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Comment by sachinag | Hacker News Reader

There's a long-standing tradition that communication between any two of a country's citizens is important to protect as it is a public good. Postmaster General was a cabinet position for many years because of this. The desire to impose market pricing on market costs for everything is unsettling to me.

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Postal communication between citizens is a classical private good. It is both rivalrous (my letter takes up space in the mail carrier's bag which your letter can not occupy) and excludible (if you don't pay, they don't deliver).

A public good is not just a good you want the government to provide, the term actually has a meaning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

You're only looking at it from the shipper's perspective, not the receiver's. The postman is a romantic figure because of the recipient, not the sender.

And, frankly, the idea that my letter excludes your letter from the carrier's mailbag is laughable. No, they cannot fit in the same physical space, but there's room for more than one letter in the bag/carrier/truck.

Carrying letters is rivalrous. As more people send letters, the bag will fill up and more mail carriers will be needed.

Compare this to a real public good, e.g. national defense. National defense is non-rivalrous because me enjoying living in a non-communist country does not hinder you enjoying the same thing.

As for the postman being a romantic figure, not sure how that fits into the question of whether mail delivery is a public good or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)

Government control of the post office was more about controlling the flow of information. Recently I was reading a biography of Ben Franklin, and the reason the Postmaster position was so important back then was that you could use it to control the newspapers that went out. "Bradford was the postmaster of Philadelphia, and he used that post to deny Franklin the right, at least officially, to send his Gazzette through the mail" - http://books.google.com/books?id=L64OOJGaCKIC&printsec=f... ( search for "postmaster" )

This is very true. We should protect communication between citizens. I'd personally rather that we do this through protection of Internet communications. People don't send letters anymore, they send email (or tweets, or whatever).

I'd be happy if the money that is going to keep the postal service subsidized instead went into subsidizing universal internet access.

Did you read the article, or have you been paying attention? Communication between citizens has changed a little over the years.

Ignoring the market doesn't make costs & benefits disappear. In fact the author argues that's what got them into this fix.

Utilities are public goods, and people pay proportional to the cost they impose on the system. And the economics work out well, not because there is a conscious effort to impose markets on people, but instead because incentives are aligned.

With utilities, you pay based on how much you use, not on how difficult it is to get them to you. So, for example, if you live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, it is more expensive to give you power than if you live in the city (you need dedicated infrastructure to get the power to you, and chances are you are further away from the power plant which means more power gets lost in transmission). Yet you pay the same per kw/h as if you lived in the city. Where you start paying more is if you use more power. (at least, this is the case where I live. Sorry if it is different in the US)

Postage works exactly the same way. No matter how expensive it is to get a package to you, you pay a fixed rate for it. However, you also pay proportional to the cost you impose on the system is that you pay per package.

> With utilities, you pay based on how much you use, not on how difficult it is to get them to you.

Actually, you do pay for untilities based on how expensive it is to get to you. The local power folks won't run a line to whereever you happen to be "for free". They'll charge you, the developer, someone. If you're a long way from "enough" capacity, the cost can be significant.

That's why some folks aren't on the untilities grid.

Rates vary - substantially - by reigion depending on sources of power and transmission costs. If you live in an area with hydroelectric power, you pay much lower rates, for example. If you live a rural area, you have to pay for the connections.

Perhaps utilities were a bad choice of example on my part because of this usage confusion.

> There's a long-standing tradition

You are attempting to rely on a well-known logical fallacy.

See http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-tradition...

What is your opinion on "urban sprawl"?

What effect do universal service subsidies and other public works (such as highways) have on the rate of expansion of settlements?

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