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I guess what confuses me is that, even assuming good intentions by the new Postmaster General, why and why now? I believe the main stated reason has been that

I guess what confuses me is that, even assuming good intentions by the new Postmaster General, why and why now? I believe the main stated reason has been that the USPS loses money and they want to make it break even or profitable. Assuming that's the reason (and not election interference), why should such an infrastructure be breakeven or profitable? And why now, during a pandemic? There are plenty of government services that aren't even close to breakeven. I imagine USPS actually might be one of the most self-sustaining federal departments. Why should this particular one be profitable? Why should this one be privatized, out of all of them? The USPS has been one of the most stable, reliable, and predictable forces in my life. Their informal creed speaks volumes to me: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." I'm open to hearing arguments for why the USPS should be profitable (or privatized) and why now is a good time. I'm finding a very hard time imagining why.

gok 6y ago
Primary argument is that most of the entire rest of the world has moved to profitable, privatized mail carrying.
- xenospn 6y ago
  Got any sources for that claim? The transition in Israel, for example, resulted in what can only be described as a national joke.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    Germany. They’ve done so well after privatization, they now operate globally and are the world’s largest courier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Post
    - rlkf 6y ago
      DHL operates in my home country, Norway, where they are the bottom of the barrel. If I can, I avoid shopping online at places that uses DHL; they're that bad.
- vkou 6y ago
  The only part of the world's mail services that moved to profitable and privatized mail, is mail service for high-margin packages to cities and large towns. The day that UPS will be obligated to deliver a first-class letter from East Bufu, Oklohoma (population 68 people, and 837 cows), to Seward, Alaska (population 2,736 people and 14 grizzly bears), for 55 cents, is the day that their privatized business model will stop being profitable.
  - nickff 6y ago
    There are two counter-arguments to that: 1) UPS is not allowed to deliver first class mail to a letterbox, or at the same cost as USPS. 2) Why should short-distance mail subsidize long-distance mail?
    - triceratops 6y ago
      > UPS is not allowed to deliver first class mail to a letterbox, So? They regularly leave packages on your porch, they'd do the same for letters. > or at the same cost as USPS. Which is insanely low and money-losing in many cases. And first-class mail is a declining business. Do they even want that?
      - nickff 6y ago
        I was responding to a comment that said: "The day that UPS will be obligated to deliver a first-class letter... for 55 cents". UPS is legally required to charge at least six times more, and cannot use letterboxes.[1] The use of letterboxes is a cost-savings; if it were not a competitive advantage, the USPS wouldn't need a law protecting it. Whether or not UPS wants the business is beside the point, and they currently cannot have it. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/601 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/601
        triceratops 6y ago
        The letterbox might have been a competitive advantage when people weren't accustomed to having stuff delivered to their porch. Not anymore. Ditto for a first-class mail monopoly - advantageous when people actually wrote letters, practically useless today.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  I find it hard to believe that most of the rest of the world has, but it seems some countries have. Many countries don't really have functioning mail delivery, whether public or private. The CATO Institute says "The U.S. ranks near the bottom of the Consumer Postal Council’s 26‐ country 'Index of Postal Freedom.'"[1], but they only looked at 26 countries, and even then, I'm not sure what that index looks at. I found a report from 2012 but it's long and I'm not gonna dig into it now. Do you have examples of which countries have and what led to the change? [1]: https://www.cato.org/publications/tax-budget-bulletin/privatizing-us-postal-service https://www.cato.org/publications/tax-budget-bulletin/privat...
- jgacook 6y ago
  The USPS would be profitable if it didn't have to pre-fund its pension obligations by an 75 years - an obligation no other government regulated entity must abide by. https://www.nonprofitmailers.org/four-usps-myths/ https://www.nonprofitmailers.org/four-usps-myths/
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    The prepayment period ended in 2016. It is not to blame for current losses.
- triceratops 6y ago
  The USPS doesn't depend on any government funding. Nearly all of its revenue comes from postage. Why is it so important for it to be private if it's not costing taxpayer money?
  - jimkleiber 6y ago
    Hmm, this may be a dumb question, but when the USPS loses money, where does that money come from? I assumed it was just topped up by the government but maybe not.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      It seems like they've been getting by so far partly by skipping payments to the pension and health funds.[1] I don't know what they will do once that's not possible. Seek external funding? Sell some post office land? No idea what their options are or what they're allowed to do. 1. https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/us_postal_service_financial_viability/issue_summary https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/us_postal_service_financial_v...
      - jimkleiber 6y ago
        Wow, I guess it surprises me that it seems as if the government isn't paying anything to the USPS, even backstopping it when it has losses. If that's true and it's not costing the federal government any money, I'm struggling more to see the reason to privatize. PS...thank you for finding that link!
