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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]

#391

Post by coliveira »

missedthecue wrote: post #340
coliveira wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, capitalists think in terms of opening new markets so why let people have for free something from which they can make a fortune? This way of thinking is like a cancer that grows on society.

there is no such thing as a free lunch

Just because something is not free doesn't mean that a private organization should be entitled to sell it. In many cases this just becomes an additional friction to everyone. For example, health care is something that everybody needs and is not free. But this doesn't mean that paying a private company is the best option. Companies need to profit from health care to exist, which in turn drives up costs for everyone and makes the economy less competitive. This is clearly happening in the US.

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

#392

Post by Rebelgecko »

reaperducer wrote: post #288
sdinsn wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is Amazon going to run ships around the Great Lakes to deliver mail to vessels moving between ports? No, because using planes to deliver to regional distribution centers is much more efficient. > Is FedEx going to send a truck an a four-hour round-trip to deliver a single letter to someone on an indian reservation for 50¢? The USPS does not deliver mail directly to the majority of reservation residents. Most have t…

No, because using planes to deliver to regional distribution centers is much more efficient. How do planes and distribution centers get mail to people at sea for months at a time? The USPS does not deliver mail directly to the majority of reservation residents You're not wrong. But there are plenty of people in remote places on the rez who do get mail hours from the nearest trading post. Just because they're not the…

Since they mentioned the Alaska bypass, they're probably talking about areas that are only accessible by air. There's a situation kinda similar to the epacket thing with China. USPS subsidizes package delivery in isolated areas to the point that it's cheaper for the sender than deliveries to urban areas

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

#393

Post by rayiner »

js2 wrote: post #385
rayiner wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Caring about companies more than people” is empty rhetoric. People care about companies and competition because companies create the things people want and need. Indeed, lots of people believe that schools, for example, should be subject to competition. Places like Sweden have school competition via vouchers.

Sweden's schools follow national educational guidelines so they are more like what we call charter schools in the U.S. than the voucher system some districts have in the U.S. and what DeVos argues for. Also, Sweden's students perform more poorly now than they did before vouchers were implemented, though of course people argue over the cause of the decline. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/is-sweden-proof-that-.…

They’re not what we would call charter schools. For example, you can use school vouchers in Sweden for religious education.

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

#394

Post by simonebrunozzi »

teslabox wrote: post #25

There are various advocates for allowing the USPS to return to the banking business. They would put the exploitative check cashing stores out of business. Ellen Brown's has written a copy pieces advocating for postal banking. What We Could Do with a Postal Savings Bank: Infrastructure that Doesn’t Cost Taxpayers a Dime - https://ellenbrown.com/2013/09/23/what-we-could-do-with-a-po... (2013) This piece concludes by su…

Poste Italiane, the Italian equivalent of the postal service, is now mostly a bank that happens to deliver mail as a side business. Hugely profitable, and a quasi-monopolistic market position.

USPS becoming a bank could happen in the US and it would be great for the company, because the Antitrust system in the US is a joke and it would never stop it, IMHO.

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

#395

Post by mauvehaus »

missedthecue wrote: post #320
quickthrowman wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPS, FedEx, DHL, all exist and make money.

UPS ships more parcels than the USPS despite having to pay income tax, property tax, higher wages, and not having access to low interest loans. The UPS is more efficient and also loses less mail. For some reason, we're better off with the USPS. At the very least, they should have their entitlement to monopoly removed.

Honest question: when has the postal service ever lost a package of yours?

I have used the postal service in some fairly uncommon ways, and I have never had a package go missing or not meet their SLA for Priority Mail.

You can send a package to pretty much any town in the country for <$20 and expect it to be there in 3 or 4 days. It’s the next best thing to teleportation, unless you wanted to get it on a Sunday.

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

#396

Post by missedthecue »

alasdair_ wrote: post #335
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…

>So food is really important and vital. Should the government be in charge of growing and distributing food? It already is. The Food and Drug Administration exists. There are countless laws that dictate everything from how crops are. grown to how animals are treated to how products are labeled. Moreover, the government purchases enormous quantities of food and distributes it for the military as well as being involved…

There are also laws governing the UPS and Fedex. That is not the same as the government being in charge of the delivery of mail.

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

#397

Post by isthispermanent »

thesagan wrote: post #344
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…

When there's competition to foster. Unfortunately, the pendulum has been swinging towards market concentration, duopolies, and even monopolies. See: Health insurance industry Also see: Internet service providers Also also see: Publishing

The healthcare industry is a mix of players of all sizes. There are pros and cons to what we have. We do have the absolute cutting edge treatments in the world here. However it does seem like what some have access to is paid for by those who don’t receive it.

We need to do better on healthcare. However I think we can all agree, the complexities of healthcare are far from those of the postal service.

ISPs are constantly under threat of new players, see SpaceX. The only way they can stick around is by adding value to their products. When was the last time you couldn’t get on the internet by two or more means? Cell phone and WiFi are almost always.

Publishing in particular though, this one doesn’t hold water. At no point in history has it ever been 1) easier to publish but also 2) easier to gain a audience. Publishing is fully democratized due to permissionless platforms enabled via the internet.

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

#398

Post by kelnos »

missedthecue wrote: post #326
rblatz wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USPS is self supporting from postage. Your taxes aren't funding a "broken" business model. But they are funding a bunch of people trying to interfere with, and force the USPS out of business.

How much tax does the USPS pay? None. No income tax, no property tax, they don't even pay parking tickets. But for some reason, they've been losing money for decades. (yes, even before the whole pension debacle) UPS on the other hand pays income tax, pays property tax, pays higher wages, fully funds their pension plan, and does not have access to the same zero or low interest treasury loans that the USPS does and sti…

> But for some reason, they've been losing money for decades. (yes, even before the whole pension debacle)

Citation needed? A quick search suggests that post-pension-debacle, the USPS has lost money every year, to the tune of several billion dollars. Pre-pension-debacle, things were mixed; most years they made a decent profit, some years they lost some money, though much less than they do post-pension-debacle.

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

#399

Post by tptacek »

woodruffw wrote: post #349
tptacek wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is privatizing the Post Office "reactionary"? The origins of the USPS are in a pre-Revolutionary grant from the British Crown. It's always been a public service. And what is "worse politics" but a begging of the question? Ok, privatizing the Post Office is worse than keeping it public; I agree. The question is why they believe that.

> How is privatizing the Post Office "reactionary"? The origins of the USPS are in a pre-Revolutionary grant from the British Crown. It's always been a public service. It isn't; the reactionary comment is a more general one about the relationship between self-labeled libertarians and political positions that are disguisable within the libertarian framework. Being anti-postage and anti-national ID for disenfranchiseme…

Ok, but even if I was to agree with you about wealthy people supporting structural racism, how do you connect that back to wanting to privatize the Postal Service?

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

#400

Post by js2 »

rayiner wrote: post #393
js2 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden's schools follow national educational guidelines so they are more like what we call charter schools in the U.S. than the voucher system some districts have in the U.S. and what DeVos argues for. Also, Sweden's students perform more poorly now than they did before vouchers were implemented, though of course people argue over the cause of the decline. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/is-sweden-proof-that-.…

They’re not what we would call charter schools. For example, you can use school vouchers in Sweden for religious education.

Is this statement from the page I linked to wrong then?

> In contrast to American private schools, Sweden’s free schools don’t charge tuition — they draw on government funds to operate — and are required to follow Sweden’s national curriculum. They’re more comparable to American charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run.

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