So, a couple days ago the United States Mail Service announced that they will be cutting their overnight delivery for packages since the costs are getting too high. What this does for Netflix and Gamefly services is ridiculous. Paying bills can be done online and should be done online. DVD’s though, are a different animal. In other country’s like Japan, the postal service is privatized. What’s weird about this story is that mail and the mailing of things is mentioned in the Constitution. Meaning, that if the country is going to try and fix this problem of closing post offices and less mail being delivered, it will literally take an act of Congress. Congressman are allowed to have franking privileges for the U.S. Postal Service. In economics, we would call this a free-ridership. A certain group of people pay for one service while another group of citizens use that service at no charge.
Now, the video said that he expects to lose around 50% of his business. Now if Congress continues to mail me flyer after flyer regarding the campaign issues and smear campaigns and “vote yes on whatever” while not paying for something like stamps and postage that we all pay for, there has to be some changes. Congress may have thought this would be a good idea 200 years ago since they didn’t want to be held back like they were during King James’ reign. However, we live in different times and modern countries have allowed for privatizing of public goods to decrease the amount of dead weight loss on a publics budget. I had asked my mother how her Congressman gets in contact with her and it’s mostly through e-mail, which is free.
The part about this that is so absurd is that if I asked someone to take a letter across the country for me and get it there in a couple of days, would you pay the less than a dollar? No. Wouldn’t they want to get at least whatever it took in gasoline for the travel? Exactly. The mail service in this country has become unsustainable and must be either paid for in full, meaning higher prices and less service, OR we privatize it and let someone else take charge of the operation. How that would be done is very hard to comprehend. We would either have to have a monopoly or a duopoly operate while knowing everyone’s mailing address. This would also affect the process of getting a license and changing addresses.
This would also make one wonder if companies would charge one for concealing or making your address private to certain entities. Quite a future we would have to plan ahead for, don’t you think?
One, there would have to a couple of companies competing for your address or just claiming your address for them as if they were marking their land in a game of Risk. They would then have to set up mailboxes and stations at mini-malls and corners where ever seemed suitable. Then comes the time when you receive mail from either one or both companies that deliver this mail. They charge for postage and all that jazz, but then comes the time when they must keep your information from security breaches and hackers.
Would such a world exist? Would Congress allow for it to exist? Has our economy come to the point where we need to privatize more and more of our public goods so that we can employ more people?
I personally think it’s a good idea, because if this Congress doesn’t see that there are forces in this universe that not only work faster than them but more efficiently and are able to keep the ship afloat, then I think it’s a road that we should start to explore.
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