Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Please Mr. Postman

Here's Megan McArdle with "Whither the Post Office?"
Congress has given the Post Office two incompatible mandates.  It is to make money like a business . . . but it is not to have any of the freedom that businesses have to, say, close branch offices, cut its delivery area, or change delivery schedules. 
This is, to put it mildly, lunatic.
The USPS is handling 22% fewer pieces of mail than five years ago.  Personally, I pay most of my bills online and if the Post Office closed down I can't think of a single transaction I couldn't handle through online banking. That leaves - what? - Christmas cards and Netflix?  They should have weaned off Saturday delivery a year ago.

1 comment:

Brian G. said...

You couldn't be more right. I always believed that if mail delivery was privatized, it would all of a sudden be profitable.