OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

what about the people who don't live in places that UPS or FedEx serve? One of the requirements of a public or semi-public institution like the Post Office is that it serve ALL the people in ALL locations not just the ones who will make you money. Those who cannot afford or have easy access to the locations you describe will be disenfranchized. I'm sure that there are people who only know snail mail as a way of communicating because they don't know computers or have easy access to one.

How would you ensure access for those people?

Even though I like this idea, can't do it.

The reason why it is a real federal program is because it allows us to give the mail delivery full federal protection.

Screw with a mail carrier and see if you don't end up in a federal court and then a pound-me-in-the-@$$ prision.

Beat the crap out of a Fed-Ex driver and at worse go to local jail.

I read that the head of the Postal Service makes something like $800k/yr. with bonuses as a public servant. Amazing! And yet his "company" is losing billions. I think we could definitely take the savings and hire some outfits to pick up the mail from UPS or FedEx and deliver the mail. In Alaska, private contractors are often used to make a delivery once per week to rural areas. If there's somewhere to land (no matter how primitive), the mail can get to remote places. This already works with Alaska as an example.

Since we are shopping more from home via computers, pay our bills via internet. The USPS stamps I seldom ever use. FedEX,UPS. The USPS should be an independant stand alone company. They must make a profit or follow in GM's footsteps. I can't even get my medication using USPS. Put USPS on the NYSE and let us the stock holders determine there fate.

ill use email all tho i am pretty sure Obama will find a way to Tax that soon as well.

I'm not in favor of privatising postal service. There are somethings that must be ran at a lose and must be social. You can not simply privatise everything and think it's going to work. Other examples are police, fire, education, libraries, highways, military, national guard and so forth. Now, having said that a lot of states have privatised many social services (especially highways) and I do not agree with that whatsoever. Also, the USPS has privatised a lot of its operations such as outsourcing drivers and trucks. Although the USPS might technically be a Federal service it is slowely outsourcing all its duties and functions and employees.

Anyway, not everything can be ran for a profit, in fact many things should not be. You should not apply profit minded theory to everything. We have seen what a disaster outsourcing in the military has been as well.

UPS can't work without USPS. The reason USPS loses money is because the government is actually subsidizing FedEx and UPS who only go after the big bucks and ignore those who can't pay the extra fuel surcharges as karidrgn mentioned.

dude23 makes a great point to which I'd add: privitization is great when it serves the public interest, not when it serves shareholders at the public's expense.

In my neighborhood, USPS is more reliable than UPS.

The theory of natural monopoly is an economic fiction. No such thing as a "natural" monopoly has ever existed. The history of the so-called public utility concept is that the late 19th and early 20th-century "utilities" competed vigorously, and, like all other industries, they did not like competition. They first secured government-sanctioned monopolies, and then, with the help of a few influential economists, they constructed an ex post rationalization for their monopoly power.

That has to be one of the greatest corporate public relations coups of all time. "By a soothing process of rationalization," wrote Horace M. Gray more than 50 years ago, "men are able to oppose monopolies in general but to approve certain types of monopolies. . . . Since these monopolies were 'natural' and since nature is beneficent, it followed that they were 'good' monopolies. . . . Government was therefore justified in establishing 'good' monopolies."