Minor things that bother you

[SEWIGuy]

Regardless, USPS isn't a business. It's a government service. Yes, they should strive to be more efficient, but government services cost money. Why should we expect them to be profitable?  Do we expect the same of other services like the Department of Transportation?

In many cases, state DOTs contract out basic services such as patching, guardrail repair, excavation, paint striping, signage, etc., to private businesses. For many of those contracts, there are financial incentives in place for projects to be completed ahead of schedule, and penalties if they are finished late.

But that's not privatizing. That's merely contracting with a third party to provide a service - something that USPS already does by the way.

Privatizing would involve making the entire DOT a private company of some sort.

[kphoger]

Also, privatization doesn't equal for-profit.  See, for example, private non-profit hospitals.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

It's funny because HB lives in a part of the country where a privatized post office would be a major detriment to its citizens. Direct mail delivery would cost a pretty penny, or companies would just decide it's not worth it at all and make you travel 50 miles to a centralized distribution location, and a privatized PO box would cost 5-6 times as much as a USPS one.

[SEWIGuy]

Also, privatization doesn't equal for-profit.  See, for example, private non-profit hospitals.

All "not-for-profit" means is that they do not distribute profit to their owners but reinvest that profit into their charitable purpose. Not-for-profits that don't turn an operating profit won't be in business for long.

You can't have a privatized mail service that doesn't generate an operating profit. Unless of course it is subsidized by the government - which is no different than the current situation.

[kphoger]

Local mail (from one PO box to another) now goes to Louisville to be sorted before it's delivered. In the past, a piece of local mail was sorted in-house and ever left the county. Then, it started going to the regional post office (Campton, KY 41301), then to Lexington, now to Louisville. That's ridiculous and inefficient.

Last week, I got a newspaper from the first week of July. If a private business ran so poorly,it would go out of business.But since the post office is a government operation, it just chugs along and there's nothing anybody can do.

I realize that these two paragraphs are two separate complaints about USPS.  However, may I point out that, if you FedEx a package from one side of town to the other, then it's going to go through a regional hub first.  That is to say, it's going to leave the county.  Not being intimately familiar with the FedEx logistics flow, I'm assuming that means it will either go to Indianapolis or Memphis first.  That's how a private business has chosen to do things, because it's more efficient and/or profitable than sorting everything locally.

[formulanone]

Last week, I got a newspaper from the first week of July. If a private business ran so poorly,it would go out of business.But since the post office is a government operation, it just chugs along and there's nothing anybody can do.

When was the last time you've worked for a private business? Ever used a phone app or a website that absolutely won't work properly until the next update in three years, which probably has fixed one thing at the expense of losing two other features. Tell me you've never heard a complaint from someone about a workplace process gap that has a bizarre workaround which takes multiple more steps because someone on the other end just wants it a specific way?

There's inefficiencies all over the place, once you work with/around them long enough they transpire to become part of the expectation. Lethargy and perceived success prevents change if "it's always worked that way" (or perhaps under contract and financial burdens to deal with suboptimal solutions). Of course every well-oiled business isn't going to reveal their weaknesses to the public. The mouthpieces of any business or organization is going to blame every other difficulty on some other systematic problem rather than tackle the problems from within, or just dress up the issue as making the solution personalized or tailored.

That's how the whole business of consulting works; they poke around and ask questions and then write up a bunch of reports, then give some ideas to management which hasn't had a unique idea in a decade or lacks confidence to make changes. I have doubts that throwing a million bucks at an outside consulting firm to find $500,000 in waste is anymore money well-spent.

The public is more apt to noticing issues with a service they commonly use than some private business they use sparingly or singularly. It's always an easy target and the same Johnny One Notes use it to distract so spending can be redistributed into other pork products.

[Scott5114]

Yeah, there's plenty of inefficiencies in private businesses. Might be a case where doing things the most financially-efficient way is too time or energy consuming. Maybe it'd make customers mad.

