[lokar]

A lot of the USPS budget is from delivering bulk mail. They already fail to break even (albeit with absurd retirement funding rules imposed on them). Without the fees from bulk mail they would need to raise prices, and it's not entirely clear they could given they face strong competition.

[SoftTalker]

I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026. Yes, the Constitution grants congress the power to establish "post offices and post roads" but it doesn't mandate it AFAIK.

Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or driving their funny looking trucks) but are they really necessary?

Edit to add: since running post offices is explicitly a Federal power, a conversion of US Mail to being electronically based would be completely within scope. There would be no arguing over "states rights" that tends to become a logjam for any other national infrastructure or policy changes.

[stryan]

Practically speaking, USPS does a lot of last mile package delivery that no one else wants to do, including Amazon. If USPS wasn't delivering to those locations no one would be. And we're not talking middle-of-no-where-Wyoming locations, plenty of places east of the Mississippi have only USPS too.

There's all sorts of philosophical arguments as well: government services shouldn't need to turn a profit, all citizens need to be able to interact with the State and the post office provides a way to do that, mail-in voting, Post Offices can offer stuff like general delivery for those without permanent addresses, etc.

[SoftTalker]

There are lots of rural places the USPS doesn't deliver to. They require you to get your mail at a PO Box at the nearest post office, or have a mailbox at a common spot on the nearest public road (which might be a fair distance from your house).

[stryan]

They won't deliver to the house but they'll still deliver to that area. Amazon/etc wouldn't even deliver to the area without the infrastructure of the USPS.

[hadlock]

You need a non-electronic way to bill land owners for property taxes. That's it. Physical snail-mail is the de-facto way for the government to legally serve property taxes and other bills to private citizens. Yes we live in 2026 and everyone has email, but there's no legal requirement to give the government your email address, or even have one. You are however, legally required to provide a mailing address for your property tax bill to be sent to.

Sure, by that standard we could probably reduce to weekly or even monthly mail service. It's been suggested since at least 2008 we drop Tuesday mail service as almost nobody sends mail on Saturdays and there's no mail service on Sundays.

[precommunicator]

Who says anything about e-mail? Government could legislate specific government electronic inboxes, with e-mail and SMS notifications of delivery, as has been happening in several, if not all EU countries.

I haven't got a snail mail from my government for years at this point, nor did I needed to send one that way.

[exabrial]

I pay all of my property taxes online.

[15155]

That's wonderful: the option of a payment portal isn't the point. The purpose of snail mail is process can be served prior to seizing/applying a lien on the property when you don't pay (online or otherwise.)

[raw_anon_1111]

Because you can’t make money serving rural areas and no for profit company would touch deliverying to those areas

[lokar]

Another case of the evil, unamerican cities subsidizing the real Americans

[michaelt]

Traditionally, the state has certain duties it needs to perform for every member of the population.

Passports, driving licenses, polling cards, draft registration, pensions, company registrations, patents, copyrights, court summons, speeding fines, inheritance, tax paperwork, census, etc etc.

It’s much simpler to perform these duties if you have a means of communication that can reliably reach every citizen.

[SoftTalker]

I'm not sure I'd put "reliable" in any description of the USPS. I get my neighbors mail in my box often. I can only assume some of my mail gets delivered to them as well.

[joemi]

That's still far more reliable than trying to email someone who doesn't have a computer or smartphone.

[lokar]

I think it's mostly not needed, but there are a lot of edge cases or narrow situations where it's important. They could be fixed, but no one is doing that.

IMO, a better option is to switch to 3 days/week delivery, and where addresses are very spread out, require centralized boxes.

[dawnerd]

Those other countries are much, much smaller in land mass than the US making it much easier for private companies to be competitive. Privatizing post in the US would be potentially life threatening to some rural communities. More than just mail is delivered. Saying we don't need one is pretty out of touch IMO.

[duskdozer]

It provides the best service of all of them. I'm not sure why you would want to add a profit-seeking middleman when you can just fund the service at cost.

[46493168]

> I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026

Mail in voting.

[conception]

Denmark is like twice the size of Massachusetts.

[Hikikomori]

Danskjävlarna ruined posten.

[duskdozer]

>They already fail to break even

It doesn't need to make money or "break even." We just pay the cost in tax or postage that is needed to run the service.

[lokar]

I don’t mind a public subsidy, but that’s not current law or the majority attitude

[exabrial]

yeah... I'll take clean air and pay a few extra bucks the 3 times a year I actually need to mail something.