[anilshanbhag]

Well you would be surprised that you can buy a sub-dollar item (eg: [1]) on AliExpress and have it shipped all the way from China to your home in US. Just the shipping within US using USPS costs at-least $3.

[1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/SHUANGR-fashion-1-pair-5-sty...

[ElBarto]

Lest we forget that the USPS seems to have been quite OK with how things worked:

http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2010/pr10_058.h...