Comment by the-dude | Hacker News Reader

Comment by the-dude | Hacker News Reader

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15 years ago we were shipping vast quantities of our devices worldwide via 'Priority Airmail'. This is regular postal mail. The business died down and I started shipping Priority Airmail last year again for a new product.

I notice in some countries quality of delivery has dropped dramatically, worse reliability and transit times. The UK for example. I talked with a customer who acknowledged my feeling and said the workers were demotivated by the restructuring which seems to last for over a decade.

In The Netherlands, our former national postal service PostNL is treating its workforce in the most egregious ways of all former monopolies.

Consequently I found the Russian postal service to be fast and reliable, especially considering the vast distances serviced.

15 years ago, there was some corruption in Africa, South/Middle America.

Not any more.

Your comment is interesting, because it points out the fact that quality does vary over time, for all types of goods and services. I think this is one of the strongest arguments for creating an environment where healthy competition exists.

The reason being that if a business/organization declines in quality, competition always exists to step in and serve those whom the organization previously served. When you have government controlled monopolies, private competition is literally killed off because the private competition's tax dollars typically go to subsidize the government entity serving the same customers. This keeps prices low, but it does nothing to address the quality of the services being provided, which oftentimes degrades over time (this is partially why most Fortune 500 companies weren't on the list 20 years ago).

When the government steps in and serves a group of people in the marketplace, there is rarely a mechanism to give consumers an alternative should the government entity fail to provide adequate service.

But, is a service that is better/cheaper for 50% of the people and not available or too expensive for the rest a better outcome? For most things sure, for others that's why government programs exist.

It is the race to the bottom which is driving the quality down.

It's a race to the point where the consumer is willing to pay more for better quality. At that point, the costlier alternatives survive and the low cost provider exits the market.

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