        munk-a 6y ago
        USPS actually ends up being a net-earner for the US Government. It's actually one of the few branches that has no allocated budget and has enough of an internal surplus that it's actually been able to afford to innovate. However, that shifted in 2006 when it was burdened with pre-paying for retiree health benefits. If anything - we need some deregulation around the post office to allow it to remain profitable, it's currently shackled by the government in what actions it can take and the 10billion in funding offered by the executive branch comes with some really heavy strings attached that'd actually further restrict what it can do to retain fiscal independence. I think it's also important to take stock in just how well USPS works - if you compare it to CanadaPost the differences are astonishing, USPS has managed to keep the unions happy while also keeping costs relatively low - I'm sure a lot of passionate people poured their lives into threading the needle on how to keep everything running smoothly, it's quite the success case.
nickff 6y ago
The reason to make changes now would be so that they're set in stone before the next administration comes into power and tries to change everything back. This logic applies to every agency, and is one of the reasons NASA's Ares system got cancelled so quickly by the Obama administration (before they had an alternative vision for space exploration). The reason to privatize this one is because it has direct competitors, and does not accomplish anything which requires the powers of the federal government. Other departments such as the Department of Energy are not interchangeable with a private competitor, and perform functions which require direct federal involvement (guarding nuclear weapons and working with the armed services). Some people (including myself) believe the federal government should be as small as possible, and the USPS is simply one of the easiest parts to spin-off/get rid of.
- jandrese 6y ago
  What is the direct competitor for bulk letter delivery? Historically that's not profitable so no private company does it and instead they all focus on the profitable package business, or edge case super-fast high cost delivery.
  - nickff 6y ago
    Well, the law currently requires that any competitor charge many times (7x if I recall correctly) more than the USPS for mail, and they are not permitted to use letter-boxes, so it is rather unsurprising that UPS and FedEx charge more for first class mail.
    - jgacook 6y ago
      I can find no evidence that private competitors must legally charge a higher rate than USPS. Do you have a source for that? My understanding was that USPS had to compete directly with private mail carriers.
      - nickff 6y ago
        From Wikipedia: "Regarding the monopoly on delivery of letters, the report notes that the monopoly is not complete, as there is an exception for letters where either the amount paid for private carriage of the letter equals at least six times the current rate for the first ounce of a single-piece First-Class Mail letter (also known as the "base rate" or "base tariff") or the letter weighs at least 12.5 ounces." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#2008_report_on_universal_postal_service_and_the_postal_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#2... edit: Here is the law https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/601 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/601
manquer 6y ago
Giving the absolute benefit of doubt to the administration , the only valid reason for why now is that term of the current administration is ending, if they don’t do it now , they may never get a chance to do it at all.
toomuchtodo 6y ago
> why and why now? If voting by mail enfranchises those who can't get to the polls easily on election day, does it not make sense (to those who are not favorable to that electorate) to break down the system that enables that? Edit: Assuming positive intent (which should be done!) only works for so long.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  I mean, that's my default assumption: that this is a strategy to suppress votes. But I want to pull back and try not to assume ill intent, because I've seen how it just squashes conversation and dialogue. I want to learn what else is going on, if there is something else there. edit: removed "don't"
  - jimkleiber 6y ago
    Maybe I'm saying I try to not 100% assume ill intent, and that while I feel skeptical and suspicious of motives, I try to maintain an openness so that conversation doesn't devolve into two people thinking the other doesn't care about them. I'm tired of seeing so much of that in society.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      I'm happy to continue this conversation over email, but there is no value in us having the conversation here due to how charged the subject is.
      - jimkleiber 6y ago
        Yeah, I see a lot of comments going gray (grey?). Sounds good to me—how shall we exchange that?
- specialist 6y ago
  Many jurisdictions require postal ballots to be received by election day. Delaying mail delivery absolutely will disenfranchise many voters.
dsr_ 6y ago
The theme of the last four years of Federal government has been dismantling working-but-flawed systems in favor of private enterprise. You cannot assume "good intentions" on the part of a Postmaster General who is part of this government and is personally invested in private competitors to the USPS. The USPS also labors under the Republican-inflicted 2006 decree to prefund their pension obligations: https://www.gao.gov/assets/660/650511.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/660/650511.pdf
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
aslfksdfl 6y ago
Imagine if the military had to be profitable?
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  Depending on how you measure externalities, it probably is
  - chc 6y ago
    They're not measuring externalities with the Postal Service.
    - manquer 6y ago
