How the US Postal Service is Being Gutted

Will the USPS still be around after its 10-year pension prefunding period is over?

The short answer is that [UPS and Fedex] can price postage to be profitable (partially why their sites are so complex) and invest in growth areas -- both of which USPS can't do.

The article discusses just how trim the USPS' operations are. Maybe this is part of why?

Whenever USPS tries to enter a new arena, private competitors bleat to Congress. Examples abound: plans to develop an online payment system in 2000 (Internet industry cried foul);

A public paypal competitor? O_o

public copy machines (office supply stores);

I feel as though this idea has a "negative synergy" -- it's like we're lumping together all these services which are increasingly depreciated. Because you really need to photocopy that email you just printed.

in-store sales of phone cards and money transfers;

Who uses phone cards? No-contract cell phones make calling in the US free, and "everyone" uses Skype or one of the thousand other VOIP solutions (from Steam Chat to WebRTC) for calling foreign countries.

Did the USPS stop selling money orders? Do you trust a government agency more than you trust Paypal?

selling postal meter cartridges (Pitney Bowes objected).

Ink cartridges? O_o

And, of course, rivals such as UPS complained, ultimately leading Congress in 2006 to restrict USPS to mail delivery.

Yet UPS couldn't get a law change to allow themselves to pick up mail. The USPS still has a monopoly on mail pickup.

These "solutions" seem like they'll remain feasible for about the same length of time as physical mail delivery itself stays around.

I've been concerned about this for a long time. The USPS has operated without government funding for years but is in the hole because they have been forced to pay more into the civil service retirement fund than needed.

I consistently get better service from USPS than from FedEx, UPS, or any competitor, at a far better price. They're also the second largest employer in America.

While I admit this article is a tad political, I would like to raise awareness of this as it is really a critical problem. UPS, FedEx, etc, will not go out of their way to deliver your mail in emergencies. USPS will. The post office is truly a staple of our country, and I would hate to see it go.

In the last few years, I had to send a number of overnight letters, personally.

Without the advantage of a corporate discount, the USPS price was half of that of the private competitors.

It's things like this that individual consumers are giving up with this push to privatization. Big boys get breaks; the rest of us get screwed.

Efficiency at scale doesn't work, when you're not part of the scale.

See, for example, individual rates for health care insurance.