I agree with what I think your point is, that having mail for all is a requirement of a civilization. (Sorry if this was not your point.) However, elections alone are obviously not enough to sustain a mail operation.

[Edit: I had a double-not, hopefully everyone understood my meaning before.]

I would argue that elections are enough to drag the USPS along at literally any cost.

How much would it cost to operate the USPS without bulk mail, i.e., with next to no revenue? I'm not even necessarily against it, but it has to be astronomical.

The question is why can’t we? Why can’t the USG print and mail out ballots using these services? I don’t think they are fundamentally less secure, and if they are than we can just have them add on the capability of doing secure delivery.

Because they don't deliver everywhere.

That's one of the biggest operational problems. They don't deliver consistently to rural areas. These companies farm it out. See FedEx Smart Post

https://www.fedex.com/en-us/shipping/fedex-smartpost.html

So we let private companies have the most profitable routes, our USPS serves to either deliver spam to the suburbs or perform expensive rural deliveries?

I feel like something here needs to change. I’m not really advocating for getting rid of USPS, but if the only leg it’s standing on is delivering to rural areas, I feel like we need to take a look at different options.

Who is going to deliver to the unprofitable rural area?

It certainly isn't The Market(tm), because the for profit companies have explicitly rejected it. Or are rural people supposed to just suck it up, and lose a constitutionally mandated service for ideological reasons?

Is there a middle ground? I'm sympathetic to this, but at the same time I'm also sympathetic to not having a USPS in order to deliver only with unprofitable routes and to deliver spam mail.

What do you think we should do?

Nothing. It’s a manufactured problem by people wanting a lucrative government contract. The very premise is absurd. No one complains that the fire department doesn’t turn a profit. Doing things that the private sector won’t has always been a core function of government.

I'm not saying it should be replaced with a government contract - just like, don't do it anymore. If you need to send something via the mail you just do it like you would send a package.

I really have a hard time justifying paying for the USPS when 90% of my mail is junk mail that I don't want. the other 10% I can probably live with not getting. I understand your point about the fire department, but I find value in that so I don't care if it turns a profit - but if I'm not getting value from the USPS and the argument is that someone who chooses to live 50 miles from the nearest town isn't able to get mail... it just isn't compelling to me.

USPS has a mandate to serve everyone no matter where how remote. No private commercial company can do that.

I think I'm questioning the need for that. Right now it certainly does't actually deliver to everyone's house. If you're too remote they make you pick up at a USPS location or somewhere else.

You can FedEx an absentee ballot. There is no requirement to use USPS.

Who pays for it?

Presumably the states, striking up deals with preferred carriers; a good number of states already do something like this to prepay postage for USPS ballots.