      Also giving subsidy to ups and fedex for all the unprofitable rural / low density routes to keep it available in rural areas will probably end costing more
      - Rebelgecko 6y ago
        I dunno. There are some areas (speaking from experience unfortunately) where UPS and Fedex deliver but USPS doesn't.
        manquer 6y ago
        Perhaps , I am talking about places like this https://facts.usps.com/8-mile-mule-train-delivery/ https://facts.usps.com/8-mile-mule-train-delivery/. Or the remote islands I don’t see how Ups or Fedex will service it at the cost USPS currently does
- munk-a 6y ago
  Imagine if they had to pre pay pensions and the VA - they'd be insanely underwater.
- roberto 6y ago
  Indirectly it is.
munk-a 6y ago
The GOP is clearly intent on tearing down USPS but I've never actually understood the rationale for it - USPS has traditionally been self-funded and (without unreasonable financial burdens involving pre-paying pensions) would continue to be a revenue source rather than sink today. Mail is also a bit of an assumed service in the US so I don't know why there is a lack of understanding that privatization would lead to a lack in service quality in rural areas (where the GOP shows the strongest). I do understand it's part of the whole "government small enough you can drown it in a bathtub" philosophy but it seems like a really silly service to go after. It provides clear societal benefits - has an insanely high quality of service (just look at CanadaPost and offerings in Europe) extremely low cost for use and is integral to a lot of social services (taxes, voting, census etc...) there are much bigger government boogie men to go after than USPS.
- pradn 6y ago
  The existence of a well-run government agency goes against free-marketeer beliefs that the government can never do anything right. The USPS flies in the face of that. Unionized government employees also typically lean Democratic, too.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    That actually seems pretty credible - get rid of the big counter-example to your argument.
  - throwaway5752 6y ago
    You have to look at the breakup of the Soviet state to modern Russia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarch) and see the massive, massive profit opportunities with USPS privatization. DeJoy made his fortune from selling a logistic company to XPO, where he was an executive for a while post-acquistion, in addition to his political beliefs and alliances.
- creaghpatr 6y ago
  Not sure if this the actual rationale, but a potential explanation: https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/19/politics/osc-usps-hillary-clinton-hatch-act/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/19/politics/osc-usps-hillary-cli... A government investigation concluded that the United States Postal Service "improperly coordinated" with a postal workers union that supported Hillary Clinton's campaign.
novok 6y ago
From what I remember in this video, it's actually been a independent company spinoff since the 1970s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLyU1WCQQ8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLyU1WCQQ8A And stopped using tax dollars in the mid 80s
dawnerd 6y ago
Yeah I don't get it. They're complaining about a 2.2bn dollar loss this year, when last year the loss was even greater - and that's with the apparently reduction in mailings this quarter. At the same time the Gov will spend billions on a fighter jet that will likely never see combat, billions on other countless military waste, who knows how much in carting the president around to golf... I don't think this is entirely about election fraud, it just happens to be an easy target for the people that have already been trying to gut the USPS. I see it in the same vein as them trying to gut NASA. They both have such small budgets in the grand scheme that it just makes absolutely no sense.
- manquer 6y ago
  It is never about the actual money spent . It is about how much visibility that spend is having in the public/political mind space . This is why doesn’t make sense to compare nasa and military budgets . Decision makers do not see all money as equal. Even if there was no hidden agenda,cutting some spends are far easier than others even if it made logical sense , the lobbying power of the military budgets has is lot more than that of say NASA or USPS. It is not just government it is true for corporates and non profits as well , Mozilla cuts servo over say pocket for similar reasons ,
  - emodendroket 6y ago
    "Easier" in what sense though, it's not as though the post office is unpopular (arguably a goal of these changes is to change that to build support for privatization but anyways)
rectang 6y ago
Talking about the recent postal service changes while avoiding the political implications is intellectually dishonest, even if the intentions are good. Some topics simply cannot be discussed while adhering to the Hacker News guidelines.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  Oh, my intent wasn't to avoid political implications (but maybe that wasn't meant for me, at some point in HN comments I get lost), but rather to try to dig deeper into them. In looking at the HN guidelines, I think the closest point related to this would be: >Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for. I hope HN can be a place where we discuss political and ideological perspectives without engaging in battle, and leveraging curiosity to bring us closer together. I think the challenge is that most of the examples of political conversation we see is more political debate and less political dialogue—competition vs cooperation. So far, I've been learning in this comments section and am grateful for those who are contributing :-)
  - rectang 6y ago
    The problem lies here: > "Assuming that's the reason (and not election interference), Not being allowed to explore the possibility of bad faith omits a crucial aspect of the topic. The result is a Potemkin Village imitation of intellectual exchange. There are important reasons to "assume good faith" per the HN Guidelines (and to forbid accusations of bad faith), but that means certain topics just cannot be reasonably examined.
