It has to be about 50 to 1 at this point in terms of the ratio of important mail I get compared to junk mail that goes straight in the garbage.
It doesn't have to be profitable but the cost to send mail should cover the operation. It is absurd that it is worth it for so many companies to flood people with literal garbage.
That seems unlikely. Why do you think it's given a formal legal monopoly on the service it provides?
But this answer explicitly contradicts the idea that the post office isn't supposed to be profitable. If the goal is to make sure everyone gets served at a loss, it doesn't matter that you're taking a loss.
Right, the reason it costs significantly more money to use UPS or FedEx is that it's illegal for them to charge less. Paying more puts your letter into a different legal category that is not reserved to the USPS.
Nobody cares about the mailbox. The USPS holds a monopoly on the delivery of non-urgent mail, which is defined as mail that costs below a certain price point to send.
It’s supposed to break even. It’s supposed to be a service that provides value. If it isn’t providing value, it loses its reason to exist.
You can argue that the consumer captures a lot of surplus value from the postal service. But it doesn’t exist just to please people who like public programs.
The same with libraries.
Do SNAP, Medicaid, etc. provide value? Do they "break even"?
Who/what says it has to break even at all?
Schools also do not break even.
In contrast, (nominally) private higher education seems to do pretty well financially - even "non-profit" universities. Charging up to $80K a year and/or eating billions of dollars in government grants probably helps - so they aren't exactly independent from public funding, but we consider that funding to be wortwhile in terms of research and education outcomes, even when it goes into the pockets of wealthy, elite institutions.
Not a chance. You can see this with the US Postal Service today, with some people arguing that it should continued to be stripped because it isn't profitable. It isn't supposed to be profitable!
I think the closest we could ever get would be an "old Netflix" approach, where you have to pay a monthly membership fee based on the number of books you want at once that turns a profit.
As for eBooks, I generally find a spot to buy them online (with or without DRM) and either rip the DRM out or pirate them after purchasing. Voila, it's just like a normal book now!