4 ms·

Why should the USPS be subsidized?

• jacobush 10y ago
  A country should IMHO guarantee its residents access to mail. And nowadays, internet and phone lines.
  • witty_username 10y ago
    Why not subsidize any form of mail, including those through private companies? But wouldn't it be more equitable (people will send different amounts of mail) and more utilitarian to just directly transfer the cost of the subsidy to everybody below an income or wealth threshold? Instead of the government saying "you can only spend this on mail", let people decide whether they want to get access to mail, or buy other things. The problem here is that you're taking for granted that people would want to spend that money on mail rather than other things.
    • dilemma 10y ago
      >But wouldn't it be more equitable (people will send different amounts of mail) and more utilitarian to just directly transfer the cost of the subsidy to everybody below an income or wealth threshold? No.
      • witty_username 10y ago
        Why?
• ghaff 10y ago
  The theory is that (as, at one time, with rural electrification and universal telephone service), there is societal value to having more or less universal mail delivery. That said, as the importance of physical mail as a communications mechanism declines, it becomes harder to argue that the USPS shouldn't need to cover its costs.
  • witty_username 10y ago
    What is the societal value? Only the two people who send and receive benefit.
    • jhbadger 10y ago
      Not true. Society as whole benefits from greater communication and spread of ideas. We aren't just talking letters to Grandma but magazines and journals. Yes, you can argue that paper mail is now only one of several methods of long-distance communication (and one which isn't preferred by many), but is still the one with the least capability of censorship (yes, it can be done, as Communist and Fascist dictorships did, but it requires massive manual effort).
      • witty_username 10y ago
        If I discuss ideas between me and another person society does not benefit; only the two benefit. If I subscribe to a magazine and journal, only I benefit. So, why should the people who don't use mail pay for the people who do use mail? > but is still the one with the least capability of censorship (yes, it can be done, as Communist and Fascist dictorships did, but it requires massive manual effort). Why do you think it has the least capability of censorship, especially versus the internet?
        • jhbadger 10y ago
          The development of science and technology was only possible with scientists and engineers communicating their results via mailed journals, for starters. Everybody benefited from that, not just the scientists and engineers themselves. As for censorship, Internet censorship (as in the "Great Firewall of China") is rather easy to automate (and is getting harder to avoid). Paper censorship (such as in East Germany) required thousands of workers to open and read mail physically in order to check if anything subversive was being discussed. Maybe with modern OCR it could be automated a bit more, but still not as easy as just blocking a website.