Example—when I worked off-track betting we'd print up a whole bunch of programs that we'd hand out for free. Most of them would get thrown away at the end of the day. But that was better than just printing them off as they were asked for, which would be far less wasteful, because the printer took forever to warm up and it'd make people mad if they had to wait. I at least got them to start recycling...but the only way to recycle paper there was to put it in the shred box, which was emptied by another private company and taken to a secure destruction facility, which I assume charged the company by weight. The programs really didn't need to be taken to a secure destruction facility, but that was the only form of recycling the company participated in. So that's another inefficiency.

Another source of inefficiency is office politics. Doing things X way is more expensive, but it means you don't have to deal with Craig who is an asshole, so that's the way things get done. Or maybe Craig wants things done in a certain inefficient way because that gives him job security. Or whatever.

Point being, merely privatizing something doesn't automatically make it more efficient.

[kkt]

USPS does have a couple of advantages that are important to me that are not available from UPS or USPS:

If I'm on vacation, I can have my mail held at the post office so packages don't sit on my porch waiting to get stolen and advertising that my home is vacant and ripe pickings for a burglar.

If I move, I can have my mail forwarded to my new address and I'm reminded to send change of address notifications to those mailers.  Some are notified automatically based on the notification I gave the post office too.  For something that I order and have sent right away, that doesn't matter much, but if it's something like a monthly or 4x a year magazine, that's valuable.

[kphoger]

Point being, merely privatizing something doesn't automatically make it more efficient.

Right.  But you must admit there's less incentive to be efficient when Joe Taxpayer is the one paying to keep your business open.

As an illustration, let's imagine buying a bottle of wine.

[1]  Imagine you want to buy a bottle of wine to share when your sister comes into town.  You go to the liquor store and start looking around.  You're the one paying for the wine, and you're going to be one of the ones drinking it.  So you're going to look for a bottle that's a good value—that is, a bottle that both (a) tastes good and (b) doesn't cost too much.

[2]  Now imagine that same scenario as [1], except that you've been holding onto a gift card for that liquor store, which you got as a birthday gift a few months ago.  You're going to be the one drinking the wine, so you'll still make sure to pick one that tastes good.  But, as long as the price is less than the gift card amount, then you won't care as much about how much it costs.  Instead of a good value, you're just looking for a good wine.

[3]  Next, imagine that your boss wants to give one of his new clients a bottle of wine as a Christmas gift.  He's given you the task of buying the bottle of wine, along with whatever else you think might be nice to put in the gift basket too.  You're still the one paying for it, but you won't be the one drinking it.  In fact, you've never met the lady who will be drinking it, nor will she even know or care that you're the one who bought it.  So you're still going to look for a bottle that doesn't cost too much, but you're going to care a lot less what the wine tastes like.  Instead of a good value, you're just looking for a good bargain.

[4]  But now imagine the same scenario as [3], except that your boss gave you the company credit card to use.  You won't be drinking the wine, and you won't be using your own money to purchase it.  So you won't be likely to care as much that it tastes good, nor to care as much about the price.  Heck, you'll probably just pick whatever bottle looks fancy or has a cool sounding name on the label.  At this point, neither price nor quality matters all that much to you—some, perhaps, but not nearly as much as if you were spending your own money on something to personally share with your sister.

A lot of government spending is scenario 4.  They use other people's money to fund products and programs that other people use.  Sure they use some of those products and programs themselves, but certainly not all of them.  For example, I'd be a lot likely to believe government-run healthcare could keep prices low if members of Congress had to shop on the same exchange and pay the same rates as the rest of us, and that it could deliver a good quality product if members of Congress had to use the same plans as the rest of us.

Private businesses have inefficiencies just as the USPS has inefficiencies, but the former don't typically have Uncle Sam paying to keep the lights on.

[SEWIGuy]

Wow. That is one bizarre anaolgy.

