I'm still waiting to hear about a better option ... what will yield better outcomes?
> What you are missing is this institution does not have direct accountability to neither voters nor tax payers.
I'm not sure what this means, though it's often repeated.
In most democracies, only one person who does anything (legislatures don't act, they make rules) that is directly responsible is the chief executive, e.g., the President in the United States. 99.9999% of what is done is by people not directly responsible to voters, which includes every park ranger, bank regulator, soldier, janitor, cabinet official, medicare payment processor, security guard, CIA agent, NIH researcher, etc etc etc.
Furthermore, every international agreement is made by the executives, and carried out by someone - Trump isn't going to be personally delivering the mail to Mali (or to Minnesota) no matter what happens, so inevitably it's done by an institution that "does not have direct accountability to neither voters nor tax payers".
How do you propose we handle international mail with people directly accountable to voters?
> why is the Universal Postal Union concerned with income redistribution
It's not redistribution, it's paying our share as the richest countries in the world. Is it income redistribution when Bezos pays more taxes than the person who served you your coffee? The principle is equal sacrifice. If Bezos and the waiter paid the exact same taxes, it would be absurd. Bezos and the rich countries can afford much more. We'd have to be amazing doctrinaire or miserly to demand that poor people pay as much as we do. $300 million issues should not reach the President's desk in the U.S. - it's laughable. There are many corporations that could write off that amount without thinking twice.
> Is it income redistribution when Bezos pays more taxes than the person who served you your coffee
Yes, it is, taxation is a mean of income redistribution!
But I find your example flawed for the purpose of this discussion. More apt would be to say that the coffee clerk (through his taxes) have to help reimburse the Chinese post office when Bezos orders a package from Aliexpress.
But note, I didn’t say income redistribution is always bad! You seem to assume that you are arguing with some tea-party republican with a MAGA cap. But I am not, not even american.
But income distribution through UPU is incredible opaque. If we are going to pay foreign aid, I think we tax payers at a minimum deserve to know exactly how much we are paying and to whom!
>How do you propose we handle international mail with people directly accountable to voters?
I don’t suggest that. What I am saying is that they since they are not directly accountable to the tax payers, the people that are (eg US president) have to hold them accountable.
Also they better stick to their scope or they will lose public support.
I doubt the US will leave UPU in the end, but this will be a huge wake up call for the other member countries.
> miserly to demand that poor people pay as much as we do
But no one is upset with US or France paying more than Zimbabwe. They are upset mostly with Chinas classification, which doesn’t match its new economic powers.
Whether US president should be involved in a
$300 million decision I don’t know, but that is still is a lot of money, and the tax payers deserve that every dollar of their money is spent judiciously.
A corporation writing that off is not an apt comparison because being a shareholder is a voluntarily taken risk position. You can’t opt out of paying tax.
> What you are missing is this institution does not have direct accountability to neither voters nor tax payers.
I'm not sure what this means, though it's often repeated.
In most democracies, only one person who does anything (legislatures don't act, they make rules) that is directly responsible is the chief executive, e.g., the President in the United States. 99.9999% of what is done is by people not directly responsible to voters, which includes every park ranger, bank regulator, soldier, janitor, cabinet official, medicare payment processor, security guard, CIA agent, NIH researcher, etc etc etc.
Furthermore, every international agreement is made by the executives, and carried out by someone - Trump isn't going to be personally delivering the mail to Mali (or to Minnesota) no matter what happens, so inevitably it's done by an institution that "does not have direct accountability to neither voters nor tax payers".
How do you propose we handle international mail with people directly accountable to voters?
> why is the Universal Postal Union concerned with income redistribution
It's not redistribution, it's paying our share as the richest countries in the world. Is it income redistribution when Bezos pays more taxes than the person who served you your coffee? The principle is equal sacrifice. If Bezos and the waiter paid the exact same taxes, it would be absurd. Bezos and the rich countries can afford much more. We'd have to be amazing doctrinaire or miserly to demand that poor people pay as much as we do. $300 million issues should not reach the President's desk in the U.S. - it's laughable. There are many corporations that could write off that amount without thinking twice.