6 ms·

Are there some actual studies stating that privatized mail office would be cheaper/more efficient/better service? Or is this just attempt at money grab?

cenal 6y ago
How can it not be less expensive? The private companies don’t have to offer/fund the insane pension benefits that public sector employees get. The public sector pension scandal is insane.
- wwright 6y ago
  Not giving employees benefits does not necessarily lead to a better service
  - orev 6y ago
    The USPS is uniquely shackled by a ridiculous requirement to prefund 75 years worth of pension and medical benefits, and is also barred from raising rates the help pay for it. There is no way any organization can operate that way.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      You are correct the problem is that they are now allowed to set prices, but incorrect in that USPS is not required to prefund 75 years of pension and medical benefits. It is required to save for accrued benefits. Which is how it should be. If you purchased, today, a $2,000 annuity starting when you are 65, wouldn’t you want the insurance company to start saving for it now? https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-offices-financial-mess.html https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-off... > Although accounting rules require the postal service to calculate future liabilities, including those for projected future employees, the law only requires pre-funding of obligations to actual current and past employees.
      - Ericson2314 6y ago
        No, it's still stupid. The government creates dollars. Asking individual agencies to save money for pensions just distorts monetary and fiscal policy. When will people understand fractional reserve banking...
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        The federal government creates dollars. Ask the taxpayers in IL, NJ, CT, KY, Chicago, Detroit how their money printing presses are doing and if fractional reserve banking is coming to their rescue. And it still results in devaluation of the dollar. You don’t get to pull resources from the future for free, especially if the expected economic growth doesn’t materialize.
        Ericson2314 6y ago
        > Ask the taxpayers in IL, NJ, CT, KY, Chicago, Detroit... We're talking about federal agencies. > And it still results in devaluation of the dollar. We could probably use more inflation, to be honest.
    - cure 6y ago
      Thank Susan Collins, Republican senator of Maine, for that one. She's up for re-election this year.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Why does this thinking only apply to the post office? Obviously we could cut nominal costs of the far larger US military if we threw out its universal health care, housing, and retirement benefits. The only way this kind of thinking makes sense is if you simply don't believe that the mission if the postal service (or the army) is worth accomplishing. After you decide that, you can obviously just throw all their benefits under a bus because now you're just trying to drown the agency. You can achieve the same kinds of (short-sighted, naive) cost savings by disbanding the fire department.
- vvanders 6y ago
  UPS has a very strong union and benefits so not really following your point here.
- angst_ridden 6y ago
  Nor do the private companies provide complete nation-wide service. The charter and purposes of the USPS cover far larger ends than that of a profit-making company.
- epistasis 6y ago
  Suppose you were right, and a private service could outcompete USPS. Why haven't they already? There's many delivery services that go to residential homes now, and tons of spam mailers that would love to save a few dollars in those areas where a private service could do it more cheaply. I'd be shocked that if UPS or FedEx thought they could be more profitable than USPS they wouldn't start competing.
  - treis 6y ago
    >Suppose you were right, and a private service could outcompete USPS. Why haven't they already? They're prohibited by law from competing in regular mail delivery.
  - bboston7 6y ago
    It's illegal to compete with USPS on normal letter delivery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes
    - epistasis 6y ago
      Thank you, I did not know this! Also did not know that postal service was envisioned in the constitution. I would think that if such services were thought to be of federal powers, that many more bedrock services that are essential provide to all of society, such as internet service, would also be written in today if the founders had started in 2000.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - casefields 6y ago
    It's illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes RIP Lysander Spooner
epistasis 6y ago
I think the parsimonious explanation is that it's a political move to delegitimize voting by mail. It's hard to imagine such intentionally bad management without some sort of motivation.
- Simulacra 6y ago
