Post Office Privatization?

If you haven’t taken the time to speak to a mail carrier and find out more about what his or her job entails and what mail delivery calls for, I suggest you do. It can be revelatory, but even more relevant it helps to understand why there is no reason for the post office to be privatized. Due to retirement, the head of the USPS is about to be replaced. The whole board is made up of Trump appointees and the word is he would like to have the post office go private in 2020. Public services such as the post office or garbage collection are called public for a reason. Their main function is to serve the public. As soon as a service is privatized the issue of profits comes to the fore and to guarantee those profits either services have to be curtailed or decreased as has been the case with private prisons, or prices have to increase. Probably in the case of the USPS both will occur. When you consider that the postal services deals with millions of pieces of mail each day, their errors are negligible. It may not feel that way when the piece of mail in question is yours, but consider that percentage in relation to the total amount of mail you receive. A tenth of a percent? Compare that to the errors you have to deal with every day including those you yourself might be likely to make and the old phrase if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, comes to mind.

What stands in the way of privatization right now are the unions. For all our sakes, let’s wish them well.