It seems me that Cep doesn't make a very effective case for her position. Her recounting of the history of the Postal Service is undeniably interesting - for instance, I didn't know the specifics on when stamps and mail slots came along - and reinforce the notion that it's been imbued with a noble purpose since its founding. But she recites its problems in recent years - volume considerably down from its peak, even as costs for equipment - and, um, pensions and health insurance - rise and then points out that, even though the USPS is a quasi-autonomous organization, Congress still sets its rates, regulates what services it can provide and determines rules for operating. What's up with that? Why shouldn't an independent provider of a service be able to be in charge of those things? Well, that would sever the remaining tie it has to government, and we'd be talking about - bingo, privatization.
Plus, she attempts to alarm her readers with this scenario: "With a private system, you might pay fifteen times more to mail something to your cousin in Alaska than to your sister in New York City; a radical magazine might be denied distribution entirely; a small business in Montana might have to drive a hundred miles to ship the neon signs it manufactures. As it is, companies like UPS and FedEx contract out their “last mile” to the U.S.P.S. in many places, because delivering to remote areas is unprofitable."
What she's not seeing is that there would not be a "private system." The free market unleashes human innovation. There would be dozens, maybe hundreds of "systems" as people figured out how to competitively provide all the things that she cites.
I think she is driven by a mindset that got inculated into her early in life: "My father, who is older and had been working longer than my mother had, was a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers; my mother joined the National Rural Letter Carriers’ union as soon as she was eligible. They knew that whatever they hoped for their children, they themselves would always be labor, not management. So we were a union family: my parents spent a few nights a year at local meetings, and if we went on vacation it was to wherever the annual union convention was held that year—usually the beach near where we lived, in Maryland, although one year we drove all the way to Maine. While we three watched the miracle that was cable television or played mini-golf with Dad, my mother put on her Sunday best and spent her days doing what I later learned a lot of other people’s parents did all the time: attend meetings. To me, my mother suddenly seemed like an executive.
I think the key line to understanding Cep's mindset is "They knew that whatever they hoped for their children, they themselves would always be labor, not management. " Why did they "know" that? Anybody can be anything they want in life. It seems to me that's a pretty limiting view of one's opportunities.
She brings up public education and public libraries, but does nothing to convince someone like me that those institutions aren't better off being privatized. Maybe she assumes that people generally accept that these ought to be public.
The efficacy of the USPS generally speaking was not my main point in this post. It was more narrow. It was that it looks pretty clearly like Trump wants to use the agency's precarious condition to make an excuse to call this year's election into question. Since the arrangement between the government and the USPS is what it is, Congress could provide the funds to see that mail-in balloting happens smoothly. But the Very Stable Genius will do what he can to interfere with Congress's proper role and the post office's functionality.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/we-cant-afford-to-lose-the-postal-service
The whole truth about the US Postal service Is that Republicans have been trying to privatize it for 40 years
It seems me that Cep doesn't make a very effective case for her position. Her recounting of the history of the Postal Service is undeniably interesting - for instance, I didn't know the specifics on when stamps and mail slots came along - and reinforce the notion that it's been imbued with a noble purpose since its founding. But she recites its problems in recent years - volume considerably down from its peak, even as costs for equipment - and, um, pensions and health insurance - rise and then points out that, even though the USPS is a quasi-autonomous organization, Congress still sets its rates, regulates what services it can provide and determines rules for operating. What's up with that? Why shouldn't an independent provider of a service be able to be in charge of those things? Well, that would sever the remaining tie it has to government, and we'd be talking about - bingo, privatization.
Plus, she attempts to alarm her readers with this scenario: "With a private system, you might pay fifteen times more to mail something to your cousin in Alaska than to your sister in New York City; a radical magazine might be denied distribution entirely; a small business in Montana might have to drive a hundred miles to ship the neon signs it manufactures. As it is, companies like UPS and FedEx contract out their “last mile” to the U.S.P.S. in many places, because delivering to remote areas is unprofitable."
What she's not seeing is that there would not be a "private system." The free market unleashes human innovation. There would be dozens, maybe hundreds of "systems" as people figured out how to competitively provide all the things that she cites.
I think she is driven by a mindset that got inculated into her early in life: "My father, who is older and had been working longer than my mother had, was a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers; my mother joined the National Rural Letter Carriers’ union as soon as she was eligible. They knew that whatever they hoped for their children, they themselves would always be labor, not management. So we were a union family: my parents spent a few nights a year at local meetings, and if we went on vacation it was to wherever the annual union convention was held that year—usually the beach near where we lived, in Maryland, although one year we drove all the way to Maine. While we three watched the miracle that was cable television or played mini-golf with Dad, my mother put on her Sunday best and spent her days doing what I later learned a lot of other people’s parents did all the time: attend meetings. To me, my mother suddenly seemed like an executive.
I think the key line to understanding Cep's mindset is "They knew that whatever they hoped for their children, they themselves would always be labor, not management. " Why did they "know" that? Anybody can be anything they want in life. It seems to me that's a pretty limiting view of one's opportunities.
She brings up public education and public libraries, but does nothing to convince someone like me that those institutions aren't better off being privatized. Maybe she assumes that people generally accept that these ought to be public.
The efficacy of the USPS generally speaking was not my main point in this post. It was more narrow. It was that it looks pretty clearly like Trump wants to use the agency's precarious condition to make an excuse to call this year's election into question. Since the arrangement between the government and the USPS is what it is, Congress could provide the funds to see that mail-in balloting happens smoothly. But the Very Stable Genius will do what he can to interfere with Congress's proper role and the post office's functionality.