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

inthepublicinterest.org

421–430 of 575 posts

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

#421
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why does it have exclusivity for letter service? It doesn't have exclusivity for letter service. UPS, FedEx, and DHL (among others) will carry letters across the country for you. Yes, it's going to cost ~$10 to roughly match the service speed of a USPS first-class stamp. But it's available.

The post office does indeed have a legal monopoly on first class mail.

Hasn't this been worked around, though? I can take a letter or other paper documents to FedEx, and they will ship it. It will be more expensive than USPS, though.

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

#423
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

"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…

Except that there are billions in agricultural subsidies and they are (at least intended) to manage the cost of food on store shelves. The government will pay farmers to not grow food to control the supply. The government isn't fully running the show but it's absurd to assert that the government is incapable of everything and that only private business can get the job done!

Especially when you're being entirely disingenuous about your argument. I don't honestly understand how you can truly believe that corporate interests care more about people than the government. Perhaps you also believe that corporations are people, and at that point I guess I'd have to concede. If corporations are people, then they do care about people. It's just the one they care about is themselves.

Not every business is a cartoon mustache twirling villain but it's baffling to me to see the lengths people will go to to both outright dismiss the governments ability to do literally anything, and also that private enterprise can do it better.

Also the major sources of inequalities today go far beyond education, policing, and the justice system. Many of them are inexplicably tied to private enterprise. You don't want the government in charge of growing or distributing food. Well that's great. What's also great is that the cheapest food you can buy is also some of the most unhealthy trash you can put in your body. Soda is cheaper than water.

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

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would I want to help the USPS at a cost to me?

because you're only considering short term monetary cost at the cost of long term benefit

how so

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

#425
post #74

Something I don't normally see discussed re privatization of US Postal Service is that it doesn't appear to be a novel idea. Singapore's postal service, SingPost, is a publicly traded company[1]. The UK's postal service, Royal Mail, is a publicly traded limited company[2]. Germany's postal service, Deutsche Post AG, is a publicly traded company[3]. Japan's postal service, Japan Post, is a publicly traded company[4].…

Consider any tangible thing that's wrong with America - shareholders whims are likely to be a part of that equation.

This is a state of affairs we need to consider rolling back, not expanding.

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

#426
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I think if we had a real UBI, then doing away with services like the USPS and public schools would be okay. These services were designed to help make things affordable to people who could not afford the private version. Maybe instead we should have just made sure everybody could afford the private version, by directly giving them money!

That doesn't seem to make sense to me. We should give people money only to remove services, increasing their costs, likely far beyond any basic income could provide for?

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

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post office does indeed have a legal monopoly on first class mail.

Hasn't this been worked around, though? I can take a letter or other paper documents to FedEx, and they will ship it. It will be more expensive than USPS, though.

it is more expensive because it must be shipped as a parcel rather than a letter. They can't ship it as a letter because it's not legal to.

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

#428
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing your anecdote, but you left out the rest of the sentence that provides context for the word ‘mail’ when you quoted me. I was explicitly referring to first-class letters, not packages. I believe first-class mail is better left to the USPS.

Meh... I’ve had issues with first class mail as well. My neighbor getting my letters, I even had a letter torn open and the check taken. Turns out it was a postal employee but at least the postmaster followed up.

That’s unfortunate to hear, sounds like you’ve had some bad luck with the USPS. I can see why you took issue with my claim that the USPS is good about delivering the mail, I’d be frustrated if I was you as well.

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

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

not really about USPS, just the idea that the Kochs want the USPS privatized because they personally want to steal the value of labor being performed there. there's no reason to believe the Koch's are interested in or would be good at running postal services; probably fedex/ups/dhl/amazon or someone else would be better at that, leaving no particular material advantage to the Kochs. the labor theory of value being espoused by the person I was replying to is just an easily skewered tangent in an emotionally colinear conspiratorial vein. as far as I can tell the Kochs are just ideologues.

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

#430
post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is no such thing as a free lunch

True, but the question is always: what level of profit is reasonable? A corporation, absent regulation, will charge as much as the market will bear. If they can charge twice as much but only lose a quarter of their customers, they'll do it. Such a situation with something like water would be a disaster. People would die.

They will not charge as much as the market can bear. They will charge as much as they can without competition eating their market share.

There is no regulation for instance on the cost of soda, but it is not priced as high as the market can bear. Soda is incredibly cheap and requires no government interference to be cheap.

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