The post office likes to make believe that it’s a real business with ridiculous gimmicks like its “forever” stamp and talk about being “competitive” in the market. But that can’t change the fact that the post office is an outrageously inefficient government monopoly, which exists only because the law protects it from real competition or even the consequences of its perpetually poor management.
Strip the post office of its special privileges. Then we would see what kind of “business” it’s capable of. In all likelihood, under those circumstances, it would quickly become extinct.
Read my complete op-ed on abolishing the postal monopoly in the Baltimore Sun.
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I fully agree the Postal Service should be privatized, but I think it can and should be done without destroying the postal service. In transition, the USPS could be totally privatized, eliminating the Postal Service commission, while temporarily retaining the first class monopoly. During this same time, potential competitors could prepare to enter the first class mail business on the day the monopoly ended. This period would give the newly privatized company a chance to trim down and shed its current civil service workforce and adopt a privatized workforce structure. At the end of the interim period, likely two to three years, competitors could enter the business on equal footing with the USPS.
This method would preserve the USPS and avoid the unpleasant possibility of extended postal service disruptions which would likely happen if the Postal Service was cut loose without a chance to trim down. It also leaves the possibility that Fedex, UPS, DHL and other competitors could divvy up the Postal Service, buying out certain post offices or taking over certain delivery routes. Fedex could end up with Postal Air routes while UPS ended up with the individual offices. The possibilities are literally endless. My personal opinion is that given my scenario, the USPS would likely survice, but might not be present in every city and town as it is now.
I s’pose the obvious alternative to mail is email. Indeed the delivery efficiency of email is better than mail somuchso I mostly get emails from others I don’t even want.
Never gonna happen. It’s a God-given right for people in high delivery cost areas to shift their costs onto people in low delivery cost areas.
Here is an archived copy of J.H. Huebert’s op-ed in the Baltimore Sun.
http://www.webcitation.org/5ePpCyV8v
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