Anyway, I think the USPS inefficiencies are mostly due to the universal nature of its services and its access. It has to largely deliver something to almost every mailbox in the country daily. (Something UPS and FedEx don't have to do.)

And it has to have tens of thousands of access points, mostly post offices, for people to access its services. Again, UPS and FedEx don't have nearly that amount of real estate to manage.

[kphoger]

Wow. That is one bizarre anaolgy.

Yeah, well, look who posted it.

And don't get me started on the redundancy and inefficiency of there being a post office every five miles in some rural areas of Kentucky and West Virginia, that aren't open but a couple of hours each day with the federal government renting space in a country store somewhere.

And it has to have tens of thousands of access points, mostly post offices, for people to access its services.

Does it really have to have as many as it does?  Is there a legal mechanism preventing them from consolidating?

[SEWIGuy]

Wow. That is one bizarre anaolgy.

Yeah, well, look who posted it.

And don't get me started on the redundancy and inefficiency of there being a post office every five miles in some rural areas of Kentucky and West Virginia, that aren't open but a couple of hours each day with the federal government renting space in a country store somewhere.

And it has to have tens of thousands of access points, mostly post offices, for people to access its services.

Does it really have to have as many as it does?  Is there a legal mechanism preventing them from consolidating?

I don't think there is a *legal* mechanism preventing them from consolidating. I do think it becomes more difficult from a mission-related point of view. Perhaps politics as well.

[kkt]

Wow. That is one bizarre anaolgy.

Yeah, well, look who posted it.

And don't get me started on the redundancy and inefficiency of there being a post office every five miles in some rural areas of Kentucky and West Virginia, that aren't open but a couple of hours each day with the federal government renting space in a country store somewhere.

And it has to have tens of thousands of access points, mostly post offices, for people to access its services.

Does it really have to have as many as it does?  Is there a legal mechanism preventing them from consolidating?

Significant numbers of post offices have closed.  A city loses its downtown post office and they have to go to a suburban one, or a small town loses its post office and they have to go to a neighboring down. Hard on people who need the post office and depend on public transit to get there.

Meantime as pointed out previously a lot of sorting has been taken out of local post offices to be done by bigger machines, giant sorting centers for each metropolitan area.  And that has a cost in slower delivery of mail that was very local.
 

[Rothman]

Point being, merely privatizing something doesn't automatically make it more efficient.

Right.  But you must admit there's less incentive to be efficient when Joe Taxpayer is the one paying to keep your business open.

As an illustration, let's imagine buying a bottle of wine.

[1]  Imagine you want to buy a bottle of wine to share when your sister comes into town.  You go to the liquor store and start looking around.  You're the one paying for the wine, and you're going to be one of the ones drinking it.  So you're going to look for a bottle that's a good value—that is, a bottle that both (a) tastes good and (b) doesn't cost too much.

[2]  Now imagine that same scenario as [1], except that you've been holding onto a gift card for that liquor store, which you got as a birthday gift a few months ago.  You're going to be the one drinking the wine, so you'll still make sure to pick one that tastes good.  But, as long as the price is less than the gift card amount, then you won't care as much about how much it costs.  Instead of a good value, you're just looking for a good wine.

[3]  Next, imagine that your boss wants to give one of his new clients a bottle of wine as a Christmas gift.  He's given you the task of buying the bottle of wine, along with whatever else you think might be nice to put in the gift basket too.  You're still the one paying for it, but you won't be the one drinking it.  In fact, you've never met the lady who will be drinking it, nor will she even know or care that you're the one who bought it.  So you're still going to look for a bottle that doesn't cost too much, but you're going to care a lot less what the wine tastes like.  Instead of a good value, you're just looking for a good bargain.

[4]  But now imagine the same scenario as [3], except that your boss gave you the company credit card to use.  You won't be drinking the wine, and you won't be using your own money to purchase it.  So you won't be likely to care as much that it tastes good, nor to care as much about the price.  Heck, you'll probably just pick whatever bottle looks fancy or has a cool sounding name on the label.  At this point, neither price nor quality matters all that much to you—some, perhaps, but not nearly as much as if you were spending your own money on something to personally share with your sister.