    - jimkleiber 6y ago
      Admittedly, I don't have a deep grasp of what Potemkin Villages are, so my comments below may reinforce what you said, I'm not sure. I'm not saying that conversation about election interference shouldn't happen, I guess I'm trying to test the strength and legitimacy of one stated claim, that of privatization, before maybe moving to others. I also think that even when discussing voter suppression, gutting the institution from the inside as that's easier than legislating it out, or even trying to capitalize on the sale of public assets, one can assume that people want those behaviors not of bad faith, but because they believe they will help the most people, or at least their people.
maxlybbert 6y ago
> I guess what confuses me is that, even assuming good intentions by the new Postmaster General, why and why now? Because Congress hasn’t approved postage increases, so the post office doesn’t have the money it would take to provide the service Congress wants it to. At the same time, Congress hasn’t approved closing offices, so the post office can’t scale back to provide the service it can actually afford. > I believe the main stated reason has been that the USPS loses money and they want to make it break even or profitable. Assuming that's the reason (and not election interference), why should such an infrastructure be breakeven or profitable? It’s not the postmaster general’s decision. Congress set up the requirement that the post office be self funded when it limited how much it will subsidize the post office. I can imagine a world where the post office is self funded, and I can imagine a world where the post office is heavily subsidized. I don’t think the world we live in — where the post office has to be self funded while literally requiring an act of Congress to raise prices or close offices — can actually work.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  Fair points, I'm operating mostly blind on this so I'm grateful for you and others who are bringing more references to laws and the functions of it. The question still gets me is "why now?" Why privatize or change the USPS now, when it could very well jeopardize, or at the minimum, give people the impression that it will jeopardize the election? In other words, is the <$10B in annual loss more important than the integrity of the election?
  - maxlybbert 6y ago
    > Why privatize or change the USPS now, when it could very well jeopardize, or at the minimum, give people the impression that it will jeopardize the election? The post office turned into the USPS (and the postmaster general removed from the line of presidential succession) in 1970 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Reorganization_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Reorganization_Act ). Ever since that time, people have been arguing whether it should be privatized or return to what it was before 1970. The postmaster general just took office in June. > In other words, is the <$10B in annual loss more important than the integrity of the election? That’s a question for Congress. If the post office’s bank account is empty, I don’t believe it can get a loan, sell bonds, or borrow money in any other way. It’s not truly independent. Right now, Congress isn’t ready to allow a postage increase, allow offices to close, or to give the $10B or so to the post office to continue operating as usual. I suspect that could change pretty quickly if voters complain loud enough.
djaque 6y ago
> why and why now Playing the devils advocate, it could be a bone to throw to the small government crowd and the "why now" is because it's the middle of an election and they want to drum up support for their campaign. However, I typically receive five or six packages per week. Two weeks ago I suddenly started having delays and some packages are taking a week longer to show up than I am used to. It was like a switch being flipped. Nothing like this happened even at the height of the lockdown. I also sent in a ballot application which is now a week late compared to when I sent it in last year. That's really concerning with how many people will be voting by mail. I'm really scared for what is going to happen in November. Even if he loses by huge margins, Trump has set himself up to scream "rigged election" and have at least part of his base believe him. I'm not sure I can do anything other than wait around and worry, but if he loses there really will be a chunk of Americans that have convinced themselves that the new president wasn't elected democratically. That's really messed up and I don't think we've had an administration that has so undermined trust in our democratic process like that. Even when they were on the losing side, all significant politicians in my recent memory have at least shown respect for the process.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  > It was like a switch being flipped. Nothing like this happened even at the height of the lockdown. I also sent in a ballot application which is now a week late compared to when I sent it in last year. Wow. Imagine the service not hiccuping much at all during the initial lockdown and confusion around the country at the start of the pandemic and now all of a sudden losing service. I guess I'm trying to get at that bone and small gov't crowd and ask if this is really the fight to fight right now, if decreasing the size of the USPS is the most urgent fight that we should have as Americans. Because I do believe there are many people who want it to be private, but I want people who are supporting it to say why they believe it's urgent that this specific thing happens now, amidst all other challenges we currently face.
defertoreptar 6y ago
The "why" and "why now" is that the USPS's debt has been growing and isn't sustainable in the long run. Unless structural changes are made, tax payers will ultimately be left paying the bills. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/15/postal-service-bailout-congress/?outputType=amp https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/15/postal-se...

