Operate Like a Business? USPS Edition: Smoke and Mirrors

The phrase “operate like a business” is too simplistic

In a beveridge healthcare model for example, you want Gov to act as a cutthroat business in negotiating drug, staff and building costs. It has to be as efficient as possible in these areas. And at the same time, you don’t want the Gov “acting as a business” in coverage / access (giving premiums or refusing to cover those with expensive conditions).

This talking point is black and white when most areas are pretty much entirely grey. Nordic countries offer incredible safety nets while also being extremely efficiency focused. This isn’t an either or, and to frame it as so is a disservice. We want things that work well.

 

A lot of the redundancies from the USPS is to provide better coverage AND Service to rural residents.

Cities are far more efficient per person with a station potentially covering at least 1,000,000 people within a 5 mile radius, but if a USPS station covers only 100 within the same distance in Mo Podunk than Podunk, Alabama...that's it for "Big Government Influence".

FedEx or UPS aint got time for dem scrubs.

This latest stunt is to extract more government/taxpayer value FOR corporations like Amazon, USPS, and Fedex.

When airlines were decentralized/deregulated in the 70s-90s, one big consequence was the formation of super hubs like Dallas and ATL. Major airlines stopped providing direct flights to smaller cities and towns meaning some regions had one major carrier in a hundred mile radius.

A capitalist would argue this is intended because smaller area coverage is Inefficient and "if the market was there for direct coverage, then there would be a profitable business model for it"

The USPS isn't fully corporate for a reason. National security and national interests for one. The other is that it's large transportation infrastructure is directly leveraged by smaller corporate competitors. The same orgs that promote FedEx and UPS as "Working Efficient Models" know that private carriers can't handle the demand and needs of a national mailing carrier like USPS, but will still lobby for its weakening in order to convince voters of more pork coming to their corporate sponsors.

The Era of Spin and Lies...where it's peddlers get high from their own product.

 

How about not requiring them to keep 75 years of worth retirement in liquid asset?
How about putting the money stolen from the USPS back?
How about not borrowing from it ever again???

Rocket River
USPS is better that most business. . . just over regulated in an attempt to make it fail.

 

Don't know of anyone who would agree with this. They lose around $8 billion per year .. now obviously, they service areas that usps and fedex won't so it's not an apples to apples comparison but surely there's a way to look at running it differently?

 

That's a lie
Literally the only part of government
That turns a profit.

"
Under the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, the USPS is required to pay $5.4 billion to $5.8 billion annually, through 2016, to pay for future retiree health benefits"

Remove this.....something NO BUSINESS HAS TO SO.....and they make a profit.

Rocket River

 

It is a service - which we pay for, it's job is not to turn a profit.

Now it may be that it is outdated now with electronic mail etc....but then congress can dissolve it....Trump has no authority to do so.

DD

 

As much as I have a fondness for the morons at USPS, I'd like to see them improved and to run more efficiently than dissolved altogether.

 

Good Stuff

Rocket River

 

Right on , brother!

 

LOL. This is exactly the thing
Imaging mailing something to Dallas is one price .. .to Austin is another and San Antonio another still
A BOONIES Fee for anywhere outside of 50 mile radius of a city of 300K or more.

Rocket River

 

A private business would never deliver mail to somebody living in rural Alaska. The USPS does.

It should not be compared to private industry because its purpose is different.

 

Bingo!
Sometimes success is not measured in Dollars
The service is the currency

Rocket River

 

Taking it under the Commerce Dept is going in the wrong direction. I'd go the other way and privatize. Eliminate the monopoly on letter delivery. Important mail all comes by email anyway. The government is supporting 300 million trash boxes for which there is a whole industry devoted to printing paper no one will look at. It was an invaluable government service when it was created and has a proud role in American history. But, it's obsolete now and has outlived its usefulness.

Putting on my fake economist hat, postal service used to be a natural monopoly. Like electric service, it made no sense to invest enormous capital in redundant delivery systems that competed with one another for business and for easements. So they made the USPS like a regulated utility -- they get a protected monopoly in return for regulated rates. Since then, substitute products (couriers, package delivery, email and the internet generally) have obviated the natural monopoly. So why provide regulatory protection for a monopoly that is not a monopoly?

I'm not swayed by the argument of rural communities and far-flung native american tribes needing their post office to get any delivery. I'd rather have a law requiring private carriers to provide that service (and build that cost into their pricing strategies) than a government-owned company providing the service at huge national expense. I also think communities would develop systems to cope when it becomes necessary to do so. It doesn't exist right now because it doesn't have to. Heck, if it's communities in Alaska or Montana that would be most hurt by it, maybe the state creates the Alaska Postal Service or Montana Postal Service and they contract with Fedex and Amazon and UPS to do the last mile of delivery, subsidized by Alaskan and Montanan taxpayers. No reason it has to be federal.