The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Service [pdf]

Re:The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Se... by hardtke on Tuesday July 21, 2020 @07:59PM (#23912288)

The cost of sending a letter to any address in the US is the same. The cost of delivering that letter varies wildly. Think New York City vs. rural Alaska only reachable by plane. If USPS did not have monopoly, they would be severely undercut in profitable areas and would only service hard-to-reach areas where prices would spiral out of control. So if you want to keep the price of a stamp the same nationwide you need to grant a monopoly. It's the same reason regulated utilities own the power lines.

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Re:The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Se... by bhupy on Tuesday July 21, 2020 @08:02PM (#23912322)

> If USPS did not have monopoly, they would be severely undercut in profitable areas

So in essence, residents of "profitable areas" are overpaying for mail to subsidize mail service to those in unprofitable rural areas.

But then the next question is: why go through this roundabout subsidization? Why not just subsidize rural first class mail delivery by the state directly?

This also ignores the fact that the USPS does not have a monopoly on sending packages, and is still able to serve package deliveries to rural areas, aren't they?

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Re:The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Se... by ip26 on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @10:21AM (#23917278)

Appropriations, tax revenue, and government budgets can be fickle revenue streams. There is a simple elegance to funding themselves, and you have full transparency into every dollar they receive from you.

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Re:The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Se... by amznthrwaway on Tuesday July 21, 2020 @08:17PM (#23912444)

Fedex, UPS, and DHL handle these, in part, by contracting last mile delivery in those locations to the USPS.

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Re:The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Se... by john-shaffer on Tuesday July 21, 2020 @08:17PM (#23912441)

> So if you want to keep the price of a stamp the same nationwide you need to grant a monopoly.

The conclusion does not follow. If it is important that the price of delivery to remote Alaska be cheap, then why not just subsidize it directly?

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Re:The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Se... by zebnyc on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @08:09AM (#23916091)

Can you clarify how this would work?

If I reside in Florida/Hawaii and send mail to Alaska I am presuming that it would get re-routed through intermediate stops. Also people move and mail traffic ebbs and flows through the seasons. So I don't understand how this subsidies would work unless we look at the network as a whole and budget accordingly.

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