gok 6y ago

Primary argument is that most of the entire rest of the world has moved to profitable, privatized mail carrying.

xenospn 6y ago
Got any sources for that claim? The transition in Israel, for example, resulted in what can only be described as a national joke.
- nostromo 6y ago
  Germany. They’ve done so well after privatization, they now operate globally and are the world’s largest courier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Post
  - rlkf 6y ago
    DHL operates in my home country, Norway, where they are the bottom of the barrel. If I can, I avoid shopping online at places that uses DHL; they're that bad.
vkou 6y ago
The only part of the world's mail services that moved to profitable and privatized mail, is mail service for high-margin packages to cities and large towns. The day that UPS will be obligated to deliver a first-class letter from East Bufu, Oklohoma (population 68 people, and 837 cows), to Seward, Alaska (population 2,736 people and 14 grizzly bears), for 55 cents, is the day that their privatized business model will stop being profitable.
- nickff 6y ago
  There are two counter-arguments to that: 1) UPS is not allowed to deliver first class mail to a letterbox, or at the same cost as USPS. 2) Why should short-distance mail subsidize long-distance mail?
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > UPS is not allowed to deliver first class mail to a letterbox, So? They regularly leave packages on your porch, they'd do the same for letters. > or at the same cost as USPS. Which is insanely low and money-losing in many cases. And first-class mail is a declining business. Do they even want that?
    - nickff 6y ago
      I was responding to a comment that said: "The day that UPS will be obligated to deliver a first-class letter... for 55 cents". UPS is legally required to charge at least six times more, and cannot use letterboxes.[1] The use of letterboxes is a cost-savings; if it were not a competitive advantage, the USPS wouldn't need a law protecting it. Whether or not UPS wants the business is beside the point, and they currently cannot have it. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/601 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/601
      - triceratops 6y ago
        The letterbox might have been a competitive advantage when people weren't accustomed to having stuff delivered to their porch. Not anymore. Ditto for a first-class mail monopoly - advantageous when people actually wrote letters, practically useless today.
jimkleiber 6y ago
I find it hard to believe that most of the rest of the world has, but it seems some countries have. Many countries don't really have functioning mail delivery, whether public or private. The CATO Institute says "The U.S. ranks near the bottom of the Consumer Postal Council’s 26‐ country 'Index of Postal Freedom.'"[1], but they only looked at 26 countries, and even then, I'm not sure what that index looks at. I found a report from 2012 but it's long and I'm not gonna dig into it now. Do you have examples of which countries have and what led to the change? [1]: https://www.cato.org/publications/tax-budget-bulletin/privatizing-us-postal-service https://www.cato.org/publications/tax-budget-bulletin/privat...
jgacook 6y ago
The USPS would be profitable if it didn't have to pre-fund its pension obligations by an 75 years - an obligation no other government regulated entity must abide by. https://www.nonprofitmailers.org/four-usps-myths/ https://www.nonprofitmailers.org/four-usps-myths/
- missedthecue 6y ago
  The prepayment period ended in 2016. It is not to blame for current losses.
triceratops 6y ago
The USPS doesn't depend on any government funding. Nearly all of its revenue comes from postage. Why is it so important for it to be private if it's not costing taxpayer money?
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  Hmm, this may be a dumb question, but when the USPS loses money, where does that money come from? I assumed it was just topped up by the government but maybe not.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    It seems like they've been getting by so far partly by skipping payments to the pension and health funds.[1] I don't know what they will do once that's not possible. Seek external funding? Sell some post office land? No idea what their options are or what they're allowed to do. 1. https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/us_postal_service_financial_viability/issue_summary https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/us_postal_service_financial_v...
    - jimkleiber 6y ago
      Wow, I guess it surprises me that it seems as if the government isn't paying anything to the USPS, even backstopping it when it has losses. If that's true and it's not costing the federal government any money, I'm struggling more to see the reason to privatize. PS...thank you for finding that link!
      - munk-a 6y ago
        USPS actually ends up being a net-earner for the US Government. It's actually one of the few branches that has no allocated budget and has enough of an internal surplus that it's actually been able to afford to innovate. However, that shifted in 2006 when it was burdened with pre-paying for retiree health benefits. If anything - we need some deregulation around the post office to allow it to remain profitable, it's currently shackled by the government in what actions it can take and the 10billion in funding offered by the executive branch comes with some really heavy strings attached that'd actually further restrict what it can do to retain fiscal independence. I think it's also important to take stock in just how well USPS works - if you compare it to CanadaPost the differences are astonishing, USPS has managed to keep the unions happy while also keeping costs relatively low - I'm sure a lot of passionate people poured their lives into threading the needle on how to keep everything running smoothly, it's quite the success case.

