Government-made monopolies hurt trade. Eliminate them, and prices plummet while quality rises. The phone company provides a good example. Here’s how you could do the same thing for the USPS:
- Just as we are free to pick our phone service, allow each household and business to choose which company picks up mail from their own mailbox. It could be USPS, FedEx, UPS or any other.
- Just as all telecommunications carriers were given access to the same lines, allow all carriers to drop off mail at all mailboxes.
Then, sit back and watch as the various carriers knock themselves out finding ways to reduce costs, increase efficiencies and deliver better service in order to attract the most customers.
Admittedly, instead of saving the USPS, this might bring about its demise. It is a necessary risk of competition. But if the USPS could change its thinking — to that of an organization that must earn its business instead of an institution entitled to government protection and subsidy — it could grow into a force to be reckoned with. Heaven knows they have the infrastructure to give themselves one dilly of a head start.
Under that scenario, regardless of which carriers come out on top, consumers and business win. That, and not protecting the USPS, should be government’s objective.
—Steve Cuno