an hour ago
Pretty important asterisk concerning the privatization of the Japanese rail network: this privatization led to the closure of a lot of rural, unprofitable lines. IMO this would play out similarly for the USPS; it's not hard to remain profitable when you can just cleave off the parts of your public service that are in the red.
an hour ago
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, the debate of “what to do” or “what would happen if privatization happens?” does not need to be a discussion.
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.
If it’s unprofitable, it’s barely unprofitable, especially in the scope of government services.
How many days of the Iran war would fully fund the USPS’ operating budget deficit for a year?
I’m not even sure that corporate lobbyists will be happy with privatization. For example, both FedEx and UPS rely on USPS for last mile delivery of some types of packages. What about all the companies that send me junk mail 6 days a week? Are they going to be happy when one of their most effective forms of marketing doubles in price or shrinks down to 3 day a week service?
an hour ago
Is it? I don't think I would miss the junk mail delivery service if it went away entirely.
an hour 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.
an hour 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.
42 minutes ago
Junk mail is a net positive for postal service revenue. Even if you could eliminate it (major free speech concern), would it be a good idea? Who would pay extra when the can just throw out the junk in less than 2 minutes a week?
34 minutes ago
prime “can’t see the forest for the trees” sort of thinking, here
an hour 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
> 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?
an hour 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?
40 minutes ago
I think the problem being solved here is largely one of waste.
USPS hides 9bn of unfunded pension obligations every year and underserves urban areas to subsidize rural areas.
Mail volume is also generally falling as everything moves to email, so it is getting both less profitable and less critical.
The US is a rich country, we can afford to waste a lot of money and not notice, and of course one person's waste is another person's easier job or subsidized service, but given the ongoing decline in the importance of mail (vs package) delivery, it's not clear that this is a particularly important utility for the government to maintain any more.
33 minutes ago
The USPS is about $100 billion short in funds for retiree healthcare. Operationally they're slated to run out of cash shortly and that's going to get worse as they have to directly fund more and more retiree health care.
an hour 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.
an hour 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
an hour ago
Sure, it's not perfect, but I'm doubtful privatizing it would make it any better. And on the list of things I want fixed in the US, it is far from the top.
37 minutes ago
All shopping companies lose packages, damage packages, and fail to deliver on time as promised.
The question is just about the rate it happens and the ease with which you can get restitution.
Remember when Amazon’s delivery dates were commitments instead of estimates? That was interesting for me to think about in this context.
an hour 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.
Well… I had a package being delivered, and it had missed its estimated arrival; it ended with me have a long discussion w/ their support that I'm sure was fed to /dev/null. FedEx was the carrier, it turned out, and they claimed they had attempted delivery. Problem was, they required a signature. I live in an apartment, & we have a dedicated package room. But FedEx's stance is that they can't deliver to the secure package room: they require a signature. But at my apartment, they come to the door with the street address on it. Weirdly, that is not the door with the buzzer — that's at a separate, more remote door. The delivery person is not going to take the time to find that door, assuming their corporate overlord's maximum dwell time even permits them to. So they can't buzz me. So they sticker an utterly arbitrary window on the building, and leave. The landlord clears the window. I am never notified.
Somewhere this kicks around in their system until I get a call from an unknown number of "hey your package is undeliverable." But the "guaranteed" delivery date was overshot, of course.
I was, of course, home the entire time. These are what spawn the "missed delivery" memes … https://xkcd.com/921/
This is a systemic problem, not just a "one time" issue: every package shipped via FedEx that requires a signature to me is undeliverable.
The shipper (my bank, in this case) was also less-than-helpful: they apparently have no idea who they ship with, let alone what tracking number they used. Worse, they refused to refund me the extra I had paid to expedite the shipment (which, as you can imagine from the above, did not arrive on time; worse, the expiditing fee was extortionary…)
… and this is modern capitalism these days. A fractal of bad service where the customer ends up having to do 90% of the support work.
34 minutes ago
Special case pain in your rear. Sorry that happened.
FYI, I am quite sure that you can provide special delivery instructions for your address to FedEx. You should try to figure out how to do that.
Dealing with your bank, though… good luck with that when they don’t care.
an hour 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.
an hour ago
Charging people a price relative to the cost of a service is not discrimination.
18 minutes 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.
an hour 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.
an hour 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.
an hour 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.
an hour ago
What were the benefits to germany?
an hour 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.
an hour 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.
an hour 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.
30 minutes ago
This argument assumes that Congress does what the electorate wants.
In a system where money in politics is unlimited (US v. Citizens United), elections consist of a first past the post two-party system, the president is not elected by popular vote, investigative media has been gutted and consolidated into oligarchal ownership, and proportional representation doesn’t exist (see: Washington DC residents have no representation, senators per Californian versus senators per Wyoming resident, gerrymandered districts) I don’t think we can blame the electorate for Congress not doing things that the people want.
13 minutes ago
Money distorts the system in some ways and I agree that’s a problem that could use systemic mitigation (farther back than Citizen’s United probably, Buckley vs Valeo is arguably the deeper roots).
But ultimately, money doesn’t remove the fundamental electoral mechanisms (yet) or opportunity for volunteer direct lobbying. It primarily distorts to the degree that it can be used to buy the focus of the electorate and to the degree it can be used to buy other people’s lobbying time.
