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kaitai | 5 months ago

There has long been a desire to privatize the USPS, so this also fits neatly into the narrative that the USPS should not be a public good.

discuss

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master_crab|5 months ago

This is affecting private carriers as well.

chuckadams|5 months ago

There's no goal for the privatized USPS to actually be successful, only to destroy the public good. It's government, it works, so therefore it must be destroyed. This is really how Republicans think.

JJMcJ|5 months ago

Friend ordered a widget from China. Needed for a project he was prototyping.

Widget $30

Shipping $60

Shipped via DHL which did have the mechanisms in place to declare contents and pay the tariffs, but not for free.

For people ordering tube socks off of AliBaba, the economics is entirely different and the result is not unexpected.

philwelch|5 months ago

A public good is a good that is both non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Establishing a federal monopoly doesn’t turn the product of that monopoly into a public good. Likewise, a public good can be provided by a non-government entity.

ffsm8|5 months ago

It's public and good though. ( ๑ ´ • .̫ • ` ๑ )

Jokes aside, I getting hung up on that term in this context feels unnecessary, it was quiet clear what kaitai was talking about from the text he wrote.

doctorpangloss|5 months ago

Have you looked at your mail lately? The USPS is mostly shipping around recycling, like ads. I would happily pay $7 to send a letter 1 time a year if it meant I would see half as much spam.

Surely you see how the spam is subsidizing letters, and then “public good” isn’t so obviously black and white. I mean we could ban spam, tax to pay $6.50 of every $7 letter to enable wedding invitations be $0.50 to mail… but why?

soared|5 months ago

Id rather get the spam and pay $1 for letters. Then lower income people have access to the public good, subsidized by industry. Otherwise sending mail becomes something only rich people do.

UtopiaPunk|5 months ago

My mom lives out-of-state, and she sometimes sends little presents to my kid. My kid then draws a little picture on a postcard and sends it to his grandma.

The post office fucking rules.