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Comment by maxlybbert | Hacker News Reader

Officially, the USPS was privatized in the 1970s, except they still need Congressional approval to raise postage rates, close offices, change business hours, or do just about anything you would expect a private company to be able to do. And I don’t believe it’s possible to buy USPS stock.

Also, they continue to have their own police force, the private mails act to protect their monopoly in handling letters, a federal requirement to provide service to every address in the country no matter how inconvenient, and laws that make tampering with the mail a federal offense. I think the big difference is that the Postmaster General is no longer a Cabinet member. But the post office makes a big deal about the fact that they’re legally a private corporation.

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USPS was never privatized. It was reorganized as an independent agency.

> The USPS is often mistaken for a government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak) because it operates much like a business. It is, however, an "establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States", (39 U.S.C. § 201) as it is controlled by presidential appointees and the postmaster general. As a government agency, it has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail. Indeed, in 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that the USPS was not a government-owned corporation, and therefore could not be sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Thank you, it looks like I misunderstood the definition of “independent establishment of the executive branch” ( https://about.usps.com/publications/pub100/pub100_036.htm ). I can’t find it now, but in the ‘90s, the post office had a brochure about how wonderful it was that it wasn’t actually a government agency, but apparently now they’re more worried about becoming truly privatized and are playing up their government connections.

Also they are exempt from state and local property tax and can reinvest their federal taxes... so their claim that they aren't paid for by taxes is kind of disingenuous because they also don't pay them, which is essentially a huge payout to them from the government.

I don't mind having the post office, because the government and the courts need a way to reliably deliver mail to anyone and have it certified and all that, but there's no excuse for them to have a monopoly.

All federal government agencies are exempt from state and local taxes, there's nothing particularly special about the USPS in that regard. In fact, state laws don't really apply to them (e.g., postal vehicles don't have state license plates).

This idea of a "huge payout to them from the government" doesn't make any sense. Who exactly is receiving this payout? There are no stockholders who would receive dividends from the profits, if there were any, which there aren't. [0]. There is no stock price going up, because there is no stock.

[0] https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2018/pr18_093.... (net loss of $3.9 billion for FY 2018)

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