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

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

#351

Post by maxlybbert »

posguy wrote: post #259
dungdang wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

umm, no. it's illegal. a competing post service was launched, with variable rates, and the gov shut it down. by law, your rate has to be flat.

What are you on about? UPS and FedEx will happily charge you more to deliver to high cost locations, whereas getting a 50lb parcel overnighted from one low cost location to another is usually around $30 if you have a volume rate. There is hefty price discrimination against high cost to serve customers baked into UPS and FedEx's model, and smaller couriers like DHL and Amazon Shipping happily blacklist large parts of…

I believe it’s a reference to the Private Express Statutes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes ). I don’t remember the law requiring flat rates, but the rates are regulated and effectively required to be more than the post office’s. FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. can’t legally compete with the post office on price.

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

#352

Post by Frondo »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #134
bmitc wrote: post #20

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 USPS, libraries, public schools provide basically guaranteed service to anyone, anywhere. Libraries are a public service. They're free. The people who use them don't have to pay anything for it, which is a boon to those who otherwise couldn't afford it. It's basically a public subsidy for access to books. The postal service is a business. There isn't supposed to be any subsidy, you pay for it through postage, a…

The postal service is in fact the only agency explicitly mentioned in the US Constitution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause

Whether it operates like a business now, it was absolutely intended to be a function of government.

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

#353

Post by rudolph9 »

nerfhammer wrote: post #231
pryce wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideological is close; If you are a billionaire, you didn't perform a billion dollars worth of labor; you got that way being the recipient of profits of significant fractions of entire industries based predominantly on other people's labor. If you make money this way, untapped resources don't necessarily look like untapped oil fields, instead they might look like entire industries that (with friendly legislators) can…

according to the labor theory of value google should be rewarded less than altavista depending on which performed more labor

Although those are both search engines altvista produced drastically different results than google and the comparison of the results is generally subjective. The quality of the search result is what largely drew people to google (I was very young at the time please correct me if I’m mistaken).

Regardless of which entity delivers a package the quality of the result can generally be objectively judged (cost, duration, package care, etc). Depending on the entity delivering search results of e.g the term “bear” the quality is highly subjective (e.g black bear wiki, Chicago bears, polar bear wiki, bear Halloween Costume amazon page, Berenstain Bears, etc). Not to mention the results are continuously changing.

I’m not really familiar with labor theory but I’m inclined to think your analogy isn’t applicable to the discussion of privatizing USPS.

Could you rephrase your comment in terms of sorting algorithms? Say a bubble sort would be rewarded more than a merge sort? Maybe that would better articulate your point??

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

#354

Post by missedthecue »

posguy wrote: post #235
missedthecue wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? How can a billionaire prevent competition without siccing the government on them through tariffs, regulatory hurdles, licenses, etc...

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.

Can you give me one example of a billionaire doing this?

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

#355

Post by isthispermanent »

tclancy wrote: post #279
isthispermanent wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This completely ignores things like the Tragedy of the Commons. Similarly, it ignores the idea some things may be a fundamental right. If the mail is completely privatized, who makes sure I can mail things at all regardless of my wealth? And some day you may ask why wealth should be a barrier to entry to anything.

I don’t think wealth should ever be a barrier to entry for anything.

The idea of privatization and inclusion are not mutually exclusive.

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

#356

Post by claudeganon »

nerfhammer wrote: post #231
pryce wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideological is close; If you are a billionaire, you didn't perform a billion dollars worth of labor; you got that way being the recipient of profits of significant fractions of entire industries based predominantly on other people's labor. If you make money this way, untapped resources don't necessarily look like untapped oil fields, instead they might look like entire industries that (with friendly legislators) can…

according to the labor theory of value google should be rewarded less than altavista depending on which performed more labor

Google rose to prominence by capturing the labor of others (links created by users and site authors between sites) and accruing the value of that labor to itself through automation. It effectively swallowed up the value of unpaid labor that existed at a scale with which Altavista could never compete.

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

#357

Post by missedthecue »

function_seven wrote: post #239
missedthecue wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? How can a billionaire prevent competition without siccing the government on them through tariffs, regulatory hurdles, licenses, etc...

They can finance the dumping of product at below market rates until they run the competition out of business, then corner the market for themselves.

You cannot corner a market through price dumping. You can lose money until the newer firm dies, but once you raise prices again, guess what happens? The Baltimore Gas Company is a famous example of this. They didn't establish their monopoly until the maryland legislature enforced a utility charter that granted them the exclusive right to distribute gas in Baltimore.

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

#358

Post by rayiner »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #291
missedthecue wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's just mind blowing why we should care about companies more than people." 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 inequalit…

Doesn't the US healthcare system, when compared to other countries, stand as a direct example of how private companies aren't inherently better at equitable essential service provision?

Many European countries have largely privatized healthcare providers.

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

#359

Post by nickff »

coliveira wrote: post #242
nickff wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying about pension payments is all wrong. They have the same obligation to fund promised benefits as any private company (which is different from government entities), and they haven't been making the payments.[1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...

The situation of pensions is that the USPS is required by a law created by republicans to pre-pay their retirement fund for the next 75 years, something that no company in the world does. Not only this, but the money they pay is being diverted to the general government accounts, so it is possible that in the future the pension money is not there anyway, if the government decide not to provide the money in the future.…

Quote from the Forbes article I linked to:

>"FACT: ALL companies are required to fund any pension promises they make to their employees. (The only exceptions are for top executives, who can lose their pensions if a company goes bankrupt, and for entities that aren’t actually “companies” - state and local governments and churches.) NONE of them are permitted to take a “pay as you go” approach but must contribute to a pension fund an amount equivalent to what a worker has accrued that year in benefit promises, regardless of how far into the future that worker will be retiring, and must make up for any shortfalls due to asset losses or other reasons. The USPS and private sector companies use the same general actuarial principles to do so, though there are differences in assumptions, particulars of the calculations, etc."

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

#360

Post by treis »

coliveira wrote: post #242
nickff wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying about pension payments is all wrong. They have the same obligation to fund promised benefits as any private company (which is different from government entities), and they haven't been making the payments.[1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...

The situation of pensions is that the USPS is required by a law created by republicans to pre-pay their retirement fund for the next 75 years, something that no company in the world does. Not only this, but the money they pay is being diverted to the general government accounts, so it is possible that in the future the pension money is not there anyway, if the government decide not to provide the money in the future.…

>USPS is required by a law created by republicans to pre-pay their retirement fund for the next 75 years

The USPS is required to pre-pay the pension costs they have incurred. It's not pre-paying the retirement fund for 75 years. It's putting money aside so that you have the money to pay your 25 year old worker the money you promised them when they're 100.

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