(Also posted at The Agonist)
The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.
It seems there’s been awful lot of news lately about the plight of the U.S. Postal Service. Revenues are declining, costs are increasing…and hey, wait…when’s the last time any of y’all actually mailed a letter? You remember letters, right? They’re those things you put stamps on (you DO remember stamps, no??) and then put into a mailbox (don’t make me explain that….). Then they somehow magically end up at their destination 2-3 days later.
I know; it’s been so long that I had to think about all of that for a bit before it all came back to me. We still have a Postal Service? Evidently so…and they’re in a world of hurt, perhaps at least in part because of people like me who insist on using da Interwebs to conduct our business.
At the risk of dating myself, I can remember $.04 stamps. Granted, I was a little tyke, but, if memory serves (and there’s no guarantee of that), some of them had a picture of the late John Glenn’s Mercury space capsule. Of course, now a stamp costs…um, how much does a stamp cost? I honestly don’t know…and that, in a nutshell, is why the USPS is a dinosaur. The only question is when the Ice Age that completely wipes them out will arrive…because, given the rules they have to operate under now, they’re hosed.
Imagine running a race wearing only one shoe (an ill-fitting one at that), with both hands tied behind your back. That, metaphorically speaking, is what the USPS is up against. Because they’re a quasi-governmental agency (and I still have no idea what in the Hell “quasi-governmental” means), they’re governed by all sorts of laws that prevent them from engaging in certain types of businesses. Meanwhile, their two best-known competitors, UPS and Fedex, are free to do pretty much what they please if it makes business sense. Even on a level playing field, the USPS would have difficulty competing with UPS and Fedex. It’s too big, too bureaucratic, and too bloated to be competitive. The problem, though, is that the playing field isn’t level because of the laws restricting everything from what businesses USPS can engage in to how much they can charge for their services. When’s the last time UPS or Fedex had to appear at a Congressional hearing to justify a rate increase?
The USPS is expected to survive financially while burdened with all manner of legal restrictions, as well as some sizable (some might say onerous) union contracts (and I’m a union supporter). In an “adapt or die” business climate, the USPS is dying on the vine. Most of us grew up taking mail delivery for granted. As a kid, one of the highlights of my day was going to the local post office in Walker, MN, and checking box #563 to see if we had any mail. Some days, I’d walk home with all manner of catalogs, letters, bills, and magazines. In many ways, that was my primary connection with the outside world (When you grow up in a town of 1,000 people in the middle of nowhere near the Canadian border, the bar’s set pretty low). Now, in the Internet Age, most of what excited me as a child is transacted electronically. In the same way television gradually killed off radio stars, snail mail is being strangled by e-mail. Such is the way of the world. Adapt or die.
Do we even need a postal service anymore? If we do, what form should it take, and shouldn’t it be allowed to compete in the market on a level playing field? If we don’t, what impact will laying off several hundred thousand of worker have on an already-tottering economy? The world is growing and evolving, and it’s entirely possible that the USPS is a white elephant, something of little value save for the sentimental. I don’t know what the answer to these questions are, but Congress being what it is these days, it will no doubt be debated and demagogued ad nauseum, then saved with a few politically palatable half-measures which will merely forestall the inevitable.
Personally, I think USPS should be given the opportunity to compete in the marketplace, free of the legal limits that currently burden it. Push it off the deep end and see if it can swim. If not, sell it for parts. Anything short of this will simply delay the painfully inevitable and very public demise of USPS…and it will cost taxpayers a LOT more money. Isn’t that what the free market is all about?
