6 ms·

I read the whole article, and it had a lot of informed discussion within it, but ultimately that discussion felt a little pointless. The crisis is manufactured

• eru 4mo ago
  > The USPS is a no-brainer public service and the only reason there is any question of its value is due to the severely broken, dysfunctional, corrupt Congress. Huh? Even Germany managed to privatise their snail mail, and approximately no one would want to renationalise it. What makes USPS a 'no-brainer public service'? What's the big benefit of having government snail mail? Mail delivery service is not a public good. It's both excludable and rivalrous. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good > What about all the companies that send me junk mail 6 days a week? Effectively calling USPS the 'federal agency of paper spam delivery' doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement?
  • notnaut 4mo ago
    If the USPS were fully privatized without strict government subsidies or mandates, rural and remote Americans would likely face exorbitant delivery surcharges or lose service entirely. Once again… the United States is very large.
    • eru 4mo ago
      > [...] rural and remote Americans would likely face exorbitant delivery surcharges [...] Surfacing the cost of service provision to end users is generally a good tool to align incentives. (Use welfare systems to give money to poor people. But don't worry about giving rich people support just because they are old or live in the sticks.)
  • redsocksfan45 4mo ago
    [dead]
  • garbagewoman 4mo ago
    What were the benefits to germany?
    • eru 4mo ago
      Lower prices, bigger volume in the market. And the privatised Deutsche Post (/ DHL) is now a world beating logistics company that makes plenty of profit, instead of subsidies and bleeding red ink all over. However Germany still has plenty of government interference in snail mail, like a universal service mandate (or a sector specific minimum wage). Denmark dropped that requirement, and Danish society hasn't collapsed so far.
  • materielle 4mo ago
    I don’t know anything about Germany’s postal service. In the US, what the parent comment was getting it, is why are we even talking about this in the first place? What problem is privatization trying to solve? As an American, I have zero complaints about our postal service or how much we pay for it. Apart from the fact that I wish there were more branch offices and a few more workers at most locations. I don’t think privatization will solve either of those. Why do we need to reform something that already works?
    • msandford 4mo ago
      My problem rate with Fedex or UPS is maybe 0.1% of packages. I can't remember the last time I had a delivery issue. Just this week I had a package that was supposed to be delivered by Monday that lost tracking and didn't show up until Wednesday. It might be "basically fine and good enough" but it's definitely not "amazing and completely beyond reproach" at least in my opinion.
      • Swizec 4mo ago
        > Just this week I had a package that was supposed to be delivered by Monday that lost tracking and didn't show up until Wednesday. This is the sort of problem you solve with more funding not privatization. Here’s how these privatizations work: 1. Cut funding for public service 2. Service becomes bad 3. Cut more funding because service is bad and unused 4. Service becomes worse 5. Privatize 6. Strip the service for parts, a bunch of people get rich, classic PE stuff but worse 7. Start extracting rents, you have a nice monopoly 8. Public has no or worse service for higher cost
        • msandford 4mo ago
          1. They do a really bad job because you can't get fired 2. My package is delivered late yet again 3. I don't bother calling because the other 8 times I did I wasted an hour, nobody did anything (because nobody can get fired) and I didn't get any money back 4. Look how great we're doing! Complaints are down 5. Give us more funding because we're doing such a good job This is just as likely of a spiral if we keep it publicly owned. It's also not good. How do you get good outcomes with.no accountability?
  • owenthejumper 4mo ago
    For one, Germany is a densely populated country smaller than the state of California. I think we can stop there? There is really almost no comparison to the US in terms of rural areas anywhere in Europe.
    • eru 4mo ago
      Just split the US into 50 individual territories, if you think that being small is a benefit in service provision. > There is really almost no comparison to the US in terms of rural areas anywhere in Europe. Why do rural people deserve subsidies by virtue of living in the sticks?
      • rented_mule 4mo ago
        > Why do rural people deserve subsidies by virtue of living in the sticks? For the same reason urban people deserve subsidies, for things like public transportation, by virtue of living in the city. The first sentence of the US Constitution lists "promote the general Welfare" as one of the foundational reasons for the creation of the Constitution. There is no "one size fits all" for a nation this size - the welfare of people in the city and the welfare of people in the sticks requires differing allocations of tax money. Also, mail delivery to the sticks benefits people in cities given that mail in the sticks is often sent to or from cities.
        • eru 4mo ago
          > For the same reason urban people deserve subsidies, for things like public transportation, by virtue of living in the city. They don't. > The first sentence of the US Constitution lists "promote the general Welfare" as one of the foundational reasons for the creation of the Constitution. Just lower general taxation instead. That's even better for promoting general welfare. > Also, mail delivery to the sticks benefits people in cities given that mail in the sticks is often sent to or from cities. Well, the senders can pay then.
