The postal service is a public service.
Privatizing the U.S. Postal Service is a bad idea - it's not about profit, and it shouldn't be.
WSJ - Trump Is Planning to Take Control of the Postal Service, Officials Say — President seeks to disband governing board and put Postal Service under the Commerce Department By Esther Fung and Josh Dawsey Feb. 20, 2025 10:03 pm ET Trump is preparing to issue an executive order, possibly this week, to fire the members of the Postal Service’s governing board and to put the agency under the direct control of the Commerce Department, according to two government officials. The plan was earlier reported by the Washington Post late Thursday. The Postal Service board is expected to fight the move and is exploring legal action, one official said. It is uncertain whether they would be able to stop the order though since its members are appointed by the U.S. president and confirmed by the Senate. The plans renew questions over the future of the 250-year-old Postal Service.
The US Postal Service doesn’t exist to serve shareholders or make a profit for the owner like businesses do. It can’t be profitable AND deliver mail at the same price out into the mountains, the woods, in rural areas, and also in the city, all at affordable prices to everybody. Rural people will suffer the most if the USPS is ceded.
A lot of people seem to have forgotten, for instance, that to bring electricity out to rural areas, the government needed to step in because even that was not considered profitable enough for “market solutions” to drive such innovation and reach.
Homestead National Historical Park, Nebraska - Rural Electrification Act On May 20, 1936, Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act which was one of the most important pieces of legislation passed as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. This law allowed the federal government to make low-cost loans to farmers who had banded together to create non-profit cooperatives for the purpose of bringing electricity to rural America.
People already had access to an affordable mail and shipping service because the US Postal Service dates back to 1775.
And another aspect is that the US Postal Service provides private correspondence.
USPS - Introduction to Postal Facts The United States Postal Service has a storied history, familiar to many. It began with the Second Continental Congress and Benjamin Franklin in 1775. It continued when the U.S. Constitution empowered Congress to establish Post Offices and post roads in 1787. Congress exercised those powers with the passage of the Post Office Act of 1792, which made postal services a permanent fixture of the federal government. The act included provisions to facilitate freedom of the press, ensure the privacy of personal correspondence, and expand the nation’s physical infrastructure, all vital to the nation’s growth and prosperity. These principles and objectives endure. While email, the internet and social channels have forever altered information-gathering habits, postal correspondence remains a highly secure and resilient form of communication, providing the American people with a delivery infrastructure vital to national security. (emphasis added)
Did you know that the U.S. Postal service acted as a subsidized news delivery service in the 1800s America?
Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael - Our Broken Media System in the Era of Trump & How It Could Be Fixed w/ Victor Pickard Jan 18 2024 “If you know American history, you know that media subsidies are as American as apple pie, going back to the early postal system which was essentially a newspaper delivery infrastructure. Well into the 1800s, 95% of the weight wasn’t letters written home to mom, it was actually newspapers. The postal system was the internet of the 1800s, this was how they delivered news and information, disseminated news and information, to far-flung communities across the country. And that was heavily subsidized, so that newspapers were basically disseminated almost for free. In today’s revenue it would be equivalent to tens of billions of dollars that was being used to subsidize the dissemination of news and information. So that is something we need to remember, that it’s really a libertarian fantasy to suggest that government should never be involved in our media system, government’s always involved in our media system, it’s really a question of how it should be involved.” — Victor Pickard
If you value privacy, paper is the technology of the future, and you want the US Postal Service and these principles and objectives to endure, and perhaps expand more into the modern forms of news and information dissemination.
Whereas a private company might compel customers, like large tech companies already do, to submit to having the contents of their correspondence rifled through or harvested. We know tech companies are already doing this for targeted marketing and training AI databases, sometimes without allowing people to opt out, or to even let people know it’s happening. Imagine a big tech company taking over the mail system in America and making it into the worst aspects of the internet, because that seems like a probable outcome in this timeline.
Government Executive - USPS offers ‘little convincing evidence’ its reform plans will succeed, regulator says Watchdog suggests Louis DeJoy’s overhaul initiatives are destined for failure without significant changes February 3, 2025 06:37 PM ET Eric Katz “The commission urges the Postal Service to reconsider whether the speculative, meager gains from this proposal outweigh the certain downgrade in service for a significant portion of the nation,” PRC wrote. The commission, whose opinion is non-binding but was being closely watched by lawmakers in both parties, said it recognizes that USPS is in a difficult position and supports the push for change. It issued its opinion after postal management requested it, which followed criticism from Democrats, Republicans, the USPS inspector general and stakeholders.
There’s every reason to think Louis DeJoy’s purpose is to downgrade the service so that anti-government industry paid interests can get their pocketed politicians to “drown it in the bathtub”. And now he’s looking for his successor in the project.
Government Executive - Louis DeJoy to step down as USPS postmaster general - The postal leader brought a spotlight, controversy and a plan to save the agency to his role, but is now starting the process to find a successor. February 18, 2025 10:18 AM ET One executive in the mailing industry speculated DeJoy’s timing was not a coincidence, suggesting it “sure feels like” he stepped aside so Trump can reshape the board to install a DeJoy protege or “change USPS in some other way.” Trump briefly proposed privatizing the Postal Service in his first term and recently suggested he could seek to do so again.
In some countries where the postal services have been privatized I’ve heard stories where people don’t seal envelopes in those countries and barely use mail at all, because they know their letters will be opened and read, maybe never delivered, envelopes and packages opened by people looking for information, cash, or anything of value. I feel like that’s already the case with one particular private parcel service in the U.S. where what’s not delivered damaged in some way, is sometimes never delivered at all. Imagine a big company with no easy way to reach customer service. A company so big with a monopoly control that is so powerful they don’t really need to care about your complaints anyway. Private companies can be like that, government agencies are accountable to the public.
It’s important that sustained pressure is applied to prevent privatization of our post office services, because the current guy in there, Louis Dejoy, sure seems like he’s trying to sabotage the system. He came into power during the Trump administration in the summer of 2020, and has been waiting out the Biden years, chipping away at our beloved American institution, waiting for right-wingers to come back into power and ramp up the pillage of our society’s few good services.
✏️ My letter to reps:
I want the postal service to remain the U.S. postal service and continue serving the people with mail delivery without regard for profitability. The USPS should be expanded in government services and never privatized. The USPS was founded and well into the 1800s operated as a heavily subsidized news and information dissemination system, and it could do that again for the benefit of us all.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose the contents of my letter for your own letters to reps.
