[jlcx]

This article seems to be missing something important: the postal service is still subsidized by the federal government, even if there isn't a direct transfer of taxpayer money.

The mail I receive through USPS is ~90% unwanted (maybe more, if you go by weight), despite my ongoing efforts to "go paperless" and opt out of marketing mail. If I could stop this constant flow of junk, I would gladly pay UPS/FedEx twice as much money to deliver the small amount of mail that I actually care about.

[treehau5]

The USPS is greatly subsidized because of these print advertisements. If they did not exist, you would not get your mail, or it would cost like 10 bucks to send a letter. Priority Mail for 5.95? Try 25.95.

There's a reason why it costs 11 dollars and some change to ship a small box with UPS/FedEx -- that's just the cost of shipping.

We are so blind to the true cost of shipping. What would be better is if we got rid of UPS and FedEx, in my opinion.

[ghaff]

I was with you until the last sentence. Why on earth would we want to get rid of competition that has driven a lot of the innovation in the shipping/logistics space?

[treehau5]

Well, I will preface and just say it's my own opinion, and I don't know too much, but my thinking goes something like this -- as you said, the innovation has already happened. There's really nothing left to innovate. As far as I see, FedEx and UPS aren't working on driverless technologies or drone delivery, that would be Google, Amazon, etc. Also, because we have 3 or 4 select giant online retailers, and then the giant big box stores that have the onus to pressure the USPS to innovate. It would drive down costs for everyone on a whole, as well as the retailers. Anywhere up to 80% of the cost of physical goods is transportation, and about half of that is on that last mile. The added benefit of the USPS being a federal agency (well maybe not so much with Trump), we could pressure the politicians to ensure customers are getting good service.

[ghaff]

Now I have to assume you're just being funny.

"The added benefit of the USPS being a federal agency (well maybe not so much with Trump), we could pressure the politicians to ensure customers are getting good service."

No, the innovation hasn't already happened. Just because UPS and FedEx aren't doing PR stunts like Amazon's 60 minutes advertorial built around drone delivery the day before Cyber Monday doesn't mean they're just sitting still.

As for autonomous vehicles. Lots of people are working on the tech and once it becomes interesting for last 100 feet delivery in a few decades UPS and FedEx will have plenty of options to deploy it.

[benchaney]

>The added benefit of the USPS being a federal agency (well maybe not so much with Trump), we could pressure the politicians to ensure customers are getting good service.

Please tell me this it's a joke.

[treehau5]

When you start being cynical and think democratic processes are a joke, then yes, they won't work. But I refuse to give in to cynicism. These agencies are to operate for the public benefit.

[phil21]

To make a different argument - because Fedex and UPS cherry-pick the profitable routes and leave USPS to handle the undesirable markets they are required by law to serve. This would be highly problematic if the USPS didn't exist on those routes as a very subsidized backstop.

That's about the only argument you can make, and I'm not certain it's a great one. Additionally one giant national parcel company in theory should have scale working for them and thus lower per unit costs - in practice I think the opposite holds true for large monopolies. But reasonable minds could disagree here.

[snovv_crash]

Maybe GP just prefers DHL?