Word: mailings
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...fact, the problem lies not in the form of the Postal Service but in the nature of the beast. It is no more reasonable to expect the government to run a cheap, efficient system of mail delivery than it is to expect water to run uphill. The USPS is a monopoly, and a government-operated one at that. It has no profit motive; in the private sector, a firm has to make a profit to survive, and it can only do that by providing people with a service they want at a price they are willing...
...obvious solution to the problem of steadily deteriorating mail service is to legalize private competition in first class mail, and to lift those restrictions which inhibit competition in other classes of mail. In many areas, private companies already compete successfully with the Postal Service in second- and third-class mail, despite those restrictions and despite the fact that the USPS charges less than cost on such mail, subsidizing it out of revenues from its biggest money-maker, first-class mail. In Congressional hearings in 1974, Congressman Philip Crane reported that the American Postal Corporation was delivering advertising to over half...
Even the Postal Service concedes that private companies could probably deliver first-class mail cheaper than it can. In a report for the USPS, McKinsey and Company estimated that private firms could deliver local mail charging only 43% of what-USPS charges, and still make an 18% return on investment. What was true over a century ago is still true: until 1850, when the first laws against private mail delivery were enacted, over 95% of all mail in the US was delivered by private firms. Companies in New York City even provided delivery two and three times...
Postal employees, ingenious in their fleecing of the public, have concocted a number of arguments for keeping their legal monopoly, and some have even proposed expanding it to eliminate the budding competition in lower classes of mail. One claim is that, if wide-open competition is permitted, firms will only exploit the lucrative first-class letter market, the only class in which the USPS makes a profit. According to this argument, private price-cutting will make it impossible for the USPS to compete in first-class mail, leaving it with only money-losing lower classes. But private firms have already...
...status quo also claim that fractious competition would raise total costs by eliminating the advantages of economies of scale. Uncharitable critics point out that the USPS has hardly shown that its huge size offers great financial advantages. In any case, if it proves true that large concerns can deliver mail cheaper than small ones, then, as in any other such case, large firms will grow up and drive out their smaller, less efficient competitors. Still another argument is that private companies will refuse to deliber to remote rural areas, due to excessive cost. In this case, as in any other...