photo credit: SC Fiasco
Facing a potential $6 billion shortfall this year, the U.S. Postal Service has asked Congress to allow it to cut one day of mail delivery and it wouldn’t necessarily be Saturday! In fact, they’re proposing to suspend mail delivery on, of all things, Tuesday. What’s next, no mail delivery in months ending with “y”?
Personally, I think that we should just let the USPS fail, and deregulate the entire industry. Not only would the major express shipping companies like UPS and Fedex be better at providing mail delivery, but thousands of local entrepreneurs could jump into the fray and provide the specific services in demand in their communities.
Several other countries, including Sweden, New Zealand, Germany and Argentina have opened up the postal services markets to outside competition. If Germany, a country the size of Montana, has at least 39 private postage delivery companies, imagine what we’d have here!
Finally, I’d be remiss to discuss postal deregulation in the United States and not mention one of my heros, Lysander Spooner, the 19th century entrepreneur who opened a competing postal service and only failed because the US government blocked him at every level:
To begin with, Spooner couldn’t understand why the Post Office should have a monopoly on mail delivery. He was schooled enough in law, however, to know that the Constitution ordered Congress to provide for mail delivery and it had done so with a postal department. But the wily Spooner found a loophole – the Constitution did not declare that a private citizen could not do likewise.