Trump eyes privatizing US Postal Service, citing financial losses | Hacker News Reader

Trump eyes privatizing US Postal Service, citing financial losses

washingtonpost.com

8 pointsleotravis108 comments

Waste and inefficiency aside, a public postal service should never turn a profit - and, if it does, it should either invest in improving quality of service, or lower the prices until it breaks even.

If the USPS were profitable, it'd mean you are all paying more than you should to send letters and packages. It's a basic infrastructure service, much like roads and the interstate system.

Agree, we do not need to turn everything into a profit center. Rural areas will be the most harmed by this because the costs are higher per capita from the lower density. The move seems in line with the broader pattern of pushing govt services into the private sector. Another example is wanting to remove the IRS provided free efile

This is mostly a personal anecdote with maybe only limited applicability here. But something like 5 years ago I was on a vacation to Hell Creek State Park [0] in Montana, on the banks of the Fort Peck reservoir. There is a marina there servicing the fishermen and running the campground. To get there you had to take 30 miles of a horribly maintained "gravel" road. That's the last 30 miles and the nearest town is the thriving metropolis of Jordan, MT, population 368. We'll it was a pretty WTF moment when I saw UPS and FedEx delivery trucks roll into the marina. That's like a 2 hour round trip at 30 MPH to get the driver back on a paved road. Not to mention the maintenance burden on the shocks for the trucks. I wonder what the cost of subsidies that UPS and FedEx must be paying to service places like that.

[0] - https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hell+Creek+Recreation+Area...

Agreed. A problem with selecting a bunch of successful businesspeople to lead the government is that the government is not, and should not be, a business.

Privatization is a bad idea for an essential service that does not need to grow, innovate, or add new features. Services like postal service should promise a core set of features (sending stuff) with minor upgrades to keep up with basic technique without any profit.

If anything we need to go the other direction and de-privatize the USPS. We've essentially been going down the privitization route since Reagan. Rural folks (generally Trump voters) should really hate the idea of privatization as they're going to lose post offices and service.

https://archive.is/ArVrG

Well, since the 1970's Trump has been a legendary catalyst for financial losses.

And that was way before he got into the casino business.

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