This isn't exactly true. Even with junk mail they aren't profitable. But being profitable is a non-goal; they exist to serve the people, not to allow 3rd parties to harass them endlessly.

That's not really the point. If they didn't push junk mail so hard, they'd be insolvent and fail. Profitability is not the issue.

> But being profitable is a non-goal; they exist to serve the people

Agree, but someone should probably tell Congress that.

The situation is trash (literally; 95% of my mail goes directly to the recycling bin), but conservatives want the USPS to behave more like a business, and its funding -- and need to do crappy things -- reflects that.

I never said they should be profitable, just that junk mail funds them.

Sounds like they exist to serve big business pumping out tons and tons of land fill routed trash, subsidized by the federal government/taxpayers. Given they're unionized, they can just lobby whomever to keep this unicorn status. Federal agencies should not be allowed to unionize.

If properly funded, do you really want the USPS filtering your mail to only deliver what they think you want delivered?

Their job isn't to stop junk mail. Their job is to reliably deliver whatever mail has my address on it to my mailbox.

They don't have to provide bulk-mailing services to non-government entities. This is where someone says "Mail one of these advertisement packages to every person in this district", and it's not actually addressed to you. This would raise the cost of mailing spam to the same cost as mailing real letters.

Not filtering, no, but I would like them to set bulk mail prices high enough to actually reflect the cost of the externalities of sending (and trashing) that mail. Fewer companies would send so much junk if they had to pay for its true cost.