271–280 of 575 posts
And a future where I don’t have giant boxes “delivered” into my tiny mailbox that could fit maybe a stack of 25 envelopes.
And a future where 20% of packages don’t arrive.
I can see why people want to avoid this.
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It's also likely because they are trying to suppress mail-in ballots. These are overwhelmingly used by people who can't get to a polling station because eg it is too far away and they don't own a car - in other words, they are poor.
Whats wrong with sending a ballot via UPS?
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It's ideological. They believe that the government should not be in the postal business. They probably believe that it's harmful to competition in various ways, and they are probably right in certain narrow contexts.
The same argument of being harmful to competition could be extended to schools and libraries and . It's just mind blowing why we should care about companies more than people. So what if it's harmful to competition? What merit does that have? (These aren't questions for you. They're rhetorical.)
So food is really important and vital. Should the government be in charge of growing and distributing food?
Of course not. This experiment has been tried with horribly deadly results. The basic fact of the matter is that the market is far more effective at fairly distributing goods and services. If you look at the major sources of inequalities today in our society, they are in education, policing, and the justice system, all of which are under public control. Interestingly enough, the tort system, which is partly under private control, is far more fair than the criminal justice system that is under public control, which is why killer cops never go to prison but their victims get million dollar damage payments. (as the old axiom goes, if the king controls criminal punishment, the kings friends get away with murder).
The point is, it's a total non-sequitur to assume that just because a decentralized system is the primary means of distributing something therefore implies that it only exists to make corporate profits at the expense of us poor people. Individuals like myself who are for wider privatization believe so because we care about people. I think people will be better off if the government isn't in charge of growing food, and I think people would be better off if more systems were privatized. It's not because I have a fetish for companies, it's because I think the general welfare would improve.
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The USPS has already lost a fair amount of business to email and overnight package services. It is interesting that the reason we cannot “opt out” of junk mail is because it would cause financial harm to the USPS. As for banking and check cashing businesses, why do we think it is appropriate for the government to actively compete in those businesses? What if they decide to set up a technology consulting business? A s…
What's wrong with a government-run grocery store? I can quickly think of a hundred reasons why I would support such an idea. And no reasons yet why I wouldn't support it. But you make it sound like a government-run grocery store is massively crossing a line for you. So I am curious about that.
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Buying up all the land that contains a particular resource then guarding it, thus permanently locking said resource away is one way to monopolize a market vertical.
If there had ever been such a person, even once, it seems like we'd be celebrating them today. If you could send a guy back 200 years to keep all the coal in the ground, you'd do it.
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> The question is why USPS enjoys a state sanctioned monopoly on paper mail specifically. I'm curious -- can you link to more detail about this? I've never had trouble sending paper mail through UPS or FedEx. What does the monopoly cover, specifically?
Sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#U... By law, private corporations aren't allowed to deliver anything to your mailbox, only the USPS can.
On the one hand, it seems unfair. On the other hand, since they don't have any cost-competitive offerings, it seems like a non-issue. I'm a big fan of the USPS, but if it looked like FedEx could help push the letter rate down, I would be a fan of revoking that law. (If a private carrier committed to serving 100% of the USPS coverage area.)
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It's also likely because they are trying to suppress mail-in ballots. These are overwhelmingly used by people who can't get to a polling station because eg it is too far away and they don't own a car - in other words, they are poor.
Whats wrong with sending a ballot via UPS?
The amount of narcissism these people (the Koch's, for example) have is just astounding. If you're a billionaire, what could possibly be a reasonable explanation for why you even care about the post office? Why are these people so hell bent on hurting people to feed their own narcissism? The USPS could be improved but struggles primarily due to active efforts to kill it off. But it's a wonderful idea of a service tha…
The idea that it’s purely narcissistic is without merit. Privatization is about fostering competition to ensure better products are created. Just because the USPS works as is does not mean it couldn’t be better. This is a classic “I like things the way they are” problem. Where the other possibilities are unknown and inexperienced and so are not given equal weight to a decision. I don’t particularly care whether the p…
And some day you may ask why wealth should be a barrier to entry to anything.