[rainsford]

This is almost always the right answer to people who claim the government should be run like a business in a tone that suggests they believe they're the first person to ever have thoughts. Businesses and governments operate under wildly different constraints, the most significant being the general need of government to provide a broad range of services even where it's inefficient.

Now people could make a reasonable argument that they actually do want government to run like a business by getting rid of costly functions or services with low ROI. But at least in the US this almost never seems to be the case and proponents of the argument just think government has a ton of excess waste that can be cut with no impact on services.

[toomuchtodo]

“The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people. The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities. The costs of establishing and maintaining the Postal Service shall not be apportioned to impair the overall value of such service to the people.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Reorganization_Act

I hope for representation to at some point arrive that will protect the public good that is the USPS in the same manner the cofounder of Costco, Jim Sinegal, protects the $1.50 hotdog:

> “If you raise the [price of the] effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costco_hot_dog

(Tangentially, I highly recommend the book “Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home” by Stephen Starring Grant, ISBN13 9781668018040)