People could spend their time managing their own political /public policy focus and volunteer lobbying instead of any other leisure activities. I’ve done it and I know others who do. Most Americans don’t, and that’s a revealed preference. Other leisure activities are more important.
an hour ago
yawn the old blame the victim. Get lost kid.
3 minutes ago
Why not both? Yes, there are systemic issues in the US. But 70% of the US either voted for Trump or didn’t vote at all in 2024.
(Let me pause to pre-empt any bothsideism by saying that I think that’s silly and I doubt you’ll change my mind on that, but you can try)
Continuing on - liberals tend to point at systemic issues, but personal responsibility is a thing too. I’m a bit tired of the “education this, social media that” arguments. I grew up in rural Texas, one of the most conservative, fundamentalist, and poorly educated states in the US. By the time I was 14 I rejected the then nascent Fox-style fascism and bigotry I was surrounded by at home and church, because I actually bothered to seek out information on the internet and hear the other side even when it was uncomfortable or morally repugnant to me.
I don’t say this to congratulate myself (or maybe I do, deep down). I try to stay humble and I feel that I succeed in that to the extent that I have often had self esteem issues. I genuinely have tried to see the other side, and I grew up inside it. But after 2024, I have to say, what the hell is wrong with the people in this country? Why is everyone so stupid, selfish and easily misled? There are so many legitimately interesting and inherently difficult problems to be solved with politics, and so far in my life I’ve only seen conservatives blowing the United State’s huge lead by clogging up all of the political bandwidth of the entire country with barefaced bigotry. I’m so tired of it. 2024 was a breaking point for me. I don’t know how I can identify with or be proud of this country.
Happy 250th y’all
an hour ago
Doesn't USPS also play a key role in a lot of other services?
* ID verification
* Vacant home notifications
* Registered mail
I have a hard time seeing a private company scrupulously handling these operations when the incentives to manipulate them could be very large.
an hour ago
Also voting.
If you privatize the post office, then either mail-in voting stops completely, or else a private company can control which mail-in ballots get delivered, and which ones don't.
an hour ago
Yes, it also had a mandate to deliver mail. So people living in the middle of nowhere New Mexico can do something like run a small business through delivery (this was on the radio the last time this nonsense was floated). It's actually kind of beautiful, something that I can't imagine would work with a privately owned system.
an hour ago
The beautiful thing is a society deeming universal (gasp!) access to mail to be important.
The ugly part is profit driven mindset, and a “you live in an unprofitable area to mail to, sorry” obvious outcome
an hour ago
They'd end up charging you the amount of money you'd make sending the package, that's how all these forms of rentierism work: Uber, Amazon, Apple, Shopify, etc. Private taxes they want to force onto people.
Must fight it at any opportunity. I can't imagine the economic value something like USPS brings to the country, likely trillions of trillions over it's lifespan. Something the corpos would never admit.
an hour ago
The postal service was in the constitution from the beginning - Washington signed it. But the wording is a bit weird - obviously there's supposed to be a postal service but now with how bad tings have become, who knows.
an hour ago
Huh, where's the postal service in the constitution?
As far as I can tell your constitution allows the federal level to regulate postal services, but it does not require the establishment of government snail mail.
an hour ago
"The Congress shall have Power...To establish Post Offices and post Roads;"
The wording "shall" is what I meant by weird wording. But no roads? No post offices? Whatever. The constitution is extremely flawed and should be abandoned.
an hour ago
That's quite a non sequitur there. The wording is weird, so we should abandon the entire constitution?
Not so fast, comrade. Not so fast. You've got a lot of work ahead of you to fill in the gaps in your logic here, before any of us are going to agree with your conclusion.
2 hours ago
A Soviet joke goes like this: "Daddy, daddy, they've said on the radio that vodka price goes up next month! Does it mean that you won't drink as much anymore?" — "No, son, it means that you won't eat as much no more".
So. The new private owner(s) will try to increase their profit. Increasing the efficiency of the processes already in place while providing the same services with the same coverage/quality/etc. at the same prices is indeed one way to increase the profit... but it's one of the hardest ways. Hiking up the prices and discontinuing services with smallest margins is a much simpler, easier, and even more effort-efficient way so this is what's going to happen first.
an hour ago
It means prices will go up and service/quality will go down. I already consider the service sort of at a base state. If it gets any worse, it will just go under. Which is what they want.
35 minutes ago
It's already a (public) corporation. You can send mail through the non-profit, old postal service. You have to measure the postage yourself and put it in the slot called non-domestic mail.
2 hours ago
That the US has failed as a country?
an hour ago
It's a casualty of political corruption, both moral in terms of Party first politics and run-of-the-mill crony capitalism. That's what it means.
The consequences are far reaching for many existing industries. It may never be unraveled once initiated. It will give rise to more concentrated wealth and power. This is by design.
an hour ago
>much of what USPS does is unprofitable
The same could be said about many organizations within companies if you don't give them a proper budget. Once you start actually caring about being profitable it turns out that you can find how to do things in a way that is less wasteful. Cost acts as an incentive to reduce waste and if you remove it then there is no force to combat waste or unsustainable practices.
>It’s not that private entities won’t deliver postal service; it’s that they quite literally can’t.
If you paid someone $10,000 to deliver a letter to somewhere in the country I'm sure they could find a way to bring it there. It is not impossible.