re: postal service
Topics: Regulation
23 Mar 1994
From: ervan
> [ Society should have "universal communication". The government
> protected mail monopoly is a legitimate way to achieve that. ]
I think this is worth discussing because it is something we can
get ahold of and yet it has broad application as a metaphor
(e.g. to the 'right to health care'). I want to make two
points, the notion of a communication entitlement is rather
silly and government protected monopoly as way of providing it
is atrocious regardless.
How much is universal communication (UC) worth? What if it
costs $10K/person for the last 0.1% of the population? Is that
worth it? How much UC is worth it? You already begged this
question yourself. Why should people have an entitlement to
slow mail but not to the phone or e-mail? Why doesn't just one
of these services alone meet the entitlement for UC? To whom
do people have an entitlement to communicate? Does the sender
have the entitlement or the recipient?
What is it that is so important to communicate that the postal
service actually does communicate? Is it an entitlement to
receive bulk mail? Surely not. Is it an entitlement to
receive a newsletter from your congresscritter? Given what
actually comes that way, that would be a rather pathetic
response. In any case, congress has sufficient money to mail
propoganda via a private service. Especially in the presence
of TV that tells people most of what they *want* to know what
does the mail communicate for which UC is important? Do people
have an entitlement to correspond with other random people
regardless of the resources consumed in that process? That is
to say, how the heck do you figure I owe Joe Blow money so he
can stay in touch with his girl friend that lives 1,000 miles
away? That strikes me as a luxury and not anything necessary
for democracy or whatever.
If people have an entitlement to phone service, where was that
entitlement before phones existed? By this rhetorical
question, I mean to establish that it is not a right but merely
a subsidy. Or that matter, why wasn't everyone entitled to a
phone 10 years after the invention of the phone (when it would
have been possible but very expensive)? The only answer that I
can envision is that people have an entitlement to whatever is
technologically feasable and cheap, i.e. what we are really
doing is extracting money from the tax base to redistribute to
the people who mail the most letters!?! In other words, on
average, the poor subsidize the rich. If we really believe
that we need UC, why not just give the poor a stamp subsidy and
be done with it? How many letters per year (from those who
cannot afford postage) constitute UC? 100? Okay, let's lower
taxes in the lower brackets by $29 (or whatever postage would
to improbable destinations after deregulation) and we're done.
Why not?
As a practical matter, urban deliveries subsidy rural
deliveries. So what we are really saying is that poor urban
dwellers subsidy rural dwellers twice, once through taxes to
subsidize the post office and twice via paying more for postage
than they really need to. What the heck kind of sense does
that make relative to your goal of UC? If you want UC would
not there be more of it if we let the market charge lower rates
for letter delivery? (I find it laughable that the USPS is
scared to death of competition when they are already being
subsidized out of the tax base which should give them an
impossible to beat advantage if they were as efficient as they
say). Why if I want to communicate with someone where it
requires more gas, more tire rubber, and more time to reach
them, should I not pay more to cover those costs? Even if for
some grand reason no one should have to pay more than 29 cents
to send seven pages to the middle of Montana why make the whole
system inefficient? Why not let local mail go as cheaply as
the system cares to provide and then subsidize rural routes
directly? Making everyone suffer inefficiency harms the
central goal of UC, not adavance it. If that's really the
problem here, subsidizing the rural life, why not just give
rural dwellars $100/year to pay the UPS man to come their way
(or whoever would spring up in competition) or to compensate
their gas to go to a central PO box location?
What is it we are so afraid of anyway? UPS delivers anywhere
and Fed Ex charges the same price for any destination. Private
services can clearly meet this criterion. If we let private
carriers compete what do you think would happen? Here is my
prediction: 99% of all mail (that to or from urban areas) would
be carried more cheaply with efficiency enhancing competition
(the most cost effective thing the USPS has done recently is to
let mailers do their own sorting because the USPS is so inept
at even a basic task like that). Rural dwellers would still
have universal access but have to pay more for their mail in
the form of going to a common point or paying some private
individual to drive the distances required. I would not expect
to see differentiation by urban/rural zip code for the sender's
cost (just because of the bookkeeping involved). Dirt poor
hermits living in the middle of the country would not be able
to afford this service, *yawn*. Do you disagree with these
predictions? If not, where in any of this is UC damaged? It
seems to me like a win-win situation.
It seems to me the USPS is going the way of the railroads,
comfortably regulated to the point of being flabby and then
left hanging by new technology. We'll reach an era where
people use e-mail when it really isn't necessary because it
would cost too much to subsidize postal rates. BTW, USPS sued
to outlaw e-mail about an decade ago (under the private express
statutes which give it a monopoly)! I kid you not!
Fortunately it lost.
> [ how do we provide near universal access to data networks? ]
Why do we want it? I suppose it is a cost question again.
What if it costs $1K/home to get widespread access but the
average person only gets $500 of good out if it? Wouldn't it
be better to let them keep their $500 (instead of taxing it
away)? I think the presumption in many statements similar to
yours is that access is a 'right' and its value is always
greater than its cost.
I want widespread access to cement trucks. Everyone can use
their own cement truck. Just think of the money they would
save by not dealing with surly contractors! And it's just not
fair that some people have cement trucks and some don't. Why
not?
If there is a useful tool, put it in the hands of the people
who can use it. Giving everyone access does not help.
> [ Maintain common carrier rules (carrier cannot sell content) but
> otherwise deregulate home bandwidth providers. ]
As a specific policy proposal, I can agree with all of that.
There are some good technical objections to common carrier in
*some* forums. For instance, consider Compuserve, a distinctly
non common carrier but yet very popular. No common carrier
version of Compuserve has ever come to the market (as far as I
know). Why? I think part, and just part, of the answer is
that a single integrated service has a much simpler billing
system.
---Ervan
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