RatesRise, Lines Lengthen at the ol' PO

May 14, 2006 10:12 AM (Archive)

I don’t mean to pick on the US Postal Service, but I must admit to a strong (but not yet clinical) obsession with monopolies - especially those that deliver mail. Consequently, the planet’s largest governmental monopoly draws my attention like cow patties attract flies.

Maybe its existence is necessary just to provide a real-world experiment in monopolistic inefficiency. What could provide a better lesson in economics than a spotlight on this governmental operation that, despite inflation, deflation, stagnation, starvation and lengthy oration, continues to raise prices? This time the increase is not totally due to the greed of the postal authorities, but to a 2003 law that mandates a 3.1 billion dollar escrow account, or sinking fund, for the postal service. Never mind that the USPS boomed in ‘05, raking in 1.4 billion in net income. Nobody in the USPS, Congress, Executive Branch or Harvard Business School has ever explained to us stamp lickers why a governmental agency like the post office needs a sinking fund. The U.S. Treasury with a debt of megatrillions doesn’t have one - so why the post office? Anyhow, last January the price of a first class stamp jumped to 39 cents. Postcards went up a penny, too.

What can we do about the postal budget except pray that the Postmaster General spends our money for postal delivery trucks instead of Dom Perignon at the annual party celebrating the traditional rate hike!

There’s not another post office next door or down the street, you know. And if you think you’ve spotted a marketing niche - like Henry Ford saw horseless carriages, like Bill Gates found Windows, like Hugh Heffner latched onto T&A - forget it! It’s illegal. You cannot compete - first class letterwise that is - with the U. S. Postal Service. They’ll mail you 3rd class to a federal pen with no return address in a poorly wrapped cardboard box, which they’ll drop from trains, planes, and trucks every chance they get.

The U. S. government is the only monopoly that has a monopoly on the prosecution of monopolies. If Microsoft is a “coercive competitor�, as tagged by the Justice Department, the Post Office is a robber baron.

Ah, if only they had a competitor for delivery of first class mail, their stamp-sized brains would be working on techniques to attract customers. How about this: I want to mail a letter, but I have no stamps. Hey, why not let the mail person, who visits your mailbox daily, sell stamps? Or let these blue suited messengers weigh and accept packages, thereby saving me - the consumer - the time and expense of a trip to the post office. That’s not a difficult service to imagine, is it? There’s probably forty more conveniences you could conceive of, if you spent a couple of hours working on the problem. But why bother? There’s not another game in town.

When you enter my Post Office, you know you have entered a clockless zone. Like gambling casinos, opium dens, and supermarkets, the Postal Service shuns the sunlit world outside. Windows are absent. Heaven forbid you should see the sun journey from horizon to horizon as you wait in line. The minute you catch that interminable line facing the counter, you realize that time is mortally wounded. It moves like a green slug on your patio pavement.

But I must admit, I’ve learned patience and the joys of fellowship at our neighborhood post office. There’s nothing you can do except stand there and chat about the ever increasing price of stamps or if you’re in a historical mood, the theme of the new commemoratives.

Besides the commemorative theme, there’s a lot of complaining about the service; and angry muttering about where the post office can put their profit. Nobody’s suggesting Fort Knox.

I advise my endearing, but maritally unattached daughter to drop the internet and pick up her pen. Write some letters. Go to the neighborhood Post Office. Meet your beau in line, not on-line, where there is plenty of time to explore mutual interests and backgrounds. More lasting friendships have been made in USPS lobbies than in neighborhood bars. It’s cheaper, too. But bring a package so you won’t look like an impostor.

My daughter would surely have hooked up yesterday morning. Only one of the counters was manned. So, I chat a while with the guy next to me, lose a few bucks playing gin, and absentmindedly look around. Then I see it!! A sign of signs. Right there on the wall facing me. “Armed robbery of a postal employee or facility carries a prison sentence of up to 25 years upon conviction.� Intriguing. A proclamation that could only come from the governmental mouth.

My first thought is why suggest to these irritable customers, loaded with parcels, and highly susceptible to violent solutions, that armed robbery is a possibility. But if some impatient, soul should open up with a blazing AK47 and relieve me of all my problems including the appointment I’m missing - well I guess he goes free, since I’m not a facility or a postal employee.

My feet nailed to the floor, I’m pondering that bureaucratic sign. You get 25 years “if convicted� it says. Wonder what the penalty is if NOT convicted. Maybe it’s is a mere 5 years from a merciful judge at a penitentiary with ping pong, volley ball, DVDs, or at a minimum, a weight room. (Why do penal reformers insist on muscular recidivists?)

Then too, I reflect on the injustice of this discriminating sign. It infers more draconian punishment to a shooter who rubs out a blue suit instead of me. If you want to commit armed robbery, it says - rob a customer, not us. You’ll probably be sentenced to 13 hours of community service and maybe a couple weeks of the Anger Management classes, where they serve Colombian coffee and those really dark chocolate doughnuts!

But here’s the idea. Why not tear down that depressing sign that reminds unemployed felons of armed robbery as a profitable occupation? Why not replace it with a banner stretched over the three counters? Two words. (Red letters on a white background.) “TIPS ACCEPTED�. A dose of pure, hundred proof capitalism.

Please, don’t laugh. It will reveal your ignorance of the human condition. Those two words will immediately relieve the molasses syndrome. They will turn that sluggish line into a conga line. And you won’t feel quite so bad about that 5.4% increase. At least you don’t have to wait in line to give them your money.