>Sam Krogstad of Bush Consolidators, which specializes in sending construction materials via the mail, says the Postal Service’s losses are partly self-inflicted because the postal system pays 10 times as much to send the building materials by air freight as it charges Krogstad to mail them.
The US constitution merely allows congress to establish post offices and post roads. In a wider interpretation, it gives congress the right to regulate the postal system. But that seems to be a right to do something, not an obligation.
And it certainly doesn't read as an obligation for the government to run a postal system themselves. They merely chose to do so.
Nothing in the constitution indicates what kind of parcels the mail service should deliver. They already refuse to deliver certain types of parcels - are they violating the constitution by doing so?
Who cares? Engage with the argument that it’s self inflicted losses. If it’s a service for citizens then by definition it cannot have losses because it is _not_ a business.
Even applying the idea of profit and loss to the post office is using a paradigm against it that does not fit the reason for its creation
Responding to this a bit late, but your link is showing me a system that involves a fixed rate for a service if I’m interpreting this correctly?
I would need to be given some sort of argument that this was a cash cow and not a service that is absorbing a massive amount of risk by giving a static price in the face of a constantly changing business world.
Every company I’ve worked at has been massively adverse to any risk because that can scale to infinite. Offering a service for a static price sounds exactly like something that is ignoring the idea of profit and loss as a metric to compare itself to in exchange for making sure everyone has access to the service
> Offering a service for a static price sounds exactly like something that is ignoring the idea of profit and loss as a metric to compare itself to in exchange for making sure everyone has access to the service[.]
The Penny Post was a profit driven private enterprise. There might or might not have been a more profitable pricing strategy for them, I don't know. Neither me nor business people have perfect knowledge (and don't need it to make markets work).
> The Postal Clause was added to the Constitution to facilitate interstate communication as well as to create a source of revenue for the early United States.
This is a good example of the “tragedy of the commons”. How a public good is abused by a few egoists to make a profit and destroy it for everybody else. What’s even more depressing is that many here seem to find that totally okay.
>Sam Krogstad of Bush Consolidators, which specializes in sending construction materials via the mail, says the Postal Service’s losses are partly self-inflicted because the postal system pays 10 times as much to send the building materials by air freight as it charges Krogstad to mail them.
https://apnews.com/article/281d3e682569b2cc5edd890bf600d17e