yourself on the point before arguing such a strong strawman. this battle has been going on for over 150 years, and it has nothing to do with parcel service. start here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company
that's what i and the whole country is 'on about.' welcome to the conversation.
we go to dinner. you get a side salad, and i get a steak and some wine. we split the bill down the middle. cool? i'm not trying to diss you. i want to be friends with you.
soo how that works?
locations have different expenses. farms have cheap land. they have expensive delivery cost. taking money from people paying high rent to subsidize farmers is not 'benefitial' to people living in cities. it's benefitial to farmers. how about everyone pay their own expenses, and we don't shuffle around other people's costs. it's not benefitial to me to pay for a farmer getting fifty junk mail catalogs a week.
All first-class letters of 1 oz or less are identical. Housing is not identical, which is why it’s fine to have varying prices for housing. Many places have rent controls in place. The utility of having flat rate letter postage for every citizen outweighs any benefit realized from privatization.
> taking money from people paying high rent to subsidize farmers is not 'benefitial' to people living in cities.
This has been done for quite a while in the US, as crop subsidy payments. People in cities benefit by having stable food prices.
> it's not benefitial to me to pay for a farmer getting fifty junk mail catalogs a week.
You’re not paying for it, hope that helps.
so you looked it up, saw you were wrong, and changed your argument to 'parcel service' = 'letter service.'
you were given examples of why people want letter service from private companies, and how urban citizens pay for rural letter costs.
your argument at that point us 'you don't pay for it, the money to cover costs comes from a magic place, but if you do, quickthrowman has determined it's worth it, so case closed.'
thank you for the entertainment.
these sort of imbalances generally disappear in aggregate (sometimes your letter goes to a farm) and/or are worth the simplicity anyway, should you ever choose to take part.
it's not 'worth the simplicity' to me, living in a high rent city. literally every piece of mail in an urban area is 10x it's actual delivery cost, which pays for the farmer's mail, and him getting all the spam, which actually costs 10x more than he pays. exponentially more people live in cities. every time you get your bank statement delivered in a city, you and 20 others just paid for a single letter to be delivered to a farmer. through shittier interest rates in your savings account. yes, i rarely mail letters. like 10 times a year. and same goes for the 3 million other people in my city. and yet because of low farmland population, urbanites still mail many more total letters vs farmers.
we're not paying for it? whi, pray tell, do you think is paying for that farmer to send a letter? he pays half a dollar for a stamp. the post office spends about $10 to deliver it. my letter costs a penny to deliver. i pay half a dollar too.
so no, it is not 'worth the simplicity' to me, to pay for that farmer. but federal law forces me to.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/is-sweden-proof-that-...
> In contrast to American private schools, Sweden’s free schools don’t charge tuition — they draw on government funds to operate — and are required to follow Sweden’s national curriculum. They’re more comparable to American charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run.
This system is also unique in the world and the results since its institution have been woeful. Massive increase in segregation, inflation in grades, bankruptcies where the pupils suddenly doesn't have a school. All because they need to market themselves as "good schools" to make the largest amount of profit.
For the same reasons they tend to establish themselves in places with socioeconomically strong families, since those kids needs less work, and are thus more profitable.
There's also a queue system in-place where the parents must enqueue their child into these "good" schools basically directly after birth. These kind of hidden signals is used to further stratify the pupils through both segregation and class. A government issued report suggested that there should be a draw instead of a queue to prevent these outcomes. This is of course vehemently opposed by the "free-school industry" (yes, ofc they added the "free" prefix).
This system is not something that any country should adopt, and luckily, we're so far unique about it (heard something about Chile (Chicago Boys remember?) but not sure that's still the case). There's a large majority to change this system, but unfortunately the current situation in parliament doesn't allow it.
> OECD’s reports show that, of the 53 participants, 25 countries’ governments (nine of which have top 20 PISA scores overall) provide vouchers and/or tuition tax credits for students to attend private schools (see accompanied table).
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.
If you want to mentions specific countries we can compare them to the US.
It already is. The Food and Drug Administration exists. There are countless laws that dictate everything from how crops are. grown to how animals are treated to how products are labeled. Moreover, the government purchases enormous quantities of food and distributes it for the military as well as being involved in everything from food stamps to the famed "welfare cheese" strategic food reserve issues.
Now, it's true that the government isn't in control of literally every aspect of food distribution, but they definitely do things to ensure a stable food supply for the country at reasonable prices. (And then there are the billions and billions in farmer subsidies etc.)
Especially when you're being entirely disingenuous about your argument. I don't honestly understand how you can truly believe that corporate interests care more about people than the government. Perhaps you also believe that corporations are people, and at that point I guess I'd have to concede. If corporations are people, then they do care about people. It's just the one they care about is themselves.
Not every business is a cartoon mustache twirling villain but it's baffling to me to see the lengths people will go to to both outright dismiss the governments ability to do literally anything, and also that private enterprise can do it better.
Also the major sources of inequalities today go far beyond education, policing, and the justice system. Many of them are inexplicably tied to private enterprise. You don't want the government in charge of growing or distributing food. Well that's great. What's also great is that the cheapest food you can buy is also some of the most unhealthy trash you can put in your body. Soda is cheaper than water.
Yes, the civil justice system is more private-party focused, but you have conveniently left out why victims obtain judgements in civil courts when cops are not convicted in criminal courts. In civil litigation, a judgement is made based on the preponderance of evidence. In the criminal courts, the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt". It's easier for the plaintiff to win in civil court than for the prosecutor to win in criminal court.
Private/public control is inconsequential when compared to the level of proof required for conviction/judgement.
The primary issue is qualified immunity, coupled with the DA needing to rely on cops to do their jobs, leading to a massive conflict of interest. Unless the exact circumstances in one case occurred previously (and it was explicitly ruled illegal), a cop is let off due to the way qualified immunity works.
If a cop faced the same criminal trial as a regular citizen, they would very likely go to jail as most cases that go to trial result in a conviction.
However, it should be noted that some people, possibly even MANY people...do not have money or have limited money that must be allocated to stop death in one form or another. The market does not have a solution for them because they are not participants in the market. Yet they exist as a rather defined part of objective reality.
Privatization is charming and all, but it is not an end all, be all to the ills of mankind.
> Of course not. This experiment has been tried with horribly deadly results.
I assume you're referencing famines in communist countries, etc. In those instances, the government had a monopoly on food growth and distribution.
Your example is irrelevant because the USPS is just one of numerous mail carriers (UPS, FedEx, etc).
And I'm honestly not sure where all the USPS hate comes from: I think they actually provide pretty damn great service[0], at a pretty damn great price. Their financial struggles are mainly due to Congress heaping unreasonable financial obligations on them (obligations that companies like FedEx or UPS would never have). I don't think I could say they're objectively superior to the private couriers, but they're not objectively inferior either.
You mention education, and the issues there mainly boil down to lack of funding. The US spends a pittance per student compared to countries with much better public education. You could say ok, well, that's just proof that the government can't manage education well. And I guess that's maybe not false, but consider that a big reason why education isn't funded properly in the US is because of people (like Betsey DeVos) who want to kill public education, not because they truly believe the private sector can do it better, but because doing so will enrich their cronies. Regardless, you could flip it around and say that the US's public education is amazing considering how under attack its very existence is.
> the tort system, which is partly under private control
Not sure I understand what you mean. In a civil trial, you still have the same lawyers represent you, and you get the same public-servant judges, etc. The state's word is final when a judgment is rendered.
And in fact we do know what happens in civil matters when we try to privatize it: arbitration (often binding, because god forbid we disallow that), which is hardly a paragon of fairness or equality.
> ... is far more fair than the criminal justice system that is under public control
I don't think this is an argument about public vs. private, though. Yes, in a criminal trial, the prosecution has many, many tools available to them that a plaintiff in a civil trial wouldn't have, in the form of whatever law enforcement apparatus is at hand to help gather evidence and find witness testimony (and perhaps other nefarious things that they're in a unique position to get away with). But there's really no other option; you just can't treat criminal cases in the same way you treat civil cases.
There's a ton of inequality in our judicial system, but that has nothing to do with the public-sector private-sector dichotomy. In a civil matter, the state is a mostly-disinterested party, while in a criminal matter, the state has an inherent interest.
> which is why killer cops never go to prison but their victims get million dollar damage payments
No, that's because criminal proceedings have a much higher evidentiary standard. Which is how it should be, because the result of a criminal proceeding can deprive someone of their freedom or life.
[0] Two nice things the USPS does that the private couriers don't: pick up mail and packages from my building for free, and keep a key to my condo building so I don't have to be available to let them in.
I don't hate the USPS. I think it's mistake.
>You mention education, and the issues there mainly boil down to lack of funding.
Please spare me. The US spends an average of $15,400 per year per kid, which is an enormous cost. In NYC, it's even higher than this, yet their test scores and grades are worse than say Utah where the the cost is $5k per year per kid. Funding has, past an extremely basic level, no bearing on child academic performance whatsoever.
>Not sure I understand what you mean. In a civil trial, you still have the same lawyers represent you, and you get the same public-servant judges, etc. The state's word is final when a judgment is rendered.
In a criminal trial, only one party can file charges to begin with. The state. In a civil trial, anyone can file charges. Even after trial the inequality persists, which is why Roger Stone won't have to serve his full prison sentence. In a civil trial, the president/governor/mayor cannot pardon because he is not a party to the trial.
>In a civil matter, the state is a mostly-disinterested party
It is not a party, full stop. This is the advantage to the tort system.
>No, that's because criminal proceedings have a much higher evidentiary standard.
It's because the state simply chooses not to charge. Which is why the Director of National Intelligence did not get tried for committing perjury, and why Donald Trump hasn't been indicted with treason, and why it took Minneapolis to burn before Chauvin got charged with anything. The state has total control over criminal proceedings which is an enormous source of inequality.
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.
Source: FedEx does this to us all the damned time. UPS generally delivers to our door in a brown truck. I don’t know about DHL.
Let’s not pretend that other couriers offer the same service as the USPS (specifically universal service) in a competitive market while also turning a profit.
I have used the postal service in some fairly uncommon ways, and I have never had a package go missing or not meet their SLA for Priority Mail.
You can send a package to pretty much any town in the country for <$20 and expect it to be there in 3 or 4 days. It’s the next best thing to teleportation, unless you wanted to get it on a Sunday.
They've lost plenty of other things besides. I once sent $100 cash in a fun colored envelope containing a birthday card. The card arrived scotch-taped closed with the money gone. I know it wasn't an accident where it got ripped open by a conveyor belt or something because they re-seal torn envelopes in a plastic bag when that happens. That was more an annoying than headache inducing, but UPS has never caused problems for me like those and I use them by an order of magnitude more than USPS.
The worst part isn't that those things happen. Theft and accidents can happen anywhere. The worst part is that the USPS takes no responsibility and could not care any less. So what if a postal employee stole money from a birthday card? Sucks to be me. I can't send letters any other way. The USPS has a legally protected monopoly on letter delivery. So what if the hold time is 9 hours? Who else am I going to go to? The post office is built on bureaucracy and you and I pay the price for it.
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).
The socioeconomic situation in the U.S. is so poor that some of the top things public schools offer their attendees is food, water, shelter, and socialization. The people benefiting from these aspects have 0% of attending private schools. The fact that public schools are struggling with their educational duties is a political one and not one inherent to the service being public.
They would have a >>0% chance of attending private schools if they were each given their share of the public school budget.
I am not convinced that would be a good thing — my big concern is that a lot of 'private schools' would pop up which would just hoover up the vouchers, much as one sees with for-profit higher education.
The socioeconomic situation in the US isn't poor. It is tragic that someone thinks this but I would suggest leaving the US for a few days. Suggesting that schools are there to prevent some kind of public health catastrophe is ludicrous. The irony of incredible fortune is being unable to understand that you are fortunate.
True, and yet as someone who is extremely liberal on social issues and cannot possibly find a home on the right, I still feel uncomfortable among many on the left who don't worry as I do about the potential for stagnation in the absence of competition. It's different than it was back in the 80s but there is still a divide.
I agree with most of what you say about competition and I wanted to upvote, but this dig at unionized teachers really makes me angry.
Many, many teachers are extremely highly motivated because they love the students they see every day and cannot stand to do any less than their best for them.