nickff 6y ago

The reason to make changes now would be so that they're set in stone before the next administration comes into power and tries to change everything back. This logic applies to every agency, and is one of the reasons NASA's Ares system got cancelled so quickly by the Obama administration (before they had an alternative vision for space exploration). The reason to privatize this one is because it has direct competitors, and does not accomplish anything which requires the powers of the federal government. Other departments such as the Department of Energy are not interchangeable with a private competitor, and perform functions which require direct federal involvement (guarding nuclear weapons and working with the armed services). Some people (including myself) believe the federal government should be as small as possible, and the USPS is simply one of the easiest parts to spin-off/get rid of.

jandrese 6y ago
What is the direct competitor for bulk letter delivery? Historically that's not profitable so no private company does it and instead they all focus on the profitable package business, or edge case super-fast high cost delivery.
- nickff 6y ago
  Well, the law currently requires that any competitor charge many times (7x if I recall correctly) more than the USPS for mail, and they are not permitted to use letter-boxes, so it is rather unsurprising that UPS and FedEx charge more for first class mail.
  - jgacook 6y ago
    I can find no evidence that private competitors must legally charge a higher rate than USPS. Do you have a source for that? My understanding was that USPS had to compete directly with private mail carriers.
    - nickff 6y ago
      From Wikipedia: "Regarding the monopoly on delivery of letters, the report notes that the monopoly is not complete, as there is an exception for letters where either the amount paid for private carriage of the letter equals at least six times the current rate for the first ounce of a single-piece First-Class Mail letter (also known as the "base rate" or "base tariff") or the letter weighs at least 12.5 ounces." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#2008_report_on_universal_postal_service_and_the_postal_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#2... edit: Here is the law https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/601 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/601

manquer 6y ago

Giving the absolute benefit of doubt to the administration , the only valid reason for why now is that term of the current administration is ending, if they don’t do it now , they may never get a chance to do it at all.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

> why and why now? If voting by mail enfranchises those who can't get to the polls easily on election day, does it not make sense (to those who are not favorable to that electorate) to break down the system that enables that? Edit: Assuming positive intent (which should be done!) only works for so long.

jimkleiber 6y ago
I mean, that's my default assumption: that this is a strategy to suppress votes. But I want to pull back and try not to assume ill intent, because I've seen how it just squashes conversation and dialogue. I want to learn what else is going on, if there is something else there. edit: removed "don't"
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  Maybe I'm saying I try to not 100% assume ill intent, and that while I feel skeptical and suspicious of motives, I try to maintain an openness so that conversation doesn't devolve into two people thinking the other doesn't care about them. I'm tired of seeing so much of that in society.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    I'm happy to continue this conversation over email, but there is no value in us having the conversation here due to how charged the subject is.
    - jimkleiber 6y ago
      Yeah, I see a lot of comments going gray (grey?). Sounds good to me—how shall we exchange that?
specialist 6y ago
Many jurisdictions require postal ballots to be received by election day. Delaying mail delivery absolutely will disenfranchise many voters.

dsr_ 6y ago

The theme of the last four years of Federal government has been dismantling working-but-flawed systems in favor of private enterprise. You cannot assume "good intentions" on the part of a Postmaster General who is part of this government and is personally invested in private competitors to the USPS. The USPS also labors under the Republican-inflicted 2006 decree to prefund their pension obligations: https://www.gao.gov/assets/660/650511.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/660/650511.pdf

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

aslfksdfl 6y ago

Imagine if the military had to be profitable?

