The Grand Illusion
Governments owe certain services and infrastructure to their people, such as highways, impartial laws and courts, civic order, defense against invaders, and open and affordable communications systems.
Historically, the United States was one of the first nations to emphasize a national postal system. Among our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin was firm in his determination that the United States should have a postal service. He even served as Postmaster General before there was a United States.
Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution mandates that Congress establish post offices and post roads. One of long-standing aspects of the Post Office and its successor, the Postal Service, has been the mission to provide mail access to all Americans, not just to people in cities or people who are physically or economically convenient to serve, but the vast majority of Americans.
While the Postal Service should be as cost-efficient as possible, cost-efficiency shouldn’t be its primary mission. Maintaining service to all Americans should be. That was why the post office and post roads were an essential part of the Constitution.
This background seems to have been forgotten. Amazon can use the Postal Service on Sundays to deliver packages for what I suspect is below the actual cost, using cost structures that I’ve critiqued previously for their unreality, and now Trump is talking about privatizing the Postal Service, enabling that “private” successor to gouge the public and provide less service.
We can run huge deficits for national defense and all manner of other “necessary” services, but comparatively small deficits for postal service are apparently taboo… which says a great deal about people and politicians, particularly about Republicans.
I’ve read in a couple of different places that a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals trust government, and want to give it more to do, while conservatives don’t, and want to give it less.
Looks like Trump is trying to make sure that, after he’s out of power, liberals can’t entrust more things to the government, because functionally there won’t be one…
The difference is more risk vs reward. Liberals see the reward of making a difference greater than the risk of wasting resources and unintended consequences. Conservatives the opposite.
But the current situation is not conservative vs liberal. Destroying the government is not a conservative thing to do. The current administration is about short term profit and power grabs with no regard to the consequences.
I know that some apologists for the current internal chaos in the USA have, in effect, said you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Looking at it as an outsider, you should be able to make an omelette without killing the chickens.
Bill, my version of lower c-conservative thought is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Modern Conservative thought seems to be that if it isn’t perfect (from our point of view), let’s break it.
On a lighter note, a traditional European joke was that an English government minister (secretary of state) would ask his civil servants, “That’s all very well in theory, but does it work in practice? while his French equivalent would ask, “That’s all very well in practice, but does it work in theory?” There was just enough truth in the joke to make a real point.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.
It will be interesting to see how a privatisation affects coverage. Here in the UK, the selloff was accompanied by what is teamed a Universal Service Obligation which essentially means it costs the same to send a letter next door in England as to the north of Scotland.
Much smaller country however:)
Yeah, conservatives like the idea of running the government like a business. But it is NOT a business. Nor should it ever be one. But, yeah, go ahead and privatize the USPS and let’s see how those conservative rural voters like being charged a lot extra for the distance required to deliver their mail and packages. Maybe they might even get cut off completely if the ‘Business model’ suggests they are a losing proposition.
I’ve said before on this site that the only department in the government that I know actually tuirn a profit (on purpose) is the IRS. And the Republicans want to get hobble it’s ability to maximize its mission. Well, that’s not very bright if you really wish to balance the budget (hint: they don’t wish to balance the budget. They wish to tear down as much of the existing government as possible. Broken eggs indeed).