President-Elect Trump recently suggested privatizing the US Post Office (USPS). Why? Trump points out that people have options for delivering mail and packages: UPS, FedEx, and Amazon. Competition works…
According to Forbes, privatizing the Post Office would be “foolish” and “ridiculous.” Robert Reich posted this remark on Facebook:
Trump says he’s wants to privatize USPS because it’s “unprofitable”. Reminder that the Post Office isn’t a for-profit enterprise, nor should it be. It’s a public service that guarantees everyone in America reliable, affordable, and universal mail service.
One can find a multitude of objections to USPS privatization on YouTube, BlueSky, and X. What do all of these anti-privatizations messages have in common? None of these communications were conveyed in the form of archaic physical snail-mail. Why? Traditional mail is absurdly costly and slow by todays digital internet standards.
Trump correctly points out that consumers already choose between private package deliverers. However, the USPS also faces crushing competition from digital forms of correspondence. USPS mail volume has declined steadily, and postal employment has fallen from 900k in 1999 to 600k now. This decline coincides with steady population growth. The truth here is that the USPS continues to function for two main reasons: the nostalgic value of traditional letter deliveries to some, and stalwart support for every bit of the public sector by ideologues.
United States mail volume:
Those who argue against postal privatization via the internet unwittingly provide more evidence for privatization. The decline of physical mail began with fax machines, and additional technological advances have rendered it superfluous. The question thus is not whether we should privatize the USPS. The real question is whether any contemporary private investors would pay anything more than a fire-sale price for this industrial dinosaur. There would be no harm in allowing private bids for the USPS, but it might be best to legalize private letter deliveries and just let the remnants of the USPS collapse.
