Because that makes most sense to offset the fact that it also must serve everyone. Problem for postal service really isn't profitable areas, just look at delivery services. It is the unprofitable hard to reach ones. If single company was mandated to serve these too while others where allowed to pick the easy ones or even exploit the single one it would have hard time surviving.

> If single company was mandated to serve these too while others where allowed to pick the easy ones or even exploit the single one it would have hard time surviving.

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.

While USPS technically has a monopoly on your mailbox, you can send someone a letter via UPS or FedEx--for significantly more money.

And if you send something to a remote area, UPS and FedEx will themselves delegate to USPS precisely because it's not profitable to develop the infrastructure to service remote populations.

It's not profitable to develop the infrastructure, but considering the price of delivering something where I live, I'm sure Fedex/UPS make a nice margin by delegating the last 400km drive to an unprofitable postal service.

> you can send someone a letter via UPS or FedEx--for significantly more money.

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.

TIL it's illegal for UPS and FedEx to charge less. That was certainly a part of this equation I was missing, thank you!

you can also send an email nowadays, or a <whatever chat>