  par·si·mo·ni·ous /ˌpärsəˈmōnēəs/ Learn to pronounce adjective unwilling to spend money or use resources; stingy or frugal. With respect, I don’t think that means what you think it means. We should work to remove ambiguity and threats to voting, not adding, and entrusting your ballot which is your most sacred right as an American citizen, to the Postal Service considering it’s history over the past 30 years, is far too dangerous for my taste.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    Modern usage of 'parsimony' has diverged significantly from that definition. Check out usages from the Cambridge corpus here: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/parsimony https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/parsimon... I encounter it almost exclusively in the context of statistical and machine learning. Voting by mail has proven exceptionally safe with extensive modern use, and greatly increases the safety of elections and democratic participation. All claims to the contrary are based in partisan politics and have no data to back them up. You are sorely wrong and pushing a purely political agenda.
angst_ridden 6y ago
I don't know of any study showing they are more efficient, but if they were, they would achive that efficiency by refusing to serve difficult markets. As part of their charter, USPS provides coverage to remote and rural areas that can't be easily served and that private services neglect. Also, the USPS has had potentially businesss-killing policies legislated into their finances by a hostile Congress, like requring pensions to be pre-funded seventy-five years in advance over a ten-year period. That's not to say the Post Office is as efficient as it could be. But the services it offers (e.g., bank substitute in impoverished neighborhoods for check cashing/money orders, not to mention significant employer) are vital to American small businesses and communities.
- arp242 6y ago
  In the Netherlands the postal service was privatized over 20 years ago, but they're still beholden to various special laws which says they need to service everyone, need to deliver mail within a fixed timeframe, etc. Similar rules apply to the privatized railways, telephone system, health insurance, etc. I don't really know if any of this was a good move or not – I'm too young to remember the pre-privatisation era – but overall it seems to work reasonably well; certainly not as dysfunctional as the USPS seems to be. Either way, my point is that privatisation doesn't need to lead to the USPS refusing to serve difficult markets.
tehjoker 6y ago
Given equal technology, private services can only be cheaper if they exploit their workers harder, after all they have to make a profit so the difference has to come from somewhere. They could potentially offer better service by addressing certain niches that a broader service would be less suited to address, which partially explains UPS, FedEx, DHL etc. Privatizing government services is a money grab nearly 100% of the time.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  Why does the UPS pay better than the post office if they only exist through the "exploitation" of their workforce?
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    Either they skimp on benefits, they have a better paying niche, provide fewer services, or they work fewer employees harder per unit of work. There's no real alternative holding technology constant. In any case, if they are making a profit that's just skimming cream off the value their employees produce in excess of what they are paid, so exploitation is the right term.
- evan_ 6y ago
  They can also be cheaper by doing less, e.g. no more rural service
cmurf 6y ago
Deutsche Post. The problem is that the U.S. is full of bad ideas everywhere you look and most Americans just don't care. Republicans sabotage the public institutions to make them look bad so they can say government is bad/incompentent. And when things are privately held they demand no regulations because regulations are bad/incompetent/expensive to business. At least where there are examples of successful privatization, there's strong anti-fraud and competition laws. The U.S. also used to do that, but now hate on government, insist it is inherently incompetent and cannot ever be fixed, while deifying billionaires. Aristocracy is inherently incompatible with democracy, and by default the aristocrats win. The only non-violent way to beat them is free and fair elections.
- MandieD 6y ago
  Differences between Deutsche Post and the USPS: 1) They do not collect mail at houses or even street postboxes - you have to find a letterbox to drop your stamped letters, and those are less frequent than bus stops. My nearest two are about 400-500 meters away from my house in a neighborhood dense enough for an U-Bahn stop (and neither is at said U-Bahn stop). A good prompt for a walk for my able-bodied, middle-aged household, but hellaceously inconvenient for our 80+ year old neighbors. 2) A regular national letter is 0.80 EUR (US$0.94) in a country that does not have houses or small neighborhoods that are miles from anything else. 3) There are a few full service post offices that are also Postbank offices, but most parcel acceptance happens at shops that have DHL as a sideline. My city of 130,000 has two full service post offices, and one of them is only open 9:00-12:00 and 14:00-17:00 (and of course that's the one I have to pick up parcels that won't fit into the automated lockers at...) Overall, privatized Deutsche Post is quite reliable, but its stability comes with trade-offs that the USPS is not allowed to make.

