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> What _specific_ problems do you believe privatization would solve? For starters, unlike what we’re seeing today, mail-in ballots would be processed without i

by bhupy 6y ago

> What _specific_ problems do you believe privatization would solve? For starters, unlike what we’re seeing today, mail-in ballots would be processed without issue because there isn’t a political incentive to hobble it. As long as there is a market need to reliably deliver ballots, privatized carriers will process them. > Would delivery costs go down? Why? They certainly could. The private sector is often better at allocating resources than the public sector, because of the superior efficiency of competition and the pricing system as compared to central planning. I can give you a couple concrete examples. NASA's planned SLS moon mission is a bit of a disaster — way over budget and way behind schedule. Because the boosters aren't reusable, each launch is expected to cost $1B (with a B) dollars — EACH launch! Meanwhile SpaceX's target cost-per-launch is $50M. In Washington DC, the average government school spending per student is $31,280. The average private school tuition in DC is $23,959. Finally, privatization would allow for greater funding (through greater investment). Today, the funding of USPS is limited by the political process. > Literally every law passed, every action taken by the government, etc changes the current system That’s not what I mean by “changing the system”. What I’m saying is that as long as the postal service is tightly coupled to the political process by being “government run”, and the government in question is polarized as to whether it should even exist, then it will produce sub-par outcomes relative to its private counterparts. There is literally no law you can pass to change this save for changing who is allowed to vote/participate in the government, or by decreasing a public agency’s democratic accountability. Those all require Constitutional changes (“changes to the system”) which are almost impossible in the current climate.

cromwellian 6y ago
Delivery costs might go down at the expense of a large number of rural Americans unable to get mail at all. Universal service has a cost and like roads, those costs may not be economical everywhere but none the less necessary (eg clean water, electricity, education, etc for all Americans regardless of which town they live in)
- bhupy 6y ago
  > Delivery costs might go down at the expense of a large number of rural Americans unable to get mail at all This is conjecture, at best. If there’s a market need for something, it will be met at the fair market value for that thing — provided there are no exogenic barriers like regulation or endogenic barriers like monopolies/cartels. At best, you can probably make the case that rural areas will no longer receive subsidized mail service, but it’s worth asking ourselves if that’s even a desirable goal. And even if it is, it’s worth considering if nationalization is the best way to achieve subsidized rural delivery, or if direct subsidy or a UBI is the better way to achieve that, or perhaps even regulating the private carriers just like for eg food quality is regulated by the FDA. I’ll also add that the rural population is overwhelmingly the set of people who are aggressively voting for privatization.

by bhupy 6y ago

cromwellian 6y ago

Delivery costs might go down at the expense of a large number of rural Americans unable to get mail at all. Universal service has a cost and like roads, those costs may not be economical everywhere but none the less necessary (eg clean water, electricity, education, etc for all Americans regardless of which town they live in)

bhupy 6y ago
> Delivery costs might go down at the expense of a large number of rural Americans unable to get mail at all This is conjecture, at best. If there’s a market need for something, it will be met at the fair market value for that thing — provided there are no exogenic barriers like regulation or endogenic barriers like monopolies/cartels. At best, you can probably make the case that rural areas will no longer receive subsidized mail service, but it’s worth asking ourselves if that’s even a desirable goal. And even if it is, it’s worth considering if nationalization is the best way to achieve subsidized rural delivery, or if direct subsidy or a UBI is the better way to achieve that, or perhaps even regulating the private carriers just like for eg food quality is regulated by the FDA. I’ll also add that the rural population is overwhelmingly the set of people who are aggressively voting for privatization.