Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by thayne 25 days ago
Post is a natural monopoly, at a national scale. It is much more efficient to have a single centralized service doing all mail delivery than several competing services doing the same.

It isn't completely non-rivalrous, but the marginal cost of delivering a parcel diminishes as the number of parcels delivered in an area goes up.
1 comments
eru 25 days ago
> Post is a natural monopoly, at a national scale.

It evidently is not. There's multiple providers.

link
thayne 24 days ago
1. FedEx and UPS are not at all competitive for delivering non-package mail (letters, bills, etc.). Or even small packages.

2. Commercial providers rely on USPS to deliver packages in some situations.

link
eru 24 days ago
About (1): you know that USPS literally has a monopoly and several legal advantages?

About (2): duh, yes, because they ain't stupid. For an analogy: if there's free municipal water, Coca-Cola would make use of that for bottling, too. Or if there were subsidised electricity available etc.

link