Rebelgecko 6y ago
Depending on how you measure externalities, it probably is
- chc 6y ago
  They're not measuring externalities with the Postal Service.
  - manquer 6y ago
    Also giving subsidy to ups and fedex for all the unprofitable rural / low density routes to keep it available in rural areas will probably end costing more
    - Rebelgecko 6y ago
      I dunno. There are some areas (speaking from experience unfortunately) where UPS and Fedex deliver but USPS doesn't.
      - manquer 6y ago
        Perhaps , I am talking about places like this https://facts.usps.com/8-mile-mule-train-delivery/ https://facts.usps.com/8-mile-mule-train-delivery/. Or the remote islands I don’t see how Ups or Fedex will service it at the cost USPS currently does
munk-a 6y ago
Imagine if they had to pre pay pensions and the VA - they'd be insanely underwater.
roberto 6y ago
Indirectly it is.

munk-a 6y ago

The GOP is clearly intent on tearing down USPS but I've never actually understood the rationale for it - USPS has traditionally been self-funded and (without unreasonable financial burdens involving pre-paying pensions) would continue to be a revenue source rather than sink today. Mail is also a bit of an assumed service in the US so I don't know why there is a lack of understanding that privatization would lead to a lack in service quality in rural areas (where the GOP shows the strongest). I do understand it's part of the whole "government small enough you can drown it in a bathtub" philosophy but it seems like a really silly service to go after. It provides clear societal benefits - has an insanely high quality of service (just look at CanadaPost and offerings in Europe) extremely low cost for use and is integral to a lot of social services (taxes, voting, census etc...) there are much bigger government boogie men to go after than USPS.

pradn 6y ago
The existence of a well-run government agency goes against free-marketeer beliefs that the government can never do anything right. The USPS flies in the face of that. Unionized government employees also typically lean Democratic, too.
- munk-a 6y ago
  That actually seems pretty credible - get rid of the big counter-example to your argument.
- throwaway5752 6y ago
  You have to look at the breakup of the Soviet state to modern Russia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarch) and see the massive, massive profit opportunities with USPS privatization. DeJoy made his fortune from selling a logistic company to XPO, where he was an executive for a while post-acquistion, in addition to his political beliefs and alliances.
creaghpatr 6y ago
Not sure if this the actual rationale, but a potential explanation: https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/19/politics/osc-usps-hillary-clinton-hatch-act/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/19/politics/osc-usps-hillary-cli... A government investigation concluded that the United States Postal Service "improperly coordinated" with a postal workers union that supported Hillary Clinton's campaign.

novok 6y ago

From what I remember in this video, it's actually been a independent company spinoff since the 1970s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLyU1WCQQ8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLyU1WCQQ8A And stopped using tax dollars in the mid 80s

dawnerd 6y ago

Yeah I don't get it. They're complaining about a 2.2bn dollar loss this year, when last year the loss was even greater - and that's with the apparently reduction in mailings this quarter. At the same time the Gov will spend billions on a fighter jet that will likely never see combat, billions on other countless military waste, who knows how much in carting the president around to golf... I don't think this is entirely about election fraud, it just happens to be an easy target for the people that have already been trying to gut the USPS. I see it in the same vein as them trying to gut NASA. They both have such small budgets in the grand scheme that it just makes absolutely no sense.

manquer 6y ago
It is never about the actual money spent . It is about how much visibility that spend is having in the public/political mind space . This is why doesn’t make sense to compare nasa and military budgets . Decision makers do not see all money as equal. Even if there was no hidden agenda,cutting some spends are far easier than others even if it made logical sense , the lobbying power of the military budgets has is lot more than that of say NASA or USPS. It is not just government it is true for corporates and non profits as well , Mozilla cuts servo over say pocket for similar reasons ,
- emodendroket 6y ago
  "Easier" in what sense though, it's not as though the post office is unpopular (arguably a goal of these changes is to change that to build support for privatization but anyways)

rectang 6y ago

Talking about the recent postal service changes while avoiding the political implications is intellectually dishonest, even if the intentions are good. Some topics simply cannot be discussed while adhering to the Hacker News guidelines.

jimkleiber 6y ago
Oh, my intent wasn't to avoid political implications (but maybe that wasn't meant for me, at some point in HN comments I get lost), but rather to try to dig deeper into them. In looking at the HN guidelines, I think the closest point related to this would be: >Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for. I hope HN can be a place where we discuss political and ideological perspectives without engaging in battle, and leveraging curiosity to bring us closer together. I think the challenge is that most of the examples of political conversation we see is more political debate and less political dialogue—competition vs cooperation. So far, I've been learning in this comments section and am grateful for those who are contributing :-)
- rectang 6y ago
  The problem lies here: > "Assuming that's the reason (and not election interference), Not being allowed to explore the possibility of bad faith omits a crucial aspect of the topic. The result is a Potemkin Village imitation of intellectual exchange. There are important reasons to "assume good faith" per the HN Guidelines (and to forbid accusations of bad faith), but that means certain topics just cannot be reasonably examined.
  - jimkleiber 6y ago
    Admittedly, I don't have a deep grasp of what Potemkin Villages are, so my comments below may reinforce what you said, I'm not sure. I'm not saying that conversation about election interference shouldn't happen, I guess I'm trying to test the strength and legitimacy of one stated claim, that of privatization, before maybe moving to others. I also think that even when discussing voter suppression, gutting the institution from the inside as that's easier than legislating it out, or even trying to capitalize on the sale of public assets, one can assume that people want those behaviors not of bad faith, but because they believe they will help the most people, or at least their people.

