[aptwebapps]

The main reason for the USPS is coverage. The US has a whole lot of sparsely populated, but not unpopulated, land. Covering these people is part of what makes the USPS unprofitable.

The same problem exists for telephones but the main approach has been to set high minimum prices that non-rural carriers have to pay rural carriers for traffic flowing from the former to the latter. This enables the rural providers to make a profit but leads to unintended consequences like free conference call companies set up in rural areas which get a kick back from the local provider for the incoming traffic they engender.

[kalleboo]

I thought the reason the USPS was unprofitable was that they had to fund employee pensions 75 years in advance

[phinnaeus]

In fact, I thought the USPS was profitable before that mandate. In fact, one of the very few profitable government agencies. But I might be wrong on that.