That said, I think that a smart idea might be to create tiered service that is aware of the investment proposal. So, new communities get "first class" service for their first 15 years - mail delivered every day just like it would be in Boston. After the initial "investment period", service will be determined by the cost of delivery. Urban areas might get 6-day service. Suburban areas, 5 day service. Rural areas, MWF service. Highly rural areas, TF service. Mega-rural, no houses within 15 mile type places get mail once a week (considering that, in this scenario, a carrier would only be delivering mail to a maximum of 28 households in a day, I think that sounds somewhat reasonable). That would keep commerce running while reducing costs.
And I'm not sure there'd be too much objection to such a plan. I have a co-worker who is from a community that you can't get to by road - you have to go by boat. It is disconnected from things and that's how the residents like it to be. Granted, it's still nice to be able to get deliveries, but they're more into making things for themselves.
Does that sound like an interesting proposal? It's definitely important to keep people connected, but maybe they don't need to be connected every day. If one has situated themselves in a location apart from society, maybe it's ok that we stay connected with them, but not quite as connected as we do with those who have located themselves at the center of society.
EDIT: After talking with my co-worker, most rural places have the same every-day service, but there are middle of nowhere places that do only get mail once a week.
I can only guess that all that junk works. And I suppose it does... I keep the ones for local restaurants that deliver what may be good food...
Something the post office could do is to leverage their local infrastructure and work with the couriers. If I miss a UPS delivery, and have to ask nicely to get a 2nd delivery attempt. Picking up the package at the local post office would be a lot easier for everyone.
If settlement of remote areas is a good investment then it will occur even if the settlers have to pay the market prices for their services. Arguing for subsidization is an admission that settlement is not a good investment.
That is emphatically not what his comment stated, nor how the effects work.
The specific argument is that by spending $1 to provide a service to a group of people, you increase the size of the economy, and consequently the tax base in that area, by more than $1, thus turning a net profit.
Game theory. The population centers voted that failure to respond to mail can subject you to severe legal penalties, including imprisonment, and there is at present no practical substitute to first class mail. Cutting off the mail would result in unfair punishment of remote peoples, which would result in secession of the remote territory, which would result in loss of EXTREMELY valuable roads, railways, pipelines, oil tank farms, air space, geographically-defended military bases, and radio spectrum.
To put it another way, the economy of scale of the Pax Americana can afford quite a bit of abuse from the postal unions.
The Post Service is a classic example of such a service. They serve remote areas and communities that commercial delivery services would not cover, therefore jumpstarting commerce there. Otherwise these communities would be economically isolated and would wither away. The state usually recovers their expenses soon, given that increased commerce means increased tax income. Also, this is a form of long-term investment for the society as a whole that is non-obvious and for which other mechanisms do not exist.