[reom_tobit]

Even if everyone went fully digital, and letters became a thing of the past, you would still need a functional postal service.

Packages obviously will still be sent for one, but also from a national security perspective it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire delivery logistics network.

Lastly, if you see the government as enabling an economy for free markets, a state run postal service is a great backbone for that.

[kingsuper20]

>it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire delivery logistics network.

When you consider how much of US logistics is done by private companies, I'd say we're pretty much there and always were. Even if you dig into the USPS by itself, how much is done by private contractors? ..especially upstream from the local office.

That last mile of to-the-house delivery is a non-trivial thing but I'm not sure how essential it is.

Restated: it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire electricity generation and delivery network. Yet here we are.

[reom_tobit]

> Restated: it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire electricity generation and delivery network. Yet here we are.

I suppose this was a restatement to point out a flaw in my previous point, but I do agree with the notion that critical national infrastructure should not involve private businesses.

Just because “here we are”, doesn’t mean it’s where we should be. There are different points of view on this so I don’t expect everyone to agree with this (market efficiencies, etc etc), but I just see it as a solution looking for a problem in many cases.

Downsizing the USPS, putting increasingly more onerous rules on it, then turning around and saying “well look, the private market is already doing so much, let’s just go with that”, seems shortsighted to me.

[kingsuper20]

I think I worry less about government vs. private for things that are basically monopolies or oligopolies, both can be arbitrary and unfair (and abused), but that a lot of extremely important goods and services represent single points of failure.

Single-sourcing electricity or package delivery or precursor raw materials always seems like a near-sighted move even if it is cheaper. There's a false economy to gigantism.