cenal 6y ago

How can it not be less expensive? The private companies don’t have to offer/fund the insane pension benefits that public sector employees get. The public sector pension scandal is insane.

wwright 6y ago
Not giving employees benefits does not necessarily lead to a better service
- orev 6y ago
  The USPS is uniquely shackled by a ridiculous requirement to prefund 75 years worth of pension and medical benefits, and is also barred from raising rates the help pay for it. There is no way any organization can operate that way.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    You are correct the problem is that they are now allowed to set prices, but incorrect in that USPS is not required to prefund 75 years of pension and medical benefits. It is required to save for accrued benefits. Which is how it should be. If you purchased, today, a $2,000 annuity starting when you are 65, wouldn’t you want the insurance company to start saving for it now? https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-offices-financial-mess.html https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-off... > Although accounting rules require the postal service to calculate future liabilities, including those for projected future employees, the law only requires pre-funding of obligations to actual current and past employees.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      No, it's still stupid. The government creates dollars. Asking individual agencies to save money for pensions just distorts monetary and fiscal policy. When will people understand fractional reserve banking...
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        The federal government creates dollars. Ask the taxpayers in IL, NJ, CT, KY, Chicago, Detroit how their money printing presses are doing and if fractional reserve banking is coming to their rescue. And it still results in devaluation of the dollar. You don’t get to pull resources from the future for free, especially if the expected economic growth doesn’t materialize.
        Ericson2314 6y ago
        > Ask the taxpayers in IL, NJ, CT, KY, Chicago, Detroit... We're talking about federal agencies. > And it still results in devaluation of the dollar. We could probably use more inflation, to be honest.
  - cure 6y ago
    Thank Susan Collins, Republican senator of Maine, for that one. She's up for re-election this year.
jeffbee 6y ago
Why does this thinking only apply to the post office? Obviously we could cut nominal costs of the far larger US military if we threw out its universal health care, housing, and retirement benefits. The only way this kind of thinking makes sense is if you simply don't believe that the mission if the postal service (or the army) is worth accomplishing. After you decide that, you can obviously just throw all their benefits under a bus because now you're just trying to drown the agency. You can achieve the same kinds of (short-sighted, naive) cost savings by disbanding the fire department.
vvanders 6y ago
UPS has a very strong union and benefits so not really following your point here.
angst_ridden 6y ago
Nor do the private companies provide complete nation-wide service. The charter and purposes of the USPS cover far larger ends than that of a profit-making company.
epistasis 6y ago
Suppose you were right, and a private service could outcompete USPS. Why haven't they already? There's many delivery services that go to residential homes now, and tons of spam mailers that would love to save a few dollars in those areas where a private service could do it more cheaply. I'd be shocked that if UPS or FedEx thought they could be more profitable than USPS they wouldn't start competing.
- treis 6y ago
  >Suppose you were right, and a private service could outcompete USPS. Why haven't they already? They're prohibited by law from competing in regular mail delivery.
- bboston7 6y ago
  It's illegal to compete with USPS on normal letter delivery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes
  - epistasis 6y ago
    Thank you, I did not know this! Also did not know that postal service was envisioned in the constitution. I would think that if such services were thought to be of federal powers, that many more bedrock services that are essential provide to all of society, such as internet service, would also be written in today if the founders had started in 2000.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- casefields 6y ago
  It's illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes RIP Lysander Spooner

epistasis 6y ago

I think the parsimonious explanation is that it's a political move to delegitimize voting by mail. It's hard to imagine such intentionally bad management without some sort of motivation.

