Why should we listen to someone who probably doesn’t ever open their own mail or pay a bill or send a package regarding the postal service? They don’t have to deal with the change they’re advocating for, they have the resources to actually change things.

> Dangerous path there, buddy.

Their opinion should count as much as any regular person. I’m not arguing for silencing anyone, merely limiting their outsized influence. I should’ve clarified this in my original post.

How would privatizing the mail help the poor? I’m curious.

Why should we listen to you? Most people don’t experience the change they advocate for.

Removing money from politics is a good thing but I’m wary of outright saying certain people don’t matter. That doesn’t lead anywhere good.

I’m arguing in favor of keeping mail delivery under the USPS because it’s one of the few functional democratic government services available. The government uses the USPS to send out many notices, payments, census forms, and so on. It’s a small miracle that one can place a postcard in a mailbox anywhere in the US and have it delivered to almost any address (some areas have mail service at a post office instead of home delivery). The utility of this service being available to everyone for the same price regardless of location is more valuable than any increased competition created by removing the USPS monopoly on first-class letters.

I’m arguing in favor of a system that everyone can access for a low cost, a service one could rightly consider essential.

Why should you should listen to me (or any other poster in this thread arguing in favor of keeping the status quo postal system) instead of the Koch brothers? I take the needs of everyone into consideration when formulating my argument instead of ideological or profit motives. Do you think it would be beneficial to the nation to saddle poor rural people with mail rates 10-50x what they are now when we have a perfectly functional system? I don’t, because it screws over the least fortunate to benefit.. who? It literally does not affect me if I have to pay .55 to mail a letter, but someone living on $700/mo that needs to use the private mail to mail a $10 letter will absolutely notice. Why destroy a functional and equitable system just so rich people in cities can pay less for postage? It’s not practical or fair.

I also clarified my position on the influence of billionaires and their opinions: They shouldn’t be ignored completely, but they should not be allowed to have the massive outsized influence they currently enjoy. Their opinion should count no more or less than anyone else.

A billionaire's opinion should not count more than any other random person's opinion.

Genuinely believing something is good on the part of a billionaire has no bearing on whether or not their vote should count once per human or once per dollar.

>Again, it seems impossible for you to even grasp that they might geniuely believe that their way of doing things might lead to better outcome for all, including people living in poverty.

Genuine belief does not excuse reality blindness or intellectual stop points.

I genuinely believe the world would have so many fewer problems if people would just stop being dicks.

Alas, I am neither justified nor reasonable to present that as an answer to every problem. I have to stop, consider the details of what is there, the history of the edifice, the use case it fulfills, the fact the existence of the service is guaranteed by the Constitution, and that if you want it changed, it's going to take a Constitutional Convention, plus a 2/3's ratification amongst the States. If I want what I consider a problematic piece of the infrastructure of the United States of America to go away, I must come to terms with reality.

>>The existence of billionaires combined with Citizens United is an actual problem, the post office is not.

I'd qualify that with "the existence of billionaires [where large chunks of the capital flowing through them is not cycling back through the country via taxes] is a large threat to the country". Citizen's United alone is a bloody travesty against the very fabric of civic interaction, as a legal fiction by definition skews the equation away from all votes being equal; particularly when media exposure and marketing becomes more important in the act of campaigning than actually knowing what it is your Constituent's actually want, and the fact it is only management who gets to direct the support or capital of the legal fiction with no regard to wishes of the workers (in the case of a corporation directly) or well, workers again, in that it is infrequently seen that wages have gone up in anywhere near the proportion of income/revenue of corporate entities has. Therefore, it is rather obvious that value is likely being tied up in corporate or capital-gains tax write-offs in the forms of donations to possibly independent, yet aligned PAC's.

>I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

I realize that's the polite response, but for whatever reason, it has just always rung as condescending to me. I prefer a heartfelt "I disagree", or "I beg to differ;" but to each their own. Would still debate with over a beer or two.