Privatize the Post Office

If FedEx or UPS could deliver private letters to compete with the USPS there would be better and cheaper service.

Lysander Spooner provided private mail in 1844. In 1851 the government passed legislation that prohibited private mail. The government wants to know all about the citizens, and it does not want competition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company Spooner was effective in getting the price of a first class stamp reduced to 5 cents from 12 cents, a 58% reduction! Imagine how it would look today to get a 58% deduction in postage.

At the present time the USPS has a monopoly on cards and letters, and your mail box. The United States Postal Service will not let anyone else deliver anything to your mail box. Fed Ex can deliver a letter, to your door, but it will cost more than 42 cents. Fed Ex cannot leave the letter in your mail box. The USPS owns your mail box. If you don't believe this, try to relocate it closer to your front door and see what the USPS says.

When you address a letter to someone's home address you must put the street name and number. You do not have to put a name on the letter. However, if more than one person lives there you should put a name on the letter. You are divulging where you or your family lives by placing a name with a street address.

Not so with your email address. You do not have to give your name or your home/office location. It would be nice to have your personal residence as private as your email address. This could be accomplished by privatizing the USPS and allowing private "service providers" to deliver your paper mail, like private service providers deliver your email. What privacy would you have if the only service provider for your email was the government? Fed Ex could assign your residence as, mailto:bibag@FedEx. FedEx would know where that address was by an internal code.

When another private service provider picked up a letter addressed to me, from one of their customers, that provider would simply drop it into a FedEx box, like an email goes from Comcast to AOL.

A letter shipped by private mail would be cheaper because the providers would collect revenue by selling envelopes with advertising on the front and back. No stamp would be required. Only a small monthly service fee, thank you. For an additional monthly fee you could have all of your mail delivered to your front door. Thank you, free enterprise.

The government would not like this. They could not track correspondence as easy if private providers delivered your mail. As it stands now if the government mob hit men want to look at who I get mail from, or who I correspond with, they can simply have the sorter at the post office "sort" my mail.

Update 1/28/2009 The Post Office is asking congress to eliminate the requirement they deliver mail 6 days per week. The Post Office wants to reduce delivery to 5 days per week. UPS and FedEx will continue to deliver 6 days per week, to your door.

Bilbo Baggins