The United States Post Office has been around for more then two hundred years, and I am sure it has served us well the past. I am not writing this to complain about the price of stamps or to bad mouth the postal service. I just don’t think the government should be in the business of providing such a service.
The reason that the USPS is still around is because it is illegal for any other business to compete with them. You read correctly the USPS is alive and somewhat well today because of the government sponsored monopoly that they hold on first class mail. Those business class envelopes that you get your bills in every month by law can only be delivered by the USPS.
Recently I went to the USPS to mail a book and waited 15 minutes in line. I expected this and was not thoroughly annoyed at the process. The lady at the front was nice, and courteous. The problem was that for some reason the post office closes at 5, and everyone was trying to get their mail in before it closed.
A week later I had to mail something via Federal Express. I walked in, handed the lady my item, which she promptly dropped in an envelope and mailed. I was out the door in under a minute.
Now this could have been a coincidence, or I was just in a really good Fed Ex store on a really good day, but I doubt it. Let us take a look at a little big of the financial history of the USPS, and ask yourself, would you buy stock in this company? This is the only company in the United States that is legally allowed to hold a Monopoly
You might be saying that I am full it, and that the USPS is a wonderful organization employing hundreds of thousands of Americans. But let me ask you a question, do you enjoy going to the post office? How about the BMV? Perhaps taking a trip to the Social Security Office to brighten your day? Do you look forward to making visits to those places with all the smiling grouchy people? Or would you rather have your fingernails ripped off?
My argument can be summed up in this: Government organizations are traditionally much worse at accomplishing their goals then their private counter parts. Most of the time the only reason we have such organizations is because privatizing the industry would just not make practical sense.
We should remove the “Legal Monopoly” that the USPS enjoys and divest the federal government of delivering first class mail. Or simply allow the USPS to try to compete with Fed Ex and UPS. For some reason if we allowed that to happen I don’t think the USPS would be around very long at all……
Posted by fubar1383 