maxlybbert 6y ago

> I guess what confuses me is that, even assuming good intentions by the new Postmaster General, why and why now? Because Congress hasn’t approved postage increases, so the post office doesn’t have the money it would take to provide the service Congress wants it to. At the same time, Congress hasn’t approved closing offices, so the post office can’t scale back to provide the service it can actually afford. > I believe the main stated reason has been that the USPS loses money and they want to make it break even or profitable. Assuming that's the reason (and not election interference), why should such an infrastructure be breakeven or profitable? It’s not the postmaster general’s decision. Congress set up the requirement that the post office be self funded when it limited how much it will subsidize the post office. I can imagine a world where the post office is self funded, and I can imagine a world where the post office is heavily subsidized. I don’t think the world we live in — where the post office has to be self funded while literally requiring an act of Congress to raise prices or close offices — can actually work.

jimkleiber 6y ago
Fair points, I'm operating mostly blind on this so I'm grateful for you and others who are bringing more references to laws and the functions of it. The question still gets me is "why now?" Why privatize or change the USPS now, when it could very well jeopardize, or at the minimum, give people the impression that it will jeopardize the election? In other words, is the <$10B in annual loss more important than the integrity of the election?
- maxlybbert 6y ago
  > Why privatize or change the USPS now, when it could very well jeopardize, or at the minimum, give people the impression that it will jeopardize the election? The post office turned into the USPS (and the postmaster general removed from the line of presidential succession) in 1970 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Reorganization_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Reorganization_Act ). Ever since that time, people have been arguing whether it should be privatized or return to what it was before 1970. The postmaster general just took office in June. > In other words, is the <$10B in annual loss more important than the integrity of the election? That’s a question for Congress. If the post office’s bank account is empty, I don’t believe it can get a loan, sell bonds, or borrow money in any other way. It’s not truly independent. Right now, Congress isn’t ready to allow a postage increase, allow offices to close, or to give the $10B or so to the post office to continue operating as usual. I suspect that could change pretty quickly if voters complain loud enough.

djaque 6y ago

> why and why now Playing the devils advocate, it could be a bone to throw to the small government crowd and the "why now" is because it's the middle of an election and they want to drum up support for their campaign. However, I typically receive five or six packages per week. Two weeks ago I suddenly started having delays and some packages are taking a week longer to show up than I am used to. It was like a switch being flipped. Nothing like this happened even at the height of the lockdown. I also sent in a ballot application which is now a week late compared to when I sent it in last year. That's really concerning with how many people will be voting by mail. I'm really scared for what is going to happen in November. Even if he loses by huge margins, Trump has set himself up to scream "rigged election" and have at least part of his base believe him. I'm not sure I can do anything other than wait around and worry, but if he loses there really will be a chunk of Americans that have convinced themselves that the new president wasn't elected democratically. That's really messed up and I don't think we've had an administration that has so undermined trust in our democratic process like that. Even when they were on the losing side, all significant politicians in my recent memory have at least shown respect for the process.

jimkleiber 6y ago
> It was like a switch being flipped. Nothing like this happened even at the height of the lockdown. I also sent in a ballot application which is now a week late compared to when I sent it in last year. Wow. Imagine the service not hiccuping much at all during the initial lockdown and confusion around the country at the start of the pandemic and now all of a sudden losing service. I guess I'm trying to get at that bone and small gov't crowd and ask if this is really the fight to fight right now, if decreasing the size of the USPS is the most urgent fight that we should have as Americans. Because I do believe there are many people who want it to be private, but I want people who are supporting it to say why they believe it's urgent that this specific thing happens now, amidst all other challenges we currently face.

defertoreptar 6y ago

The "why" and "why now" is that the USPS's debt has been growing and isn't sustainable in the long run. Unless structural changes are made, tax payers will ultimately be left paying the bills. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/15/postal-service-bailout-congress/?outputType=amp https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/15/postal-se...