A lot of government spending is scenario 4.  They use other people's money to fund products and programs that other people use.  Sure they use some of those products and programs themselves, but certainly not all of them.  For example, I'd be a lot likely to believe government-run healthcare could keep prices low if members of Congress had to shop on the same exchange and pay the same rates as the rest of us, and that it could deliver a good quality product if members of Congress had to use the same plans as the rest of us.

Private businesses have inefficiencies just as the USPS has inefficiencies, but the former don't typically have Uncle Sam paying to keep the lights on.

Ridiculous analogy that does not take into account legal requirements in a lot of states for DOTs to contract out to the lowest bidder.

[kphoger]

that does not take into account legal requirements in a lot of states for DOTs to contract out to the lowest bidder.

Ridiculous counterargument that ignores the fact that nobody said anything about DOTs.

[Rothman]

that does not take into account legal requirements in a lot of states for DOTs to contract out to the lowest bidder.

Ridiculous counterargument that ignores the fact that nobody said anything about DOTs.

Ridiculous rebuttal due to the fact that DOTs are in the public sector wbich was what was being deemed inefficient.

[kphoger]

Ridiculous rebuttal due to the fact that DOTs are in the public sector wbich was what was being deemed inefficient.

Previous posts up to mine, I suppose.  But not mine specifically, which is the one you chose to quote, in which I carefully qualified my generalization with the phrase "a lot of government spending" in order to leave room for government spending that doesn't fit my generalization.

[Rothman]

Ridiculous rebuttal due to the fact that DOTs are in the public sector wbich was what was being deemed inefficient.

Previous posts up to mine, I suppose.  But not mine specifically, which is the one you chose to quote, in which I carefully qualified my generalization with the phrase "a lot of government spending" in order to leave room for government spending that doesn't fit my generalization.

Pfft.  Ridiculous CYA-ing.

[kphoger]

So, do you deny that those DOTs who aren't required to contract out to the lowest bidder have less incentive to keep costs low than, say, a small business owner who is shopping around for a contractor to repave the parking lot?

[SEWIGuy]

So, do you deny that those DOTs who aren't required to contract out to the lowest bidder have less incentive to keep costs low than, say, a small business owner who is shopping around for a contractor to repave the parking lot?

I don't really know how you can prove it either way.

[kphoger]

Here's one...  Computer stuff that gives you two options:  [now] or [maybe later].  Like, where's the option I really want?  [no, never, shut up, just stop]?

[Big John]

Here's one...  Computer stuff that gives you two options:  [now] or [maybe later].  Like, where's the option I really want?  [no, never, shut up, just stop]?

and use a slide down or popup to display it.

[hbelkins]

It's funny because HB lives in a part of the country where a privatized post office would be a major detriment to its citizens. Direct mail delivery would cost a pretty penny, or companies would just decide it's not worth it at all and make you travel 50 miles to a centralized distribution location, and a privatized PO box would cost 5-6 times as much as a USPS one.

Then why do FexEx and UPS make deliveries every day up myriad hollers?

[kphoger]

Then why do FexEx and UPS make deliveries every day up myriad hollers?

Because they don't deliver letters (unless you want to put that letter in a manila envelope and pay the package rate to ship it).  If UPS and FedEx began delivering regular envelope mail, the way USPS does, then you can bet either the price would go way up, or else they'd scale back on how many of those myriad hollers they'll pay to send their drivers.

UPS and FedEx only deliver the sort of parcels that actually make them money to deliver.  There's no way, without seriously hiking up the prices, to make letter delivery nearly as profitable as parcel delivery.  Thus, the government funds your ability to send a Christmas newsletter to the other side of the country for less than a dollar, whereas UPS or FedEx will only ship the Christmas present there—and for twice the price as USPS will.