U.S. Postal Service is actually a legal monopoly… wow
I always knew that the USPS was a Government subsidized service, one that has a proud and heroic legacy… but I never really considered the possibility that the monopoly it had was anything more than a first to market one.
Apparently, thanks to Wikipedia and a finger pointing at a part of the Constitution I never really parsed properly, I now know that the USPS is a Government backed monopoly that only allows competition in the areas in which it sees fit. First class mail? Only the Post Office can send them, any other company trying to do it is violating the law. UPS and Fedex are apparently successful only because USPS has granted them the right to send “urgent” letters and packages.
While I like this specific entitlement system, mostly because I was born into it… now that I know that the USPS runs at a loss year over year, soaking up my invisible tax dollars (since they run off the books, it is just an -in the red- part of the Government), I have a bit of a free-market problem with them not opening up other lines of service.
I am divided on how I feel about mail being subsidized by the Government. One one hand, I think that correspondence should be inexpensive… on the other hand, I also feel that consumers will demand a cost effective method if one doesn’t exist and so the market will define that space on its own.
Regardless, the anchor point on Wikipedia is interesting to read:
