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Comment by levocardia | Hacker News Reader

Also this argument is easily refuted by the US Postal Service, which physically delivers individual pieces of paper in a few days, for pennies.

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USPS is fueled by parcel deliveries, but also in large part by literal tons of junk mail on dead trees; spammers have paid Uncle Sam handsomely to spam every citizen's mailbox for decades, and it's the most lucrative thing USPS can do with our home mailboxes.

The postal service is a quasi government entity that has operated (not to get too deep into the politics of it) for many years at a loss. It does compete with Amazon, as well as being used by Amazon, but it's very different as a business than Amazon.

I got this when I told Gemini "post office loss retirement prepaid" because of other articles I have read that I cannot remember.

"In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA). This law forced the USPS to do something virtually no other government agency or private corporation has to do: prefund its retiree healthcare benefits 75 years into the future[0]. Essentially, they were legally required to fast-track billions of dollars into a fund to pay for the future retirement health benefits of current employees, and theoretically even future employees who hadn't been hired yet."

[0]: https://apwu.org/the-usps-fairness-act/

Right but that’s a government service and it should be totally fine for them to deliver mail below cost using taxpayer money to make up the deficit.

Like every other government service - highways, defense, etc. They’re profitable to the system, but not per se.

The US Post Office is funded by its own revenue, I'm pretty sure.

It still enjoys many government mandated monopolistic advantages.

See: American Letter Mail Company.

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