One out of five first-class letters entrusted to the United States Postal Service arrives late. The zip code is now four digits longer, but the Postal Service is showing less and less zip.
"The Postal Service has a well-earned reputation for slow delivery," says Gregory Conko of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. More than a century of monopoly status has made the Postal Service "complacent and slothful," Conko contends. "An over-bureaucratized management and a powerfully unionized workforce have resisted improvement and turned mediocrity into a perverted trademark."
The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 gave the ostensibly independent Postal Service "broad authority to improve management capability, modernize antiquated facilities, and allow postal rates to keep pace with cost increases," says Conko. "Tragically, the original goal of improving the quality and scope of service, while achieving financial self-sufficiency over a period of years, has never been realized." The extent of the Postal Service's failure is reflected in the size of the debt it owes to the U.S. Treasury -- a whopping $9 billion.
Despite its lack of success, the Postal Service has its defenders. They argue that "private, commercial rivals -- such as Federal Express, United Parcel Service, and more than 300 other alternate delivery firms -- are willing to compete with the Post Office only for expensive overnight service, but have no interest in delivering the lower-priced items." Conko calls this a "disingenuous argument," since the Postal Service enjoys a "legal monopoly on first-class mail." If that monopoly is more of a burden than a benefit, as this line of reasoning seems to suggest, then there shouldn't be any objection to repealing the monopoly. Once the first-class field is open to all comers, it will soon be obvious whether anyone wants to compete or not.
"Supporters also argue that private firms wouldn't deliver first-class mail to every home in the country as cheaply as the Postal Service," says Conko, but this too is a bogus argument, since the Post Office has never delivered to every home nationwide. "There are many areas in the United States where the Postal Service will only deliver mail to Post Office Boxes," notes Conko. "In some western states, farmers have to travel as far as 40 miles to pick up their mail. But private delivery companies often target rural areas for service. The Postal Service even contracts out much of its rural delivery . . . to private firms." Conko points out that "private competition for first-class mail delivery was alive and well (as well as legal) in the 19th century." Delivery services like the famed Pony Express "offered stiff competition to the government's Post Office, providing better, more timely service and charging lower rates."
Conko applauds congressional proposals to privatize the Postal Service, but insists that "the most important aspect of reform remains rescinding the postal monopoly. . . . Real privatization can come later," he argues, "but competition is the key to improvement."
