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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
by 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.