My immediate gut-reaction toward this kind of statement is negative: do we really want to have private companies in charge of all mail in the US? And no doubt there are some people who rely on it and wouldn't get acceptable service (due to remoteness, etc) from a private company. Etc.

BUT: the vast majority of the mail I get through the postal service is junk mail that I don't want. The remainder is almost entirely stuff that I'd prefer to get electronically and, if the USPS were to disappear, I feel confident I would.

So I'd like to hear arguments for the continuing subsidy and existence of the USPS, but I wouldn't personally cry any tears if it were abolished tomorrow.

> BUT: the vast majority of the mail I get through the postal service is junk mail that I don't want. The remainder is almost entirely stuff that I'd prefer to get electronically and, if the USPS were to disappear, I feel confident I would.

The answer to that has to do with economic issues. Once upon a time (and I have not seen the numbers in years) 3rd class mail (what you can junk, and is now officially called Standard) actually carried its own way, and supported the cost-basis for First Class mail.

The reason(s) were varied, but had to do with the number of times a piece of mail had to be handled/sorted. Properly prepared Standard mail, had to be individually handled less than 2 times. Much of it was handled once (by the letter carrier). Standard mail arrives at the USPS dropoff already is pre-sorted by carrier route, and potentially by carrier order of travel. The mailers get a reduced rate, but not as much as it actually saves the USPS.

Getting rid of Standard Mail would actually increase cost of First Class. Standard Mail is advertising, and if they didn't advertise to you one way, they would just do it another.

My beef is less with Standard Mail, and more with political mail.

> So I'd like to hear arguments for the continuing subsidy and existence of the USPS, but I wouldn't personally cry any tears if it were abolished tomorrow.

USPS delivers (in one way or the other) to every point of presence in the USA. UPS, FedEx and DHL can not match that (although they do try to come close).

USPS also provides a variety of services that none of the others do.

USPS provides first class mail service to all Americans for the same cost (whether that letter is addressed to down the street or across the country) and provides mail service to almost everywhere people live in the United States, whether it be a small rural town or New York City.

So in part, it's a matter of equity -- that everyone in this country has equal access to postal services and the benefits they provide (which are admittedly cross-subsidized). This same rationale goes into telephone universal service funds and has been discussed in the context of the national broadband plan too.

None of the USPS' private competitors do (or I can imagine would do) this.

Indeed. I imagine that if the USPS were to be dissolved, there would need to be federal regulations put on their private competitors requiring universal service with low-cost options, much as there are in telecom. (And that the general public would strongly support such regulations not covering "junk mail".) I wonder whether FedEx/UPS/et al would be interested in such a system or not.

There is no subsidy of USPS, and hasn't been for probably longer than you've been alive.

My understanding is that there is not a direct subsidy, but that they aren't taxed like a private organization doing the same task would be. (Of course, they fall under a different regulatory framework as well, and have obligations such as delivering to every mailbox in the US, which other organizations aren't obligated to. So it's certainly not an apples-to-apples comparison, either.)

Quick! Let start a subversive private mail company, like Lysander Spooner's American Letter Mail Company. His company literally compete with the USPS for business until it was shut down by the governmenet's lawyering.

He succeeded in driving down the cost of government mail.

Instead, UPS and FedEx have taken the high-margin segment, leaving the low margin stuff for the USPS. Also, much of what Lysander Spooner's company was great for is now covered by email and other Internet apps. (IIRC, an attraction was that intra-city mail was delivered quickly.)

WASTE