No Surprise the US Post Office is a Failure
Today I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in National Slavery Day (or the day taxes are due for the unawakened). I submitted my taxes electronically and said a prayer of thanks for free enterprise companies like Turbo Tax who make the process palatable. (Although I do realize that if the tax code were simple, or even non-existent, then there would be no need for such companies.) Unfortunately, I still had to go to the Post Office today to mail a different bill.
Once upon a time I could walk into my Post Office and commune with a vending machine that would happily take my money and spit me out a stamp. Apparently all this efficiency wasn’t good for the USPS and they decided to remove said machine. So today I got to wait in line for 45 minutes to buy a single stamp (I never buy more than one because I usually only mail something once a year). The line was backed out the front door, and yet there were only two employees working at the desk.
Any normal company would be forced to recognize (by simple economic facts) that they need to improve efficiencies, cut costs, and make their customers happy. The USPS is not a normal company! They have the luxury of being able to obtain subsidization from the Federal Government to make up for their incompetency.
This is a perfect example of what happens when the government provides assistance to a company with the excuse that the company is too important to be allowed to fail. The end result is that resources (manpower, property, money, etc.) remain invested in a very inefficient way, preventing those resources from being used to their fullest potential. If the USPS were allowed to fail, they would either improve their business practices so they wouldn’t fail, or they would fail and the resources would be reallocated to something more useful. If there were still a need for the USPS functionality, it would be met by another company or through other means.