  • jnellis 4mo ago
    USA is large and people live everywhere, including hard to get spots. USPS just works in all those places. Privatization would discriminate against those people in a heartbeat. See: rural broadband in the US.
    • charcircuit 4mo ago
      Charging people a price relative to the cost of a service is not discrimination.
      • Grombobulous 4mo ago
        Refusing service entirely kinda feels like more like something that fits the word “discrimination.” UPS/FedEx can refuse service to you for almost any reason. But, perhaps you’re right, maybe the word “discrimination” is the wrong word. Either way, from a national policy standpoint there are very good reasons to subsidize rural areas for basic infrastructure services like mail and internet. USPS from an operations standpoint is pretty much profitable. Congress basically doesn’t even allow USPS to fix itself when it absolutely can fix itself without major service cuts or privatization. For example, their pension fund can only invest in low-yield securities, while normal companies have more flexibility, so that inflates the cost of their retirement program.
        • eru 4mo ago
          You can auction off the universal service obligation to willing bidders without having a state owned enterprise with a government monopoly. > Either way, from a national policy standpoint there are very good reasons to subsidize rural areas for basic infrastructure services like mail and internet. Please tell me a few.
          • Grombobulous 4mo ago
            Sure! Rural areas extract and produce many resources that urban areas depend on. Agriculture, fishing, oil, gas, uranium, wood, maple syrup, etc. You can’t get workforces to live in those places or businesses to operate there if there’s no roads, internet, mail, schools, hospitals, etc (or if those things are prohibitively expensive). Don’t forget that subsidy doesn’t always mean the difference between whether it’s expensive or not, it can also mean the difference between having and not having. Another reason is that too much regional wealth inequality can be bad for national stability. It can lead to things like civil wars and unrest.
  • Guvante 4mo ago
    Germany is 4% of America in size. A single US state with decent population density wouldn't need a nationalized system either. The USPS gets a monopoly because it is required to go everywhere. If a private company doesn't want to go into Michigan it doesn't have to. Without a monopoly protection USPS goes from being slightly unprofitable to very unprofitable by companies competing only in cheap areas. Basically USPS needs $0.78 to mail a one ounce letter overall. However it doesn't need that much for you to mail within the same city, it is probably much less than that. But they do need it if you send a letter across the country.
    • eru 4mo ago
      They could auction off a universal service obligation to willing bidders. No need to run a federal agency with a monopoly for that. (And everything you explain could also be accomplished by state-run services, no need to involve the federal level.)
      • Guvante 4mo ago
        Universal service obligations have been some of the least effective tools used... After all what constitutes not servicing? How would a state run service be better?
        • eru 4mo ago
          > How would a state run service be better? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
          • Guvante 4mo ago
            Each post office has individual leadership which serves the purpose of that principle.
            • eru 4mo ago
              That workaround justifies nearly anything.
  • Arrowmaster 4mo ago
    USPS as a public entity of the US government is required to deliver mail to all addresses. I don't know all the specific details and I'm sure there's some exceptions for getting service to a new location but existing locations cannot be removed. There is daily USPS service to a postbox at the bottom of the Grand Canyon that is only accessible by mule paths. I guarantee this service would either be cancelled or go up in cost to thousands of dollars per letter if USPS was privatized. The sheer size and remoteness of parts of the USA is why it's a public good. https://facts.usps.com/8-mile-mule-train-delivery/ https://facts.usps.com/8-mile-mule-train-delivery/
    • jltsiren 4mo ago
      Public goods can be contracted out to private entities. And this can be done independently in each region, without having a single central contractor. EU countries privatized their postal services decades ago, because governments are not allowed to compete with private entities in the market (unless explicitly allowed by EU-wide laws). And because the idea felt good, the same privatization extended to territories outside the EU, such as Greenland.
    • eru 4mo ago
      > There is daily USPS service to a postbox at the bottom of the Grand Canyon that is only accessible by mule paths. I guarantee this service would either be cancelled or go up in cost to thousands of dollars per letter if USPS was privatized. You say that like it's a bad thing. Why does a hill billy who insists on living at the bottom of the Grand Canyon deserve a subsidy? That public money would be better spend helping poor people.
      • Arrowmaster 4mo ago
        > Why does a hill billy who insists on living at the bottom of the Grand Canyon deserve a subsidy? I'm going to say this nicely once instead of the reply I really wanted to say because I'll give you the benefit of the doubt of not knowing or looking it up. Because it provides postal service to the Havasupai people living on their native land at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Would you like to take a guess as to why Supai, Arizona, the capital of the Havasupai Nation, is located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
  • thayne 4mo ago
    Post is a natural monopoly, at a national scale. It is much more efficient to have a single centralized service doing all mail delivery than several competing services doing the same. It isn't completely non-rivalrous, but the marginal cost of delivering a parcel diminishes as the number of parcels delivered in an area goes up.
    • eru 4mo ago
      > Post is a natural monopoly, at a national scale. It evidently is not. There's multiple providers.
      • thayne 4mo ago
        1. FedEx and UPS are not at all competitive for delivering non-package mail (letters, bills, etc.). Or even small packages. 2. Commercial providers rely on USPS to deliver packages in some situations.
        • eru 4mo ago
          About (1): you know that USPS literally has a monopoly and several legal advantages? About (2): duh, yes, because they ain't stupid. For an analogy: if there's free municipal water, Coca-Cola would make use of that for bottling, too. Or if there were subsidised electricity available etc.
  • kalleboo 4mo ago
    > Huh? Even Germany managed to privatise their snail mail, and approximately no one would want to renationalise it. You can find examples both ways - the Swedish privatization has been a disaster.
• limagnolia 4mo ago
  Is it? I don't think I would miss the junk mail delivery service if it went away entirely.
  • galleywest200 4mo ago
    USPS does last mile delivery for a lot of rural places. Besides that junk mail might actually increase if a private company was paid to take it to your house since they would have a profit motive - more junk mail delivered means more profits.
    • AnimalMuppet 4mo ago
      Charge junk mail the same rate as first class. More money for the post office? That's a win. Or less junk mail? Also a win.
    • delichon 4mo ago
      > USPS does last mile delivery for a lot of rural places. Not in the rural places I've lived, including my current one for 20 years. UPS and FedEx deliver to my porch. USPS has never been here. I drive to my PO box in the nearest town. I think that in this whole county they only deliver to post offices.
      • eru 4mo ago
        How does that square with their universal service obligation? Which county is that?
        • rented_mule 4mo ago
          I'm not who you're replying too, but I also live in a place with no delivery to the home, despite UPS and FedEx doing so. Everybody in our town gets a free PO Box - I suspect that's how the service obligation is covered. Once a year we have to prove that we still live here to keep the free box.
          • 4mo ago
• wwweston 4mo ago
  > The USPS is a no-brainer public service and the only reason there is any question of its value is due to the severely broken, dysfunctional, corrupt electorate. Congress is composed of people who the electorate sends there. Once there member choices are shaped by the people who contact and persuade them. If the USPS is poorly funded or managed, it’s because US electorate either wanted that, or was inattentive about the relevant funding and management and cares more about other things. And if the postal service dies or is captured and privatized, that’s a reflection of the preferences of voters, or a testament to the limits of their attention and intelligence to the point where they voted for people who did things they don’t want. Most Americans also prefer to blame political folk devils to for the failures instead, and seem to be more happy with that than personal and community discipline that would be necessary to engage responsibly, though, so the system is arguably working to reflect people’s revealed preferences already. EDIT: I should probably add that it’s not obvious to me that it’s poorly managed. I’ve enjoyed decades of adequate-to-impressive service via USPS over a variety of locations.
  • vjvjvjvjghv 4mo ago
    "And if the postal service dies or is captured and privatized, that’s a reflection of the preferences of voters, or a testament to the limits of their attention and intelligence to the point where they voted for people who did things they don’t want." I hate this. There is plenty of research showing that the opinion of the broader electorate has almost no influence on most policies. Only lobbyists and donors count.
    • wwweston 4mo ago
      Elections still have consequences, right? I’d think the fallout between fall of 2024 and now illustrates that. And that was the choice of the electorate (unless someone can demonstrate results were tampered with). So voter choices count. There are differences in how individual congress members and coalitions handle policy, so who voters choose matters. Also, some of that research you’re invoking shows that most officeholders try to keep their promises: https://theconversation.com/do-politicians-break-their-promises-once-in-government-what-the-evidence-says-127761 https://theconversation.com/do-politicians-break-their-promi... I agree lobbyists have influence. What is a lobbyist and why aren’t more people lobbying? Donors also have influence, and yet the electorate has every opportunity to determine who donors must influence every election. Why would they choose someone who is only beholden to donors?
• afpx 4mo ago
  I love the USPS. I love going to the post office and seeing real people, especially people in the town I live in. It's a social gathering place in smaller towns. This push toward optimization in the US, gradient descent to the LCD - seems harmful to average people.