Simulacra 6y ago
par·si·mo·ni·ous /ˌpärsəˈmōnēəs/ Learn to pronounce adjective unwilling to spend money or use resources; stingy or frugal. With respect, I don’t think that means what you think it means. We should work to remove ambiguity and threats to voting, not adding, and entrusting your ballot which is your most sacred right as an American citizen, to the Postal Service considering it’s history over the past 30 years, is far too dangerous for my taste.
- epistasis 6y ago
  Modern usage of 'parsimony' has diverged significantly from that definition. Check out usages from the Cambridge corpus here: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/parsimony https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/parsimon... I encounter it almost exclusively in the context of statistical and machine learning. Voting by mail has proven exceptionally safe with extensive modern use, and greatly increases the safety of elections and democratic participation. All claims to the contrary are based in partisan politics and have no data to back them up. You are sorely wrong and pushing a purely political agenda.

angst_ridden 6y ago

I don't know of any study showing they are more efficient, but if they were, they would achive that efficiency by refusing to serve difficult markets. As part of their charter, USPS provides coverage to remote and rural areas that can't be easily served and that private services neglect. Also, the USPS has had potentially businesss-killing policies legislated into their finances by a hostile Congress, like requring pensions to be pre-funded seventy-five years in advance over a ten-year period. That's not to say the Post Office is as efficient as it could be. But the services it offers (e.g., bank substitute in impoverished neighborhoods for check cashing/money orders, not to mention significant employer) are vital to American small businesses and communities.

arp242 6y ago
In the Netherlands the postal service was privatized over 20 years ago, but they're still beholden to various special laws which says they need to service everyone, need to deliver mail within a fixed timeframe, etc. Similar rules apply to the privatized railways, telephone system, health insurance, etc. I don't really know if any of this was a good move or not – I'm too young to remember the pre-privatisation era – but overall it seems to work reasonably well; certainly not as dysfunctional as the USPS seems to be. Either way, my point is that privatisation doesn't need to lead to the USPS refusing to serve difficult markets.

tehjoker 6y ago

Given equal technology, private services can only be cheaper if they exploit their workers harder, after all they have to make a profit so the difference has to come from somewhere. They could potentially offer better service by addressing certain niches that a broader service would be less suited to address, which partially explains UPS, FedEx, DHL etc. Privatizing government services is a money grab nearly 100% of the time.

missedthecue 6y ago
Why does the UPS pay better than the post office if they only exist through the "exploitation" of their workforce?
- tehjoker 6y ago
  Either they skimp on benefits, they have a better paying niche, provide fewer services, or they work fewer employees harder per unit of work. There's no real alternative holding technology constant. In any case, if they are making a profit that's just skimming cream off the value their employees produce in excess of what they are paid, so exploitation is the right term.
evan_ 6y ago
They can also be cheaper by doing less, e.g. no more rural service

cmurf 6y ago

Deutsche Post. The problem is that the U.S. is full of bad ideas everywhere you look and most Americans just don't care. Republicans sabotage the public institutions to make them look bad so they can say government is bad/incompentent. And when things are privately held they demand no regulations because regulations are bad/incompetent/expensive to business. At least where there are examples of successful privatization, there's strong anti-fraud and competition laws. The U.S. also used to do that, but now hate on government, insist it is inherently incompetent and cannot ever be fixed, while deifying billionaires. Aristocracy is inherently incompatible with democracy, and by default the aristocrats win. The only non-violent way to beat them is free and fair elections.

MandieD 6y ago
Differences between Deutsche Post and the USPS: 1) They do not collect mail at houses or even street postboxes - you have to find a letterbox to drop your stamped letters, and those are less frequent than bus stops. My nearest two are about 400-500 meters away from my house in a neighborhood dense enough for an U-Bahn stop (and neither is at said U-Bahn stop). A good prompt for a walk for my able-bodied, middle-aged household, but hellaceously inconvenient for our 80+ year old neighbors. 2) A regular national letter is 0.80 EUR (US$0.94) in a country that does not have houses or small neighborhoods that are miles from anything else. 3) There are a few full service post offices that are also Postbank offices, but most parcel acceptance happens at shops that have DHL as a sideline. My city of 130,000 has two full service post offices, and one of them is only open 9:00-12:00 and 14:00-17:00 (and of course that's the one I have to pick up parcels that won't fit into the automated lockers at...) Overall, privatized Deutsche Post is quite reliable, but its stability comes with trade-offs that the USPS is not allowed to make.