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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

The reason to make changes now would be so that they're set in stone before the next administration comes into power and tries to change everything back. This logic applies to every agency, and is one of the reasons NASA's Ares system got cancelled so quickly by the Obama administration (before they had an alternative vision for space exploration).

The reason to privatize this one is because it has direct competitors, and does not accomplish anything which requires the powers of the federal government. Other departments such as the Department of Energy are not interchangeable with a private competitor, and perform functions which require direct federal involvement (guarding nuclear weapons and working with the armed services).

Some people (including myself) believe the federal government should be as small as possible, and the USPS is simply one of the easiest parts to spin-off/get rid of.

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Ah, I can concede the "Oh no, we might be out of power, lock as much as we can into place." I don't agree with it, especially during a pandemic, but I can see that logic.

On the second point, doesn't almost every government service have direct competitors? Public vs private education. Public vs private security. Public vs private military. Public vs private roads.

On the third point, I'm a little confused what you mean: what are some examples of something that would require the powers of the federal government?

EDIT: the comment I was responding to got edited, so this seems a bit outdated: suggestions on what to do on HN when that happens? Delete? Update? No idea how to handle it :-)

What is the direct competitor for bulk letter delivery? Historically that's not profitable so no private company does it and instead they all focus on the profitable package business, or edge case super-fast high cost delivery.

Well, the law currently requires that any competitor charge many times (7x if I recall correctly) more than the USPS for mail, and they are not permitted to use letter-boxes, so it is rather unsurprising that UPS and FedEx charge more for first class mail.

I can find no evidence that private competitors must legally charge a higher rate than USPS. Do you have a source for that? My understanding was that USPS had to compete directly with private mail carriers.

From Wikipedia: "Regarding the monopoly on delivery of letters, the report notes that the monopoly is not complete, as there is an exception for letters where either the amount paid for private carriage of the letter equals at least six times the current rate for the first ounce of a single-piece First-Class Mail letter (also known as the "base rate" or "base tariff") or the letter weighs at least 12.5 ounces."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#2...

edit: Here is the law https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/601

Thanks for the link - the 6x in pricing is to enforce the monopoly on delivery of letters rather than all mail items. It only applies to (i) items weighing less than 12.5oz (ii) to the first 1.0oz of a single piece of mail.

Certainly an enforcement of USPS' monopoly on letter delivery, but not a blanket price fixing across all mail items and types.

This subthread is in response to a comment that said:

>" What is the direct competitor for bulk letter delivery? Historically that's not profitable so no private company does it and instead they all focus on the profitable package business, or edge case super-fast high cost delivery. "

So I responded with reasons why there was no competitor for letter delivery:

>" Well, the law currently requires that any competitor charge many times (7x if I recall correctly) more than the USPS for mail, and they are not permitted to use letter-boxes, so it is rather unsurprising that UPS and FedEx charge more for first class mail."

We were never talking about parcels.

Wouldn't a better solution then be to work through Congress to repeal that law?

I addressed that in a different subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24136337

How are these changes going to be set in stone? What prevents the next administration from undoing it?

Personally I tend to lean towards privatizing or eliminating the USPS, but the timing for this isn't good if you care about people being able to vote in the upcoming election. There are going to be hiccups when we really need the USPS to be working at top efficiency. Imagine if hundreds of thousands or millions of ballots are tossed because they didn't arrive in time due to delivery delays.

There is no way to prevent future administrations from rolling back changes, but the further along those changes are, the more difficult the roll-back is.

The counter-argument to your second point is that no matter when you do this, it will be painful, so you might as well rip the bandage off as quickly as possible. You may find it unconvincing, but there it is.

But even if we should privatize, shouldn't it be done by Congress? Shouldn't the executive branch by responsible for enforcing the law that the legislative branch writes?

I would agree that Congress should be the group doing this, but executive powers have grown to the point that this type of action seems possible. I think Obama's quote aptly captured the reality of the situation:

>"I've got a pen and I've got a phone - and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward."

I am staunchly opposed to the continuous growth of these powers, but each party seems to support them when their guy is president, and Congress seems unwilling to take action.

I hear ya and appreciate you bringing that quote. Sometimes we get so attached to party (people) that we forget about the laws.

I guess I keep getting hit by the "why now" part: is it worth privatizing the USPS now, which seems to save < $10B per year, to jeopardize the legitimacy of the election in a time of such deep uncertainty?

Well, if I were in the executive branch and saw it as my priority, prerogative, and last chance to privatize the post office, I would probably do the same.

In some ways, this is comparable to the situation with DACA, in that it was important to the party in control of the executive branch, they didn't have the ability to pass legislation, and they thought it had to get done urgently.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_Action_for_Childhood_...

But out of all things you could do before leaving office, in the middle of a pandemic, why would privatizing the post office be in the top 5? A small and maybe easy win amongst your crowd?

Maybe this is so hard for me to see because I have very very fond memories of the post office. I had the same mail carrier deliver mail for almost all of my childhood. He became a pseudo-uncle to me. He was always there.

And it's hard for me to imagine that people have anything but love and tenderness for the USPS.

Sounds like you had a great person as your point of contact with the USPS, and that it favorably shaped your view of the service at large.

I have had mixed experiences with many different carriers, and have no particular fondness for any of the organizations, though some of the people (at each) have been very good, kind, and helpful.

I don't know why this was a priority for people in the current administration, though I view privatization of the USPS as a generally laudable goal.

Funny how sometimes I can be so embedded in my emotional experience of something that I can forget that others may have very different emotional experiences on the same thing.

After all these comments, I'm probably still leaning towards wanting it to stay public, but more open to privatization, and still quite vehemently unconvinced that now is the time to make that change. Again, thank you for all the conversation.

Yes, I do find that counter-argument unconvincing. Do you? It will always be painful, but right now it is especially painful because of a contentious election in three months that is going to rely on mail-in ballots more than ever before. And given Trump's history, it's very reasonable to be suspicious of his motives for doing this now.

> Personally I tend to lean towards privatizing or eliminating the USPS,

The USPS is funded nearly entirely by postage revenue.[1] Why do you support privatizing it when it doesn't cost any taxpayer money?

1. https://facts.usps.com/top-facts/

Even DOE is partly privatized both Sandia National Laboratories and Savannah River National Laboratory are run by private defense contractors for the government.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandia_National_Laboratories [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_National_Labora...

I don't know how much we should count defense contractors as "privatized" there's bidding[1] and the contractors are financially independent[2] but, due to the nepotism of the system defense contracts are quite flush with money and it seems like most contracts end up benefiting semi-retired military folks by giving them a cushy landing (though this is anecdotal).

I think power utilities might be a better place to look at privatization - but most of those (like PG&E) end up frequently running afoul of a lack of oversight while also not really out-performing public power utilities[3].

1. Often times with insanely high barriers to entry sometimes including being "non-public"

2. To my knowledge the only defense-ish contractor folks that have gotten bailed out are the more public facing ones like Boeing which do mixed public/private work.

3. Though this industry has a terrible track record across the board for being accountable, profitable and responsible. I might point at VT Yankee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_P... as an example where the company just tried to dissolve itself before paying for cleanup out of its contingency fee.

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