In the Wall Street Journal today, Gary MacDougal, a former director with the United Parcel Service, suggests that it has come time—finally!—to let the government postal monopoly die and pass into history. Why?
Because, first of all the U.S. Postal Service lost $9 billion in 2010. It’s currently facing "a $5.5 billion payment into its boated retiree medical plan"…and doesn’t have the money. So why throw good money after bad? The first class mail postal monopoly has become a typical government embarrassment. As MacDougal notes in his column, ""Visits to the post ofice are not normally known to be user-friendly experiences. It is a good bet that the private sector will be considerably more productive—and user-friendly—than today’s government employees," who, after all, are part of a monopoly business and thus don’t have to care about serving or pleasing customers.
MacDougal is right. Not only will the free market provide better alternatives to the existing monopoly, it already has, including email, various online services, UPS, and FedEx. "The lesson here is that even monopolies can die if they provide inefficient services to shrinking markets," says MacDougal What he does not say—but which is just as true—is that refusing to pour more money into a failing post office means also that a monopoly-union—the 574,000-strong postal workers union—will also pass into history…which is also a good thing.
You can read the entire column—"Junking the Junk Mail Office—in the Wall Street Journal opinion section HERE.
